Rainwater Harvesting in Arid Regions: An Integrative ApproachAiming at Adapting to Climate Change

Abstract

Environmental problem-settings are often of a certain complexity because the relationships between different sectors, and therefore stakeholders, have to be considered adequately to achieve sustainable solutions. However, the inclusion of data from different sectors is necessary to identify dependencies between needs and challenges. Neglecting such dependencies can lead to wrong or even false decisions on how to solve the problem. The inclusion of datasets from different sources is especially a necessity in a field such as climate change adaptation, because the above-mentioned dependencies are obvious: water management, for instance, concerns the balance of precipitation and discharge including processes like surface and groundwater runoff, interflow, and others. These processes are dependent from land cover, land use (e. g. agriculture, urban settling), sealing of ground surfaces, soil types, and more. Additionally, water management has also to take into account withdrawal of water (households, industrial and agricultural production). Creating a complete
water balance for a region is therefore a suitable example for the necessity to integrate spatial data from various sources aiming at producing reliable results.

Being situated in two geographically different regions, problems of water management are in the focus of the Jordan-German project “RAIN-GIS”. The problem settings, the project structure and goals are described followed by conclusions concerning scientific, management and socio-cultural aspects of this cooperation that is aimed at improving rainwater harvesting procedures which is necessary due to climate change.