Chile Fog Harvesting: Building Sustainable Water Solutions Now
As some of Chile’s driest cities confront mounting water shortages, researchers have found an untapped solution in the clouds. Fog harvesting—capturing droplets from passing mist—offers a powerful, sustainable answer that could transform life for countless urban residents across arid regions.
A Desert City in Need
In northern Chile, the desert town of Alto Hospicio is one of the driest places on Earth. It is located near the Atacama, a region where the land receives less than 0.19 inches (5 mm) of rain each year. Even with these harsh conditions, Alto Hospicio grew quickly. Many new residents live in poor neighborhoods. They do not receive basic clean water through normal means. They depend on trucks to deliver even the simplest everyday needs.
BBC interviews tell us that the town’s weak water supply points to a bigger worry for Chile’s dry areas. The Atacama Desert, known for its strange look, now hosts mining, science centers as well as higher water needs. Normal water sources like underground reserves or tanks, suffer from more people and more industrial use. In this context, scientists have begun looking skyward for innovative solutions that harness one of the region’s few consistent natural resources—fog.
In an interview with BBC, lead researcher Dr. Virginia Carter Gamberini from Universidad Mayor explained that Alto Hospicio faces complex social and economic challenges. “Like a lot of cities,” she said, “it has its social problems. There is a lot of poverty here.” The largest burden falls on those in informal settlements, who are forced to purchase drinking water delivered by trucks—an expensive, time-consuming process that also raises questions about quality. With water inseparable from health, dignity, and development, the lack of a stable supply holds back entire communities. In such conditions, even a small rise in water per day can mark the line between barely holding on and thriving.
Despite the challenges, a dull sky full of clouds points to a hidden answer: regular bands of coastal fog that come from the Pacific Ocean, which cover Alto Hospicio’s mountains. That obscured mist might become key to guiding the town toward a steadier future – one built on a new method called fog collection.
The Art and Science of Fog Harvesting
Fog harvesting, while ingenious, is relatively straightforward from a technological perspective. The core system involves suspending a fine mesh between two poles, typically positioned in areas known to have frequent fog banks. As humid air moves through the mesh, the moisture turns to water drops that fall into channels. These channels run to storage tanks, where the stored water gets cleaned and sent out.
Although fog harvesting has been used on a small scale for decades—especially in rural parts of South and Central America—scientists now see potential for a “new era” of larger-scale deployment. Speaking to BBC, Dr. Carter Gamberini described the system’s possibilities in urban environments, such as the growing city of Alto Hospicio. “Water from the clouds,” as she calls it, could become a critical piece of the puzzle for cities grappling with climate change, desertification, and rapidly expanding populations.
Fog harvesting endeavors date back to pilot programs in countries like Peru and Guatemala, but the largest current system is located on the edge of the Sahara Desert in Morocco. In Chile, researchers have been methodically mapping potential sites for maximizing fog collection, combining satellite data with weather forecasts. In the case of Alto Hospicio, they identified enough reliable fog events to suggest large-scale mesh installations could easily meet the water needs of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
During a site experiment, teams set up two mesh nets to record the water produced each day. Despite the few facilities available, the results looked good. Researchers saw high amounts of fog come from the coast, helped by the region’s unique terrain. The cold Pacific waters help generate thick, moisture-rich clouds; as those move inland and rise over the mountains, the condensation process intensifies. That sets the stage for collecting substantial amounts of water through dozens—if not hundreds—of mesh installations.
One of the biggest advantages of fog harvesting is scalability. Experts think a small setup covering 110 square meters of mesh will supply the water needed each year for Alto Hospicio’s green areas, which makes the urban space nicer and more earth-friendly. On a more ambitious level, around 17,000 square meters of mesh could produce 300,000 liters of water per week—enough to drastically reduce or even replace truck deliveries to the city’s slums.
From Cloud to Community: Practical Benefits
For residents of Alto Hospicio’s poorest districts, any new and reliable source of watermarks a life-changing breakthrough. BBC talked with local people who said that each day brings a challenge to get water. Many families lack access to public pipes or tanks and must buy water from private trucks at high cost. This choice pushes up their expenses and leaves them open to shortages.
Fog harvesting, in contrast, places the means of production closer to the community and reduces reliance on distant sources. Once the mesh systems are built, the water is practically free, requiring only occasional maintenance and filtration to ensure it meets drinking standards. This step helps protect basic human rights, like having water for drinking, cooking along with cleaning, in a simpler way.
Also, collecting fog helps not only with water to drink. In a city near a big desert, growing plants is not simple. Yet with a steady, localized water supply, landscape designers could create parks, gardens, or reforestation programs that enrich public life and mitigate local climate conditions. As Dr. Carter Gamberini’s team suggests, harvested fog water could also fuel innovations in hydroponic agriculture, producing vegetables or other crops without soil. For a place with minimal rainfall, that means fresh produce grown right where it is consumed—transforming food security for some of the most vulnerable residents.
The environmental footprint of such a system is another advantage. Traditional water infrastructure relies on energy-intensive pumping or long-distance transportation. Fog harvesting, on the other hand, makes use of a naturally present resource and directs it where people require it. It uses little electricity, mainly for cleaning and transporting, and it does not produce any greenhouse gases. It stands as a clear model of sustainable growth, providing an example of how machines, nature, and communities can cooperate.
Toward a Resilient Water Future
Chile’s growing use of underground water reserves, which received their last refresh thousands of years back, presses the need to find new water sources now. With the climate turning and more people arriving and passing over, the chance to collect fog simply wastes an opportunity. Dr. Carter Gamberini and her colleagues have published findings in the journal Frontiers of Environmental Science, revealing how reliably the coastal fog in Alto Hospicio could meet local demands.
Yet challenges remain. Scaling fog harvesting from a handful of pilot nets to large swaths of mesh demands planning, funding, and political will. Building tens of thousands of square meters of netting calls for careful planning and constant management. Government offices and community organizers next to private investors can join efforts to secure funds and skills needed to run the system well, while local people must have proof that the water drawn from these devices will be safe to drink, a goal that requires water cleaning and checking steps.
The worldwide drive for similar projects points to a promising future. In Morocco’s Aït Baâmrane region, an expansive fog-harvesting site has successfully provided thousands of people with water for everyday use. The same principle applies to desert coastal areas across the world, from California to Peru. As BBC news shows, basic engineering paired with a friendly climate gives big benefits, providing a steady water supply to communities near water shortage.
Teaching communication, moreover, plays a key role. Let local people in Alto Hospicio feel like they are part of the process so that this technology does not come from above. When local groups help with planning and repairs, the city makes citizens learn how to run plus extend the mesh systems, thus linking fog collection to everyday public life. The technology may drive new studies at Chilean universities and labs, prompting more new ideas in water capture and sharing.
Ultimately, fog harvesting exemplifies what Dr. Carter Gamberini calls “water from the clouds”—the prospect of tapping into a recurring natural phenomenon to address a dire human need. “We have the ocean along the whole country, and we have the mountains,” she told the BBC. These geographic blessings, combined with the pressing realities of climate change and urbanization, demand creative thinking and immediate action.
The solution may well lie in these giant nets—delicate as they appear—capable of gathering the vaporous lifeblood drifting through the desert air. By bridging the gap between the science of condensation and the practicality of community-based water systems, Chile could become a trailblazer in sustainable water policy. And in Alto Hospicio, where families wait patiently for weekly truck deliveries, there is already plenty of reason to hope that the next few years will usher in a more reliable, self-sufficient supply—one that quite literally materializes out of thin air.
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Fog harvesting thus stands at the intersection of necessity and innovation, promising resilience in places once deemed uninhabitable. As climate pressures intensify, other parched corners of the world may look to Chile for guidance, discovering that the future of water may drift gently overhead, waiting for someone to simply reach out and catch it.
