The idea of using fog nets to harvest fresh drinking water is not new. It is used quite successfully in countries such as Nepal, Guatemala, Chile and others where fresh water is at a premium or the purification and desalination of available water is prohibitively costly for local residents.

Fog nets have been considered for Cape Verde before. In the 1960’s Portugese engineers looked into the possibility of using fog nets to capture potable water and ten years later, a group of Dutch companies revisited the idea.

Neither of these projects or any subsequent ones seemed to stick. That is until 2005 when a fog net system was set up for families of Serra Malagueta on Santiago island. Previously reliant on fresh water being trucked to them during the dry season at a cost of 2 cents (US) per litre, the fog net families can now ‘harvest’ their own drinking water.

Despite the great boon the access to clean water has on the lives of these families, there are objections. Some say tourists will object to the sight of the fog nets and find them ugly but as water engineer Antonia Sabino says, ‘The objective of the project is to produce water to give people to drink. Not to take pictures.’

Of course, digging up the national park to lay miles of water pipes would be a damn sight uglier so I guess the tourists should just be happy that the local community is getting fresh water.

For more information on this particular Cape Verde project please see the complete Fog Harvesting article at Africanloft.com.

For more on Fog Nets and communities where they are in use, visit Fog Quest, a charity which focusses on fog collection and rainwater harvesting