World Food Programme

Lesson Learned from the construction of a 1800m3 capacity gabion in Wadi Hassan Valley, Khanfer district, Aden governorate under Food for Assets (FFA) Project

What is the specific situation that the lesson learned relates to?
It is about this asset that serves and protects more than 5,000 acres of agricultural land from drought and adds value in different aspects such as increasing underground water level of Abyan and Aden, as such, leading to diversified livelihood options e.g. livestock rearing and bee farming.

How is this impacted by the local context/environment/culture?
The agricultural sector is one of the most important economic sectors in Abyan governorate, and the main source of income for most of the people, as many of them are engaged in agriculture activities. Abyan governorate is famous for its agricultural valleys including Wadi Banna, Wadi Hassan, Wadi Delta Abyan, Delta Ahour.

Because of previous conflicts and wars that occurred in Abyan, the irrigation system was destroyed and was subjected to destruction and neglect. The Abyan Delta agricultural area located in the districts of Zanzibar and Khanfar in Abyan governorate experienced high flow of water from seasonal rainfall, however, the flow of water irrigated a small part of agricultural areas in Khanfar and Zanzibar districts. The bulk of these flood water went into to the sea, as well as causing damages such as eroding farmers' lands, damaging roads, damaging irrigation channels, bridges, and even the destruction of homes that affected some villages and population centres.

After the failure of the dam project in Wadi Hassan in year 1992, many irrigation channels, including Hussein Canal, were deprived of floodwater, which led to the drought of agricultural lands, in the process, depriving more than 2000 families of their main source of income. Hussein Canal covers more than 5000 Hectares of agricultural land that has been deprived for more than ten years of seasonal floods, which is its main source of irrigation by torrents.

In this project, five villages (Al-Dergag, Al-Komblyah, Maykalan, Kadmat Al-Saeed qasem and Obar Otman) that are inter-connected as a sub-district were targeted and benefited from the floodwater that came through the Hussein Canal. Based on the community leaders and irrigation office’s request, a 1800m3 capacity Gabion (360 inter-connected sub-gabions each with size 5m length X 1m depth X 1m breadth) covering a distance of 105 meters was constructed in Wadi Hassan to bring water from the valley to Hussein main channel for irrigation for villager’s lands by floods and torrents water. [5 Pages]
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