Source: TOI
Context: A fog-harvesting network on Mount Boutmezguida in southwestern Morocco supplies piped water to local homes in the Aït Baamrane region.
What is Fog Harvesting?
- A water-collection method that uses mesh nets to capture tiny water droplets from fog and channel them into storage or piping systems.
- It is also called cloud or mist water collection, and is used in arid and semi-arid regions.
- How it works in simple terms: fog is water already suspended in the air as microscopic droplets. When fog passes through a fine mesh, the droplets collect on the threads, merge into larger drops, and run down into a collecting gutter below. No energy is needed — the wind does the work of pushing fog through the net, and gravity does the rest.
The Technology Used
- The project uses black polymer mesh nets and CloudFisher technology.
- CloudFisher nets are three-dimensional and food-safe, developed along with WaterFoundation and Aqualonis. They can withstand mountain winds of up to 120 km per hour, and work without electricity.
- That wind strength is the important part. Earlier fog nets often tore in strong mountain winds, so durability — not collection ability — was the real problem the technology had to solve.
Why It Matters
- It creates water where rain does not fall. In regions bordering deserts, annual rainfall may be negligible while fog is frequent. Fog harvesting converts an existing atmospheric resource into usable water without drilling, damming or pumping.
- Zero energy, low maintenance. No electricity, no moving parts, no fuel. That makes it viable in remote settlements far from a grid.
- It reduces the burden on women. In such regions, water collection is overwhelmingly women’s work, often involving hours of walking. Piped supply returns that time — which is also why a women-led organisation built the project.
- Relevance for India: fog harvesting has been trialled in parts of the Western Ghats, the Nilgiris and the Himalayan foothills, where orographic fog is common. It remains a niche supplement, not a substitute for rainwater harvesting or watershed development, but it belongs in the same family of decentralised, low-energy water solutions.
Important Facts for Exams
- Fog harvesting is also called cloud or mist water collection in arid and semi-arid regions
- Gravity-fed water systems move water without pumps when the source is at a higher elevation
- The Amazigh are an indigenous people of North Africa, including Morocco
- The Anti-Atlas Mountains form part of the mountain system in southern Morocco
