4.2 Insights into sand dams viability and overall fit in Namibe
To support the rapid interest and prospective investments on sand dams in Angola (World Bank, 2022), Serrat-Capdevila et al. (2022) have recently investigated the potential for constructing sand dams in the area, although without providing a specific potential location for sand dams construction. Our final results (the 16 locations assessed with the integrated approach) can thus provide concrete support to investments on sand dams in the area, supporting local water development projects with both our quantitative and qualitative results. In fact, another key finding is that colonial sand dams have been largely used by indigenous people and are considered an asset for the communities (e.g. the colonial dam of Panguelo is the only reliable water point of the community), as opposed to other colonial structures like wells and houses who fell into disrepair or were even vandalized by local herders to reconquer their territory or because of their symbolic meaning of colonial power (Ramazzotti, 1991). The fact that sand dams became embedded in local water use traditions represent thus a peculiar situation, in contrast with most experiences also from larger dams (Liu et al., 2019). This provides new evidence on the viability of sand dams, not only as a biophysically suitable, but also socio-economically and culturally fit technology, encouraging the development of small, distributed and community driven dams for increasing water security in Namibe.
Apart from the territory of the 10 communities (municipalities of Bibala and Virei), our analysis can be used to support other pastoral communities, especially considering that water scarcity is a problem that affects people beyond community’s boundaries given the mobile nature of pastural traditions and the increasing climate change-driven migratory trends (Neumann et al., 2015; Sterzel et al., 2014). With our province-scale analysis, other communities could benefit from sand dams construction as adaptation and mitigation strategy to address the increasing impact of climate change and water scarcity. The 2106 biophysically suitable points in the whole province might seem quite a large number considering the time and resources required for a complementary in-field socio-economic assessment. However, other large-scale studies provide a comparable number of suitable points, recommending the integration of local participatory work or at least a local cross-check/validation of the approach, though mostly leaving the in-field part unmet for technical, costs and/or time constraints (Ammar et al., 2016). Nonetheless, we recommend considering our biophysically suitable points as a first selection to be complemented by participatory work, given the possible biases related to the small set of parameters used in the MCDA conceived for a complementary community engagement.