If there is something humanity has not been able to crack, is to transform the abundant ocean waters into a useful product – a product that humans can use to drink, cook, clean, and most importantly to irrigate with. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that in as much as water makes up 71% of earth’s surface, only 2.5% of that water is directly useful for humans and majority of life forms. With increasing population, the 2.5% is accelerating towards 1% – and that’s why humans need to focus on “REFINING” the ocean waters for distribution to all humans that do not have access to clean drinking water. One method that can help with this is through methods like that employed by GivePower, which has successfully installed a solar powered Desalination Plant in Kiungu Village, Lamu County.
GivePower which is a non-governmental organization identified Kiungu Village for their project as the village is situated in an area that normally experiences extreme drought, and also due to the fact that the residents of Kiungu hardly have access to clean water.
GivePower therefore installed a Desalination Plant at the shores of Indian Ocean that uses solar energy to help in desalinating the ocean water. The solar panes at the plant produce approximately 50 kilowatts of power, enough to power two pumps that run throughout the day and is able to provide clean water to over 25 thousand people in a span of 20 years.
Commenting on the Project, the President of GivePower Hayes Barnard said, “Humanity needs to take swift action to address the increasing severe global water crisis that the faces the developing world. With our background in off-grid clean energy, GivePower can immediately help by deploying solar water farm solutions to save lives in areas through that suffer from prolonged water scarcity.”
In Kenya for instance we shouldn’t have famine occasioned by drought – and areas such as Eastern and North Eastern regions ought to be turned to rich grounds for crop and animal farming. This can be made possible if we invest resources in turning the saline Indian Ocean into “refined” water, and that refined water is then pumped to the drought prone regions for useful purposes. After all, when it comes to oil, we have been able to not only get useful petroleum products from the oil, but also distribute it across continents through piping systems.