A giant cistern for Tuvalu

Scoop: A cistern that can hold 700,000 litres of water has been gifted to the community of Lofeagai in Tuvalu under the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change Project (PACC). This will help build resilience and reduce vulnerability of the community when it comes to water shortages. Last year Tuvalu went through one of its driest spells ever with very little rainfall over an 8 month period, bringing the country into a national state of emergency.

It is challenges like these that the regional PACC project hopes to empower Pacific communities to address. “We frequently experience water shortage in Tuvalu so the PACC support has come at a critical time to help us tackle this and address these issues on the spot,” said the Tuvalu PACC Project Coordinator, Ms. Loia Tausi.

“Through this project, we have managed to give the people of Lofeagai a major reserve of 700,000 litres of water so they have this extra supply to fall back on in their time of need.”

The Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change Project began in 2009 and spans 14 island countries, focusing on three key areas; food production and food security, coastal management capacity and water resource management. It helps countries identify a project under one of the key areas and strengthens education and awareness as well as develops a pilot project to build resilience and reduce vulnerability.

In Tuvalu water resource management was the priority area selected after much consultation. While the average person is estimated to consume 100 litres of water per day, in Tuvalu due to the water shortages they are limited to 40 litres per person per day. In times of extreme drought events this is lowered even further to 20 litres of water per person per day....

Sunset on Tuvalu, shot by INABA Tomoaki, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license