OVERVIEW OF THE IMPACT OF MINING ON THE ... - IIED pubs

most appropriate technical or investigative methods to use to answer the key questions, and, finally, agreement
to abide by the results or findings produced.
The formation of a suitable institutional structure probably represents one of the greatest obstacles that river
basin states need to overcome since this will formalize and legitimize the technical deliberations that take place.
The question as to what fraction of the water can be allocated for society’s use without jeopardizing or impairing
the water resource will depend on the importance that each country attributes to the necessity to maintain
essential ecosystem functions. This can be achieved by consensus-seeking approaches based on a thorough
analysis of the structure, functioning and characteristics of the water resource and associated terrestrial
systems in the catchment (Lundqvist, 1999; Ashton, 2000).
A final question: what constitutes a fair and equitable share of the water resource, is often viewed as the most
difficult one to answer and one where participating states are most likely to disagree. Clearly, the basis of the
answer will depend on the relative degree of importance that the participating states attach to the needs of their
people for water, and the necessity to maintain essential ecosystem functions and services (Wolf, 1999; FAO,
2000b). The principle of “reasonable and equitable use” embodied in Article 5 of the United Nations Convention
is somewhat vaguely worded, provides little guidance in this regard and is prone to subjective interpretations
(van der Zaag et al., 2000).
Essentially, each of the participating states needs to agree on the fraction of water to be reserved for ecosystem
functions, and the precise criteria that should be used to calculate the “fair and equitable share” that each
country is then entitled to (Wolf, 1999; van der Zaag et al., 2000). Preliminary evaluations of a set of six
tentative criteria have demonstrated that, if agreement can be reached on the precise nature of the criteria, then
it is a relatively simple procedure to derive the respective shares of the available water (van der Zaag et al.,
2000). Whilst this approach is not yet able to account for seasonal and year-to-year variations, it has an
inherent simplicity that will make it attractive to decision-makers. However, because it is still incomplete, further
development and testing are needed before it can be adopted.
1.5 Choice of catchments
An important principle of the MMSD SOUTHERN AFRICA project is the need to provide information on the mining
and minerals processing sector that is both relevant and useful to all southern African countries. This principle
required that the investigations carried out by the six Research Topics should be conducted at a wider scale
than that of a single country. In addition, it would also be possible to enhance the value of the information and
insights in each project by including researchers from different SADC countries in the research teams.
Against this background, and given that the most logical unit for water management is the river catchment or
basin, it was entirely logical to focus attention in Research Topic 4 on specific river basins. A secondary
consideration was the possibility of linking with work undertaken by the SADC Mining Sector Co-ordinating Unit
(SADC-MSCU) on the Zambezi basin and thereby ensuring that the outputs from this study supported the
SADC-MSCU activities.
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