SADC urged to invest in water to enhance development
By PELEKELO LISWANISO in Lilongwe, Malawi
GOVERNMENTS in southern Africa have been asked to commit significant proportions of their budgets to planning and management of water related issues as a strategy to enhance economic development in the SADC region.
Social scientists, researchers, engineers and policy-makers should equally be engaged in collective action plans to fight poverty and avoid the fear of looking ignorant in implementing water plans in their respective countries.
National governments should also take cognisance of their technical capacity and offer local technocrats competitive packages comparable to foreign experts to ensure equal output and equal pay in the water resources sector.
These challenges emerged during the just ended 7th Water Symposium held at Capital Hotel in Lilongwe, Malawi, which was attended by more than 200 water specialists from the SADC region including university lecturers and researchers.
The delegates included a team of 12 SADC journalists drawn by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the SADC/DANIDA Regional Water Sector Programme to assist the media understand Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) as a concept and to witness its practical implementation on the ground.
IWRM is a process, which promotes the coordinated development and management of water and land resources to maximise the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems.
It was probably the largest water symposium in recent years under the auspices of WaterNet/Water Research Fund for Southern Africa (WARFSA) and the Global Water Partnership (GWP)- Southern Africa.
Malawi’s Minister of Irrigation and Water Development, Mahommed Sidik Mia officially opened the symposium whose theme was Mainstreaming Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in the Development Process.
Noting that the SADC region has been plagued by drought, floods, hunger and poverty, Mr Mia said it was time to reverse the trend and urged policy-makers and other stakeholders to redirect their efforts and ensure that water was high on their development agendas.
‘Time to act is now before it’s too late,” Mr Mia said, adding that the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will remain a pipe dream if adequate resources were not pumped into harnessing and effectively managing the region’s water resources.
Southern Africa has a population of about 193 million people and 65 per cent live in rural areas where poverty levels, disease, poor sanitation and poor water supplies are high. The peri-urban areas in these countries are equally poor, forcing women and children to walk long distances in search of water.
Most people in these countries depend on the exploitation of natural resources including water, resulting in water scarcity, pollution, poor sanitation and climate variability which has often led to droughts, desertification, floods and other natural disasters.
Former Malawian diplomat, Professor Zachary Kasomekera, in his keynote address, said Southern Africa is equally hard hit by HIV/AIDS while subsistence economy and overall narrow based production has led to persistent poverty.
Environmental degradation is a further contributor to the decline in water availability, through loss of vegetation, and the disruption of microclimates and hydrological cycles.
Dense stands of alien vegetation in Southern Africa are particularly disruptive because they use much larger amounts of water than indigenous species.
In some areas of Southern Africa, up 50 per cent of wetlands have been transformed. The Caprivi wetland in Namibia, for example, has been reduced to almost 25 per cent of its original size.
Wetlands act as sponges, absorbing excess water in times of heavy rainfall and buffering the effects of flooding while providing catchment base flow during the dry season.
It is with such degradation that researchers feel there is need to incorporate IWRM in all development activities to ensure a balance between benefits from the development and conservation of natural resources.
Prof Kasomekera stressed that mainstreaming IWRM into the development process and taking advantage of the vast shared water resources in the region was a way out of abject poverty and persistent economic woes in Southern Africa.
He expressed concern that a variety of gatherings and declarations have in the past been made to incorporate water resources into the development process but implementation seems to be elusive.
Some of the declarations date as far back as 1977 during the International Conference on Water. Others include the World Consultation on Drinking Water and Sanitation in New Delhi, 1990; the Dublin Conference on Water and Environment, 1992; the Rio World Summit, 1992.
Other meetings were the Ministerial Conference on Water and Sustainable Development, Netherlands, 1994; the Ministerial Conference on Water and Sustainable Development, Paris, 1998; the Sixth session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, 1998; and the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg,
2002.
It was recommended that development projects in SADC be evaluated to ensure the incorporation of IWRM ideals and that developers embrace the importance of IWRM in their projects.
National technocrats should also be required to execute their chores through collective and consultative systems so that they are able to include IWRM in their planning and implementation of development projects.
It was further recommended that regional meetings on water resources should have an inherent monitoring and evaluation mechanism with measurable trigger indicators of the main issues to assess the success of the meetings and isolate main constraints to the implementation of the IWRM process.
The SADC team of journalists, that was taken on a field trip for an on the spot demonstration of IWRM at Chikuntha farm, about 30 kilometres from Lilongwe, was amazed by the use of natural based technologies like crop residues, manure and gravity fed irrigation and earth canals to produce a wide variety of food crops, fed from water diverted from a nearby a stream.
Owner of the farm, 62-year old Glyvnys Joseph Chikuntha, explained that IWRM is also at work on the farm through the application of biological pest controls and land management technology using herbs and flowers, whose scent repels pests, or the use of spices, or vetiva grass for preventing and controlling erosion. He also uses manual labour to till the land.
The farm, located in Chinkwiri village in Dowa district lies on a flood plain of Nangu stream, which the locals regarded for a long time as a wasteland.
After retiring from government, Mr Chikuntha, who has since been bestowed with an honorary Doctorate degree from the University of Malawi, started his farm in 1982 with land of only 100 square metres but now has 20 hectares in use.
The main source of water is diverted from Nangu stream for irrigation and he has dug water-harvesting structures all around the farm including furrows. He has also dug eight ponds for aquaculture (tilapia fish and for irrigation).
The water harvested drains directly into the plots while ground water from shallow wells with a hand pump is mainly for domestic use. Excess water is channelled to irrigation canals spread out on the farm.
The benefits from his style of farming are unique in that there is ecological sustainability as the farm supports biodiversity like birds and fish and microbes.
There is also economic empowerment for his family of five children and a wife, Christine, because the herbs, vegetables and spices fetch good money from the hotels.
He nets annual returns of between 3 million and 5 million Malawian Kwacha (US $30,000 or about K120 million).
The farm has also demonstrated some social and economic status for the country, as it has become a popular centre of agricultural research and training. It has become a centre of attraction for college students, Non-Governmental Organisations, local communities and foreign visitors.
The success story at Chikuntha Farm, however, has its own challenges and what is critical is the increasing water scarcity on the farm due to increased water demand from new users upstream of the farm where about 1,000 other farmers are putting pressure on water flow.
It is now apparent that there is need to construct a dam to supply enough water to all users in the area as droughts are also imminent while the influx of visitors to the area is putting pressure for water use in the few available toilets or for household use.
Earlier, founder member of WaterNet, Professor Van Der Zaag, said the WaterNet/WARFSA/GWP-SA symposia has been held annually in Southern Africa for the past six years and the purpose is to facilitate the sharing and dissemination of research results in IWRM.
It provides a platform for researchers, policy-makers and other stakeholders to meet and exchange ideas and has become the premier IWRM event in Southern Africa.
Among the participants at this year’s symposium included Malawi’s principal secretary in the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Development, Grain Malunga and Professor Zimani Kadzamira, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Malawi and lecturers from the Copperbelt and the University of Zambia.
IUCN Water Programme Coordinator, Lenka Thamae, the SADC/DANIDA regional water sector component manager Hastings Chikoko and the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC) head of programmes Clever Mafuta, all pledged to engage the SADC media in raising the profile of IWRM in the region.
GOVERNMENTS in southern Africa have been asked to commit significant proportions of their budgets to planning and management of water related issues as a strategy to enhance economic development in the SADC region.
Social scientists, researchers, engineers and policy-makers should equally be engaged in collective action plans to fight poverty and avoid the fear of looking ignorant in implementing water plans in their respective countries.
National governments should also take cognisance of their technical capacity and offer local technocrats competitive packages comparable to foreign experts to ensure equal output and equal pay in the water resources sector.
These challenges emerged during the just ended 7th Water Symposium held at Capital Hotel in Lilongwe, Malawi, which was attended by more than 200 water specialists from the SADC region including university lecturers and researchers.
The delegates included a team of 12 SADC journalists drawn by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the SADC/DANIDA Regional Water Sector Programme to assist the media understand Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) as a concept and to witness its practical implementation on the ground.
IWRM is a process, which promotes the coordinated development and management of water and land resources to maximise the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems.
It was probably the largest water symposium in recent years under the auspices of WaterNet/Water Research Fund for Southern Africa (WARFSA) and the Global Water Partnership (GWP)- Southern Africa.
Malawi’s Minister of Irrigation and Water Development, Mahommed Sidik Mia officially opened the symposium whose theme was Mainstreaming Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in the Development Process.
Noting that the SADC region has been plagued by drought, floods, hunger and poverty, Mr Mia said it was time to reverse the trend and urged policy-makers and other stakeholders to redirect their efforts and ensure that water was high on their development agendas.
‘Time to act is now before it’s too late,” Mr Mia said, adding that the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will remain a pipe dream if adequate resources were not pumped into harnessing and effectively managing the region’s water resources.
Southern Africa has a population of about 193 million people and 65 per cent live in rural areas where poverty levels, disease, poor sanitation and poor water supplies are high. The peri-urban areas in these countries are equally poor, forcing women and children to walk long distances in search of water.
Most people in these countries depend on the exploitation of natural resources including water, resulting in water scarcity, pollution, poor sanitation and climate variability which has often led to droughts, desertification, floods and other natural disasters.
Former Malawian diplomat, Professor Zachary Kasomekera, in his keynote address, said Southern Africa is equally hard hit by HIV/AIDS while subsistence economy and overall narrow based production has led to persistent poverty.
Environmental degradation is a further contributor to the decline in water availability, through loss of vegetation, and the disruption of microclimates and hydrological cycles.
Dense stands of alien vegetation in Southern Africa are particularly disruptive because they use much larger amounts of water than indigenous species.
In some areas of Southern Africa, up 50 per cent of wetlands have been transformed. The Caprivi wetland in Namibia, for example, has been reduced to almost 25 per cent of its original size.
Wetlands act as sponges, absorbing excess water in times of heavy rainfall and buffering the effects of flooding while providing catchment base flow during the dry season.
It is with such degradation that researchers feel there is need to incorporate IWRM in all development activities to ensure a balance between benefits from the development and conservation of natural resources.
Prof Kasomekera stressed that mainstreaming IWRM into the development process and taking advantage of the vast shared water resources in the region was a way out of abject poverty and persistent economic woes in Southern Africa.
He expressed concern that a variety of gatherings and declarations have in the past been made to incorporate water resources into the development process but implementation seems to be elusive.
Some of the declarations date as far back as 1977 during the International Conference on Water. Others include the World Consultation on Drinking Water and Sanitation in New Delhi, 1990; the Dublin Conference on Water and Environment, 1992; the Rio World Summit, 1992.
Other meetings were the Ministerial Conference on Water and Sustainable Development, Netherlands, 1994; the Ministerial Conference on Water and Sustainable Development, Paris, 1998; the Sixth session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, 1998; and the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg,
2002.
It was recommended that development projects in SADC be evaluated to ensure the incorporation of IWRM ideals and that developers embrace the importance of IWRM in their projects.
National technocrats should also be required to execute their chores through collective and consultative systems so that they are able to include IWRM in their planning and implementation of development projects.
It was further recommended that regional meetings on water resources should have an inherent monitoring and evaluation mechanism with measurable trigger indicators of the main issues to assess the success of the meetings and isolate main constraints to the implementation of the IWRM process.
The SADC team of journalists, that was taken on a field trip for an on the spot demonstration of IWRM at Chikuntha farm, about 30 kilometres from Lilongwe, was amazed by the use of natural based technologies like crop residues, manure and gravity fed irrigation and earth canals to produce a wide variety of food crops, fed from water diverted from a nearby a stream.
Owner of the farm, 62-year old Glyvnys Joseph Chikuntha, explained that IWRM is also at work on the farm through the application of biological pest controls and land management technology using herbs and flowers, whose scent repels pests, or the use of spices, or vetiva grass for preventing and controlling erosion. He also uses manual labour to till the land.
The farm, located in Chinkwiri village in Dowa district lies on a flood plain of Nangu stream, which the locals regarded for a long time as a wasteland.
After retiring from government, Mr Chikuntha, who has since been bestowed with an honorary Doctorate degree from the University of Malawi, started his farm in 1982 with land of only 100 square metres but now has 20 hectares in use.
The main source of water is diverted from Nangu stream for irrigation and he has dug water-harvesting structures all around the farm including furrows. He has also dug eight ponds for aquaculture (tilapia fish and for irrigation).
The water harvested drains directly into the plots while ground water from shallow wells with a hand pump is mainly for domestic use. Excess water is channelled to irrigation canals spread out on the farm.
The benefits from his style of farming are unique in that there is ecological sustainability as the farm supports biodiversity like birds and fish and microbes.
There is also economic empowerment for his family of five children and a wife, Christine, because the herbs, vegetables and spices fetch good money from the hotels.
He nets annual returns of between 3 million and 5 million Malawian Kwacha (US $30,000 or about K120 million).
The farm has also demonstrated some social and economic status for the country, as it has become a popular centre of agricultural research and training. It has become a centre of attraction for college students, Non-Governmental Organisations, local communities and foreign visitors.
The success story at Chikuntha Farm, however, has its own challenges and what is critical is the increasing water scarcity on the farm due to increased water demand from new users upstream of the farm where about 1,000 other farmers are putting pressure on water flow.
It is now apparent that there is need to construct a dam to supply enough water to all users in the area as droughts are also imminent while the influx of visitors to the area is putting pressure for water use in the few available toilets or for household use.
Earlier, founder member of WaterNet, Professor Van Der Zaag, said the WaterNet/WARFSA/GWP-SA symposia has been held annually in Southern Africa for the past six years and the purpose is to facilitate the sharing and dissemination of research results in IWRM.
It provides a platform for researchers, policy-makers and other stakeholders to meet and exchange ideas and has become the premier IWRM event in Southern Africa.
Among the participants at this year’s symposium included Malawi’s principal secretary in the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Development, Grain Malunga and Professor Zimani Kadzamira, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Malawi and lecturers from the Copperbelt and the University of Zambia.
IUCN Water Programme Coordinator, Lenka Thamae, the SADC/DANIDA regional water sector component manager Hastings Chikoko and the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC) head of programmes Clever Mafuta, all pledged to engage the SADC media in raising the profile of IWRM in the region.
posted by aydpels @ 1:03 AM
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