A number of cross-cutting issues appear to be emerging from the review of the options for addressing the various critical water issues. The four key issues are:
- Water governance
- Financing
- Capacity Building
- Performance monitoring, assessment and reporting
Other cross-cutting issues identified are:
- Paucity of technical information
- Awareness raising
- Partnerships
The top three cross-cutting issues are briefly discussed below.
Water Governance
The challenges associated with climate change, rainfall variability and multiplicity of transboundary water basins appear to be wide in scope, scale and focus. In contrast, the challenges associated with the delivery of water services for the various purposes cited appear to be narrow in scale, focus, and scope. Nevertheless, all the challenges have one thing in common, namely, water governance.
By water governance, we mean the range of political, social, economic, and administrative systems that are in place to develop and manage water resources and the delivery of water services at different levels in society. Good water governance has well-defined properties. It is transparent, open, accountable, participatory, communicative, incentives-based and equitable. It is also coherent, efficient in terms of having low transactions costs, integrative, and ethical.
The challenges arising from the multiplicity of transboundary water basins cannot be adequately addressed unless there is a governance system in place at the water basin level through which countries within the shared water basins can manage their common water basin in a mutually acceptable way.
In much the same way, in addressing the challenges associated with the delivery of sustainable water services, water governance would again be required. However, this time, the focus for this governance would be narrower, and would occur at country level or within sub-units of countries, possibly down to the community level.
Thus water governance is required at several levels: within countries, at country levels, at national or multinational water basin levels, or beyond water basin levels. In fact, in water resources management and service delivery, there is always some form of water governance in place, whether it is formally created or it exists by default. The message here is that, rather than leaving water governance to chance, it should be intentionally established so that it could be designed to embody sound principles for sustainable water management.
The way forward on this is to design a series of dialogues or roundtable discussions on the subject, involving all stakeholders. A task force could be established to prepare a detailed program of work on water governance.
Financing
A common constraint in addressing the identified water issues above is how to mobilize adequate financing to implement the coping strategies. Inadequate financing is a limiting factor. For example, with adequate financial resources, lack of technical expertise could be overcome by procuring foreign technical staff or retaining skilled African professionals. Similarly, the issue of inadequate technical information could also be overcome through the use of consultants.
Regrettably, due to Africa’s current level of underdevelopment, there is a limited scope for raising the necessary capital from local financial markets and institutions. Public sources of financing are usually strained. The solution is to turn to external private and donor sources of financing or to turn to regional and international banks which are often not able to provide the long term financing required for payback periods of 30 years and more. This highlights the priority given by NEPAD to economic growth and integration in the global economy since this is the only way in the long term that access to finance can be assured.
The challenges of funding operational costs are just as great. While pricing systems must reflect the principle that affordability should not be a barrier to access to basic services, there is a need for water management institutions to have reliable streams of income. Cost recovery from water users is an important element in the financing mix which must be developed. Limited budgetary subsidies from government or external sources should be reserved in the first instance for targeted social purposes.
Even with such external sources of financing, government policies must be supportive whether to provide guarantees, including provision for contingent liabilities or to support the establishment of appropriate prices. For this to happen, governments, their political leaders economic planners and budget directors must have an awareness and an understanding of the importance of investing scarce national resources in water rather than elsewhere. So far, no systematic effort has been launched to create this awareness and understanding. An important first step is thus to engage such decision-makers and water professionals in dialogues and roundtable discussions.
A special challenge will be to finance global and regional “public goods” such as trans-boundary management of water resources and protection of the environment and biodiversity. Given Africa’s extreme resource constraints, these matters which impact on international peace and security as well as on the international environmental heritage require specific funding mechanisms which reflect their global nature. The funding of adaptation to climate change induced by human activity should also be addressed through mechanisms which reflect the widely accepted principle that “the polluter must pay”.
Capacity Building
Another emerging cross-cutting issue is the need to build up the capacity needed for the efficient discharge of the various functions in the water sector. This would entail a definition of the tasks to be performed, providing staff with the skills necessary for performing the tasks or, alternatively, recruiting staff already equipped with the necessary skills, and creating appropriate incentives for the acquired skills to be efficiently applied to the tasks on hand, lest the acquired skills should become atrophied through lack of use. The incentives should also be sufficient to prevent premature loss of the staff or brain drain.
For existing cadre of sector professionals, the required capacity building program may consist of a well-defined system of continuing education designed to bring such professionals up to date with advances and developments in their fields. The program may consist of seminars, short training courses, workshops, distance learning, and internet-based training programs offered on a sub-regional or regional basis.
In addition, consideration may be given to the introduction of innovative formal university courses designed to provide undergraduate degree courses in water resource management. Springing from such basic undergraduate courses, specialized postgraduate professional courses may be offered in water resources development and service delivery for agriculture, water supply and sanitation, and hydropower generation. The WaterNet initiative which is offering water related post-graduate training through cooperation between SADC universities is a good practical example of the way forward.
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