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

African Water Development Report 2006appropriate policy tools for dealing with waterscarcity and the risk for these complex causes ofconflict within countries is a task that has onlyrecently begun to take form.Policy Tools for Adapting to WaterScarcity within CountriesThe analysis has so far pointed to three greatchallenges for water policy makers: to manageconflicts, get more use out of the same amountof water, and get better use out of the availablewater. As Ohlsson L.(2002) observes, the policygoals for dealing with water scarcity withincountries could be formulated as follows:(a) Managing the competing water demandsfrom different societal sectors and populationgroups in order to achieve a distributionof the scarce resource that is perceivedas equitable;(b) Facilitating technological changes toachieve greater end-use efficiency; and(c) Facilitating socio-economic changes toachieve greater allocative efficiency.There is an increasing awareness that scarcity ofresources, especially renewable resources, constitutesa risk for conflicts within countries, ratherthan between them. The causal link, however,is indeterminate and the causal chains hard totrack. At the stage at which a conflict breaksopen, the causal links may be buried under severallayers of intermediate links and links to othercauses of conflict. It is nevertheless consideredan urgent policy research task to understand themechanisms behind the pervasive conflicts nowthreatening the stability and welfare of people inan increasing number of developing countries.These mechanisms are thought to be populationincrease, frustrated development expectations,and a lack of adaptive capacity to manageshrinking per-capita allotments both of incomeand of renewable resources, prominently water.Dealing with water scarcity under such conditionsentails strengthening the capacity for institutionalchange in order to create the new societaltools needed to manage water scarcity (ibid).The debate on whether these tools should befounded on an economic incentive approach or atraditional administrative approach is graduallyconverging into the understanding that suitablemarket conditions cannot be created withoutsubstantial inputs of both administrative regulationand government intervention. The challengeto undertake these large-scale societal processesof change, without at the same time creating newsources of conflict that may threaten the veryadaptive capacity needed, has only begun to beunderstood.Technical Cooperation for RegionalIntegrationThe following is a number of technical issuesconsidered by Savenije H. and van der Zaag P.(2002 as necessary for cross-border cooperation,.They are presented in a sequence indicating levelsof cooperation:(a) Information. Exchange hydrological andother relevant data on water use betweenthe Departments of Water, Hydropower,Agriculture. Update data series, calibratedata collection systems and agree on dataformats. Establish joint databases and developrules for swift information exchangein case of (impending) crises such as floods,droughts, and pollution. Finally, exchangeof relevant national water policy plans andbasin action plans, and information on revisionsmade to relevant laws and regulations;(b) Crises procedures. Establish procedures tomanage crises, including monitoring, warningand evacuation plans in case of naturalor man-provoked disasters, such as floods,tropical cyclones, droughts, accidental pollution,etc;(c) Human resources development. Let staff ofone country follow relevant courses in aneighboring country, and let experts giveguest-lectures at educational institutions. Inso doing, strive for balancing the capacities266