African Water Development Report 2006 - United Nations Economic ...

The Africa Water Vision 2025, the result of a jointeffort by the Economic Commission for Africa(ECA), the African Development Bank (ADB),the African Union (AU) and other stakeholderssuch as the Global Water Partnership, is designedto prevent the disastrous consequences that maybe brought by failure in the field of water, and tobuild a future in which the full potential of Africa’swater resources can be unleashed to stimulateand sustain the region’s economic developmentand social well-being. At the national level, theVision calls for a new way of thinking about waterand a new form of regional cooperation basedon partnership and solidarity among countriesthat share common water basins. At the nationallevel, it advocates fundamental changes in policies,strategies and legal frameworks, changes ininstitutional arrangements and management practices,the adoption of participatory approaches,management at the lowest appropriate level, andmainstreaming of gender issues and the concernsof the youth. At the global level, achieving theVision calls for assistance from Africa’s developmentpartners in mobilizing seed funding forpriming urgent development needed to strengthensustainable water resources management in theregion with a view to the attainment of adequatewater supply as a human right. This is in line withthe General Comment 15 on the right to water,adopted in November 2002 by the Committeeon Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, whichstates: ‘the Human right to water entitles everyoneto sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessibleand affordable water for personal anddomestic uses’. This rights-based approach towater resources management recognizes equitableaccess to water as an inalienable human rightwhose achievement is the responsibility of alldevelopment actors within the international communityand within States at all levels. The Water-for-allgoal thus empowers women and men‘rights-holders’ to demand from ‘duty bearers’such as the State and development partners thefulfilment of these rights. The approach thereforeprovides a ‘moral’ basis to claim international assistancefor meeting the water needs of Africanpeoples.The Resources in CrisisAfrica is generously endowed with abundantwater resources in the form of large rivers, lakes,wetlands and limited but widespread groundwater.Much of this is located in Central Africawith a huge hydropower potential, the equatorialregion and the sub-humid East African Highlandsalong the Rift Valley. The total water withdrawnfor various uses is still very low comparedto the renewable resources (UNECA, 2001).The main threats to sustainable use of Africanwater and land resources are identifiable naturaland human factors, including factors in the manytransboundary water basins, climate and rainfallvariability, water scarcity from shrinking waterbodies, drought and desertification and depletionof water resources.High spatial and temporal variability of rainfall.Extreme spatial and temporal variabilityof climate and rainfall in the continent hasfar-reaching consequences for water resourcesmanagement, especially with the imbalance ingeographical distribution of rainfall thoughtthe continent. For example while northern andsouthern Africa receive 9 per cent and 12 percent, respectively, of the continent’s rainfall, theCongo River watershed in the central humidzone, with 10 per cent of Africa’s population,alone has over 35 per cent of the continent’s annualrunoff and combine with the humid equatorialzone in the Gulf of Guinea to record Africa’shighest annual rainfall. Extremes in rainfall variabilityare features of the northern and southernedges of the continent.Growing water scarcity. While the above-mentionedvariations have led to a growing abundancein water-rich areas of the continent, theyhave also led to endemic and spreading drought,desertification and growing water scarcity inother areas, especially where low annual rainfallsare accompanied by low levels of internal renewablewater resources as was the case with Libya,Tunisia, Algeria, Rwanda, Burundi, and EgyptINTRODUCTION - WATER FOR SUSTAINABLE SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT