Praia is a municipality with 102.6 Km2, located south of the island Santiago. It houses 132,317 inhabitants (INE, 2010), an average annual growth rate of 3%, which represents about 30% of the population of Cape Verde and 48% of the island of Santiago.
Main environmental challenges faced by the city
- Successive episodes of droughts and rains of torrential character concentrated in a reduced number of days or even hours, contributing to the inexistence of permanent water surfaces and low quantity / quality of groundwater;
- Rapid demographic growth generating peripheral neighborhoods characterized by high clandestine constructions, lack of basic infrastructure (water, electricity, sewerage, etc.) and inappropriate behaviors/attitudes towards the environment;
- The aforementioned factors contribute to the destruction and deficit of green spaces in the municipality.
NBS implemented or planned
The intention is to install the drip irrigation system in the main green spaces in Praia (squares, squares, separators, roundabouts) as a way of reducing water stress, plant death and contributing to the economy/saving of Water.
Six reservoirs will be built upstream to facilitate gravity irrigation. The reservoirs will be supplied with water self-transported from the Waste Water Treatment Station (WWTP), from the boreholes/wells and from the use of water from the company Ceris.
The project will also contemplate an educational aspect, through the elaboration of a manual of green spaces resilient to climate change and awareness actions in the student sector. In this sense, the challenge is to find better solutions to design, transform or qualify green spaces more adapted to climate change.
