Hydrology and water management in the humid tropics: proceedings ...

Second International Colloquium on
Hydrology and Water Management in the Humid Tropics
• Existing experimental hydrology being undertaken at the microscale, < 10
Km 2 , too small to be of practical use for integrated water resource
management (usually up to the meso-scale of 10,000 km 2 or even larger). One
should acknowledge here, however, that the micro-scale work has made
considerable contributions to the improvement of on-site management
practices. But it is also important that research is upscaled from the traditional
small cathchment to the larger drainage basin scales which are of more interest
to water planners who need urgent management solutions now.
• The development of models has far surpassed field testing and field
parameterisation at the appropriate scale.
• The need for greater attention being given to surface-groundwater interactions,
rather than traditionally keeping the subject areas separate. The escalation in
socio-economic pressures is causing a rapid degradation in water quality
across this region. It is therefore fitting that a session of this Colloquium will
be devoted to this topic of particular importance. Furthermore, increasing our
efforts at providing a more comprehensive assessment of groundwater
resources is also critical because many surface water resources are already
contaminated. In that regard, I am pleased to note that through the IHP Humid
Tropics Programme, UNESCO has been charged by the German BMZ with a
project entitled Management of Groundwater Resources for Sustainable
Development of the Southern (more humid) Lake Chad Basin.
• The need for long-term data sets to address the climate variability issue and its
impacts on the water balance, water policy and legal and institutional
arrangements. What we need then is the development of new experimental
designs across and up to larger scales to assess both the lateral as well as the
vertical fluxes. I give an example from the Large Scale Biosphere-
Atmosphere experiment in the Amazonas (the LBA).
At the other end of the spectrum, is the broad field of land and water policy
and management. This encompasses issues such as institutional, legal, development,
social-cultural, food and water security and so on. It is my observation that as
scientists we are not very good at interfacing with the broad policy community except
to pay lip service to selected policy issues during our writing of research proposals.
Equally, I observe that amongst the donor community there is an element of mistrust
that the scientific research agenda is too open-ended – science for science sake – and I
think that from my own personal observations that unfortunately there is some
justification for such concerns. Even of greater concern is the more extreme view that
I have met from within a minority of the policy group, that we know enough science
now for immediate implementation without the need for anymore research – a view I
frankly oppose because it is not valid. On the other hand, as scientists we are perhaps
over-cautious in releasing as well as publicizing our results because of uncertainty to
protect the integrity of our science and so are misunderstood by many policy makers.
Hence the new field of research enquiry: uncertainty analysis which encourages the
provision of quantitative limits of uncertainty to research results.
It is now clear that water will be the environmental issue of the 21 st Century.
In consequence, one has witnessed a series of high profile Symposia and Workshops
(especially from the water policy perspectives), all saying this with recommendations
not too dissimilar from each other. What was missing was an international agency
saying that if water is going to be the issue, what are we going to do about it in the
field? Further, how are we going to integrate the scientific networks with well-
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