Rainwater harvesting now to preserve groundwater for tomorrow

World Water Day is marked this year under the theme ‘Groundwater; making the invisible visible’. It highlights the importance of groundwater and the need to protect and preserve this precious resource.   

With about 14 percent of Iraq’s water coming from groundwater – the rest from the surface waters of the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates – some Iraqis are taking action now to preserve groundwater for tomorrow.

In the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, activists from several environmental organisations are focusing on conserving water, reforestation and decluttering polluted areas. Working with thousands of volunteers in Erbil, Duhok and Sulaymaniyah, Hawkar Ali, Gashbin Idrees Ali and Shahen Omer Sa’eed of Hasar Organization explain how they use water in their climate projects to sustain the environment.

“Erbil's groundwater level is deep, and it takes a longer time to be recharged by annual rainwater infiltration. We must preserve it by promoting artificial recharging projects. If we have surface flow during the wet season, we can use surface water for storing underground,” says Hawkar Ali, founder of Hasar. “Instead of groundwater, we must harvest rainwater by building several dams upstream of Erbil city.”

A Ph.D. student in Earth Science Engineering, Hawkar Ali recalls how in 2021 their tree nursery suffered from water shortages due to a drop in groundwater levels at the nearby well. Learning from their experience, they now use other water methods to sustain the trees they plant like in their recent project in Pirmam.

Echoing Hawkar’s sentiments and equally as passionate about water conservation, protecting and greening our environment, Gashbin Idrees Ali says the main objective of the project, implemented in partnership with UNICEF and financed by Germany, is to reduce desertification by planting trees around artificial ponds that they build. “These ponds collect rainwater and reuse it to irrigate the planted trees,” he explained as he joined volunteers in early March this year to plant 2,000 trees around Dwin’s pond at Pirmam in the Erbil province.

Hawkar Ali believes that reforestation needs sustainable water resources to be successful and rainwater ponds can be a solution. 

Explaining how the organization mitigates the effect of water scarcity to sustain their plants and reforest Erbil, Shahen Omer Sa’eed said, “We plant the trees that go with the Region’s ecosystem and climate. We have started with oak trees that require less water. Our aim is not merely to green the areas but also to address the issue of water scarcity.”

Hasar Organization has been involved in a three-year study of water resource protection focused on the development of harvesting rainwater integrated with reforestation campaign. Hawkar emphasizes that there must be a water strategy at the governmental level which focuses on water as a critical and vulnerable issue in the Region.

“Any water protection initiative must be supported. Urban design should consider the groundwater distribution; there should not be urban distribution over the recharging side of the city that is supposed to infiltrate water into the underground.”

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Translations by Ihsan Barzanji, Nafea Azeez and Rashwan Salih (UNAMI PIO)