222893e

TRANSBOUNDARY WATER MANAGEMENTCharter. NBA’s major challenge is to accelerate and support thebuilding and coordinated management of large hydraulic structuresin the basin.The Organization for the Development of the Senegal River(OMVS) was created in 1972. It is an international institutionbased in Dakar which gathers Guinea Conakry, Mali, Mauritaniaand Senegal around common goals, including food self-sufficiencyfor the basin people, economic development of the member statesand preservation of the balance of ecosystems in the region. OMVShas adopted a Water Charter and is a globally rare example of jointownership of large dams.The International Commission of the Congo-Ubangi-SanghaBasin (CICOS), established in 1999, expanded its mission to integratedwater resource management (IWRM) in 2007, in addition toits original mandate focusing on the promotion of inland navigation.The CICOS member states (Cameroon, the Central AfricanRepublic, Congo, Gabon and the Democratic Republic of Congo)cover 83 per cent of the catchment area of the Congo River, thesecond largest river basin worldwide with 3,822,000 km².Among the stakeholders in basin management we can distinguishthe public sector (government administration, publicagencies, local communities and authorities) on the one hand andother stakeholders on the other: civil society (associations, nongovernmentalorganizations and water users), trade unions andprofessional organizations. Stakeholders in a transboundary basinbelong to different countries but share a common resource, landand heritage, including cultural. This sharing can be expressedthrough similar activities (agriculture, fishing, etc) or by a singlesensitivity to hazards and phenomena, whethernatural or not: drought and water scarcity, floods, dammanagement, pollution, invasive species and so on.The invitation, which was made by NBA to regionalorganizations and associations during a workshop gatheringthe nine basin countries in early 2005, has beenthe starting point of thinking about the participation ofcivil society in the shared vision process in the NigerRiver Basin. The identification of stakeholders andinterested parties was a prerequisite. Among non-statestakeholders we can distinguish groups, such as farmersor irrigators’ associations, from unorganized waterusers, which are the most numerous and often the ultimaterecipients of various development programmes.A study for the identification and characterizationof water users in the Niger River Basin wascarried out under the coordination of Eau Vive andthe International Secretariat for Water. Its outcomeswere presented at the first regional forum of basinresources users, held in February 2006 in Fada-Ngourma in Burkina Faso. For the first time, this stepallowed the congregation of civil society organizationson the basin scale to discuss issues of commoninterest with the states and partners. Several resolutionsof the NBA Council of Ministers eventually ledto the establishment of a regional coordination of theNiger Basin users, based on nine national coordinationprocesses.Images: © John Burton[ 75 ]