Assessing Rural domestic water demand and use for local groundwater governance during drought, Halambani area, South Africa

Abstract

Groundwater demand (abstraction) and use during drought continues to be a vital aspect in rural areas. However, the lack of systematic data to assess the availability, demand and use of such resource in addition to lack of having appropriate implementation plan for governing such resources at local scale especially in unmetered areas remain a problem. The argument in this study was that designing appropriate implementation plan that considers local context, informs the basis for implementing local groundwater good governance practice that would sustain utilisation and management of groundwater resources. The Ha-Lambani Village in Limpopo Province of South Africa was used as case study. The aim of this study was to assess rural domestic water demand and use that would inform a basis for designing an appropriate implementation plan for local groundwater good governance as an intervention during drought in rural unmetered areas. To achieve such an aim, i), physiographic factors that influence groundwater availability were explained to establish availability of groundwater; ii), rural domestic water demand and use were assessed to showcase the procedure of generating quantitative data on groundwater abstraction and consumption; iii), factors that determine rural domestic water demand and use were established; iv), appropriate implementation plan for local groundwater governance was designed with evaluation indicators built in. The capability, resilience and sustainable livelihoods approaches were applied as theoretical and conceptual frameworks for the study which informed better understanding of coping strategies during drought.