Agricultural Water Wells and Solar Energy Adaptation

In Gaza, the humanitarian conditions remain to be challenging to the population, in particular the vulnerable communities, livelihood groups, and households. During the reporting period, updated data on food security was released through the Socio-economic and Food Security Survey (data of 2020) indicating that the share of severely food insecure householders (HHs) reached 40.7%, increasing by 4.9% since 2018 in Gaza. This brings the total number of HHs experiencing severe or moderate food insecurity to 64.4%. Following the hostilities, the poverty rate in Gaza increased from 50% to 59.3%. The slow and stagnant recovery and reconstruction process post-May has also been triggering additional risks facing the Palestinian population, a situation that imposes additional challenges in responding to the needs.

As a part of its emergency response to the humanitarian crisis that resulted from the hostilities in May that came on top of the existing crisis from the covid-19 pandemic and the 16 years of blockade, Oxfam implemented multiple emergency response activities supporting access to basic needs and to basic livelihood recovery.

This work was started by repairing traditional power installations and distribution networks for energy efficiency and installing solar panels connected to new water well pumps. The rehabilitation and maintenance provided to the targeted wells enhanced farmers’ ability to access sustainable water sources for irrigation purposes. In addition, solar energy is better than a diesel generator, which consider is very expensive for farmers, and it was ensured that water is available at any time through the provision of the solar power system with lower costs of fuel that are incurred usually during power cuts.