Sustainable development of water security a must

The Nile at Cairo

CAIRO - July 07, 2017: Suhail Bin Mohammed Faraj Faris Al Mazrouei, Minister of Energy, highlighted the UAE’s support for Arab cooperation on the sustainable development of water security.

He made this statement while chairing the 9th session of the Arab Ministerial Council for Water, at the headquarters of the General Secretariat of the League of Arab States in Cairo.

He stated that the Ministry of Energy has produced a draft water strategy for 2036, in cooperation with relevant UAE authorities, to guarantee the provision of sufficient quantities of water, according to international standards, during both regular periods and emergency shortages that affect the country.

He stressed that this strategy will cover the country’s entire water supply chain, with an emphasis on the strategic production of water resources, storage, transport networks and the supply network linking the nation’s various emirates.

The council discussed a range of important issues and reviewed the implementation of a strategic executive plan for water security in the Arab region, as well as ways of cooperating to address the challenges and future requirements of sustainable development.

It also discussed the implementation of its sustainable development plan for 2030, regarding water, and addressed ways of cooperating on a regional initiative to link the energy, water and food sectors. More

The Vanishing Nile: A Great River Faces a Multitude of Threats

The Nile River is under assault on two fronts – a massive dam under construction upstream in Ethiopia and rising sea levels leading to saltwater intrusion downstream. These dual threats now jeopardize the future of a river that is the lifeblood for millions

Though politicians and the press tend to downplay the idea, environmental degradation is often an underlying cause of international crises — from the deforestation, erosion, and reduced agricultural production that set the stage for the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s to the prolonged drought that pushed rural populations into the cities at the start of the current Syrian civil war. Egypt could become the latest example, its 95 million people the likely victims of a slow motion catastrophe brought on by grand-scale environmental mismanagement.

It’s happening now in the Nile River delta, a low-lying region fanning out from Cairo roughly a hundred miles to the sea. About 45 or 50 million people live in the delta, which represents just 2.5 percent of Egypt’s land area. The rest live in the Nile River valley itself, a ribbon of green winding through hundreds of miles of desert sand, representing another 1 percent of the nation’s total land area. Though the delta and the river together were long the source of Egypt’s wealth and greatness, they now face relentless assault from both land and sea.

The latest threat is a massive dam scheduled to be completed this year on the headwaters of the Blue Nile, which supplies 59 percent of Egypt’s water. Ethiopia’s national government has largely self-financed the $5 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), with the promise that it will generate 6,000 megawatts of power. That’s a big deal for Ethiopians, three-quarters of whom now lack access to electricity. The sale of excess electricity to other countries in the region could also bring in $1 billion a year in badly needed foreign exchange revenue.

http://e360.yale.edu/features/vanishing-nile-a-great-river-faces-a-multitude-of-threats-egypt-dam

Let's Quit This Most Dangerous Game with Drought

On a recent visit to Niger, I met a woman in Batodi village with some very bold claims. Fifteen years ago, she and her fellow women would travel a day's journey to fetch water.

Today, they fetch it from a local well, having turned the situation around by rehabilitating their badly degraded land using traditional practices. In that period, the water level has “jumped up” by 14 meters. Moreover, the village had withstood the severe food and water challenges others in many parts of Niger suffered during recent droughts.

The researcher who had invited me backed the claims that the water table had risen from a depth of below 18 meters to about 4 meters below the ground. That was precisely why he had invited me to the field; to witness – contrary to claims otherwise – that it is possible to restore the health of even badly degraded land.

On 17 June, we unveil the winners of the 2013 Land for Life Award from 137 submissions worldwide. At the national level, Eritrea, Hungary, Kenya, Portugal and Thailand unveil their first Drylands Champions to recognize the local heroes making laudable steps in the fight against desertification and drought.

These kinds of stories, from the ground, inspire me to advocate unceasingly for policies in favor of investments to strengthen both sustainable land use practices and drought resilience. Grabbing more fragile lands to meet growing food demand is neither the answer nor is improving relief delivery the ultimate solution.

Rather, we must boldly move to a land-degradation neutral world where clearing new land is not an option, and, where it is inevitable, our collective target becomes offsetting such action by rehabilitating degraded land at the same pace and in the same ecosystem.

Political contestations over whether a land-degradation neutral world is possible should not prevail for lack of generalizable scientific claims to demonstrate it. Until massive investments in small pilot projects such as these by communities fail, their viability is not in question; the status quo is.

The achievements in Batodi, the submissions to the Land for Life Award and the work of the Drylands Champions affirm the claims of the recent report, A Dangerous Delay – The cost of late response to early warning in the 2011 drought in the Horn of Africa, that “the response to drought was too little too late, representing a systemic failure of the international system.”

Indeed, the international community has been here before; in the mid-1970s, with the Sahel drought disaster, in the mid-1980s with the drought and famine disaster in Ethiopia and, most recently, in 2011, with the tragedy in the Horn of Africa.

But the best evidence that we, as an international community, are playing the world's most dangerous game with drought lies in the fact that only one country in the world – Australia – has a comprehensive national drought policy.

There are more reasons for concern.

Drought affects more lives than any other disaster, yet unlike most disasters, it has a slow onset. And not only has every region in the world experienced more severe droughts in recent times, but droughts are set to increase in intensity, in spread and in frequency due to climate change.

About a billion people, among them people living in the arid and semi-arid parts of the world, have access to little or no renewable water resources. With the climate change scenarios, that estimate shoots to about half the world's population living in areas of high water stress by 2030.

Neither desertification nor droughts are fated, but the path to change is through a radical transformation in our view of the land and attitude towards drought.

Land is a strategic natural asset for our future sustainability. So let us give life to the aspiration of a land-degradation neutral world by setting a target date for its achievement as part of the Sustainable Development Goals to be agreed by 2015. We should follow in the steps of Africa. At its Summit last month it declared this part of its future agenda and called on the global community to do the same.

 

Climate change and water mismanagement parch Egypt

Climate change, a fast growing population, ill-designed infrastructure, high levels of pollution and lack of law enforcement have made Egypt a country thirsty for water — both in terms of quantity and quality.

The River Nile, which is considered poor by many experts and hydrologists, lies at lower altitude than the rest of the country. Massive electric pumps extract the water from the river’s bed and canals and direct it to industry, agriculture and for individual water use.

A significant portion of the water contained in Lake Nasser’s 5,000 square kilometer basin is lost to evaporation, while old networks of leaking pipes also deprive the country of satisfactory access to its most important resource: water.

In order to debate water scarcity in Egypt, its causes, and how climate change makes the issue more pressing than ever, as well as looking to solutions, a panel of experts were invited to participate in the 13th Cairo Climate Talk last week entitled “Growing Thirst: Sustainable Water Solutions for Egypt.”

Tarek Kotb, the First Assistant Minister in the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, and a member of the panel discussion, talked about the dwindling water share per capita with a sense of urgency. “Every year, the Egyptian population grows by 1.8 million, while the annual quota of Nile water allocated to Egypt, 55 billion cubic meters, has remained unchanged since the 1959 Nile Water Agreement,” he says.

While Egyptians in the 1960s could enjoy a water share per capita of 2800 cubic meters for all purposes, the current share has dropped to 660 cubic meters today—below the international standard defining water poverty of 1000 cubic meters.

Kotb estimates that Egypt is gradually going to leave the stage of water scarcity and enter a phase of drastic water stress in the next 40 years, if no sustainable water management is put in place.

“By 2050, there will be about 160 million Egyptians and only 370 cubic meters of water per capita,” he says. While Egypt has other options for its water needs, such as tapping into groundwater basins and desalinating sea-water, the bulk of water is still extracted from the Nile, leading to longstanding tensions with the other Nile basin countries.

The treaty signed under colonial rule in 1959 granted Egypt and Sudan most of the Nile water share, while upstream countries were given access to a very small allocation of water. Lama al-Hatow, a hydrologist and one of the founders of the Water Institute for the Nile (WIN) condemns Egypt’s historical and ongoing hydro hegemony, by which the country claims its entitlement to benefit from most of the Nile water.

“A lot of science has been published on how not to lose water if the Ethiopian Millennium Dam is built, but it is not given much attention by the politicians,” Hatow says. “The upstream countries have the right to develop,” she says, “and there are ways to make it happen without Egypt losing water.”

She adds that preventing water evaporation in Lake Nasser could even increase Egypt’s water share.

Kotb responding to her remarks, saying that Egypt is investing millions of dollars in Sudan, South Sudan and Ethiopia to overcome losses due to evaporation in marshes and basins. “We don’t deny these countries’ right to development; actually, we help them,” he said.

Claudia Bürkin, the Water Sector Coordinator for the German Development Cooperation and Senior Programme Manager at KfW Development Bank, explains that Egypt’s water resources face two main challenges: water loss and bad quality.

“Egypt loses about 50% of its freshwater through poor maintenance of supplies and distribution problems, and the water is polluted,” she says, stressing that a significant number of diseases are water borne. Polluted water also affects the ecosystems’ balance, the soil quality, and seeps into the aquifers. “Egypt needs to set up strong standards for water quality and control the drainage nutrients, pesticides and waste found in the water.”

Kotb admits that while most of the issues and potential solutions have been identified by the government, much needs to be done in terms of implementation of existing laws and stronger cooperation between ministries.

“Water management is not the mandate of the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation exclusively, which makes the implementation process so much harder,” he says.

A National Water Resource Plan was established a few years ago, Kotb says, to curb the amount of pollution in the Nile emanating from cruise boats, factories, industries and villagers deprived of a waste management system. As part of this, he explains, factories located close to the Nile or the canals have been moved further away from the water streams, and new industries will be prevented from setting up a plant within 20km from the water.

“Law 48 on pollution has been reviewed and the penalties will be tougher,” he says. Meanwhile, Hatow argues that enforcing stronger penalties is not the solution to prevent farmers from polluting.

“Instead of punishing them, we should give farmers incentives to make better use of water, and provide them with premium crops,” she says.

The conversation then shifted to the effects of climate change, which can already be felt in the Northern part of the Delta and in the Mediterranean coastal cities of Damietta and Rosetta. The gradual rise in sea levels taking place turns fields into barren land unfit for agriculture, and the sea water that infiltrates the Nile is reaching further and further away from the coast.

“In order to keep a good yield and maintain agricultural production,” says Kotb, “we need to use more fresh water to combat rising temperatures.”

Lama’s take on how to combat climate change is quite different from this. “We need to study community based resilience techniques to figure out how local and indigenous knowledge can provide answers and climate resilience.”

- See more at: http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/climate-change-and-water-mismanagement-parch-egypt#sthash.NavKkkxR.dpuf

 

'Sand dams' bank water for dry season in semi-arid Kenya

MAKUENI, Kenya (AlertNet) – Barely a month after heavy rains pounded Kenya, many seasonal rivers in the country’s semi-arid east are already drying up, and residents are preparing for the months-long dry season.

But some, like Paul Masila and other members of the Woni Wa Mbee self-help group, are not worried about the looming dry spell. Instead, they are preparing to plant crops or are harvesting fields they planted before the rains.

The group – the name means “progressive vision” in Kamba, the local langage – have revolutionised the region’s fortunes by finding a way to store millions of litres of water under the bed of the Kaiti River, providing the once-parched community with water for domestic use and irrigation throughout the year.

“Drought will never again be a problem, particularly for future generations,” said Titus Mwendo, a 31-year-old farmer in Miambwani, in the Eastern region’s Makueni County.

The Kaiti, like other seasonal rivers in the region, fills with water only during the rainy season, which usually arrives in December.

“The rest of the year is characterised by scorching sun, dry rivers, dusty roads – only those who are fit can survive,” said Masila, a member of Woni Wa Mbee.

But Woni Wa Mbee and other self-help groups in the area, aided by local non-governmental organisations, have found a way to trap and store the Kaiti’s water in its own sandy riverbed, keeping water available for months after the river has disappeared.

“The water reservoirs are called sand dams,” said Kevin Muneene, chief executive officer of the Utooni Development Organisation, one of the supporting NGOs. Over the past two years, the organisation has helped 80 self-help groups construct 1,528 sand dams in arid and semi-arid areas of Kenya’s Rift Valley and Eastern region.

CONSTRUCTION DETAILS

To make a dam, he said, a high concrete barrier is constructed across a seasonal river. When it rains, the water carries sand downstream, depositing it up to the level of the barrier. When the rains finish, water remains trapped in the piled-up sand for up to a kilometre upstream of the dam, depending on the dam’s height.

“A well-constructed sand dam has 60 percent of its volume as sand, while the remaining 40 percent is always water,” said Muneene, an expert in sand dam construction.

In terms of volume, it is estimated that an average sand dam in a relatively wide stream such as the Kaiti River can hold up to 5,000 cubic metres of water, equivalent to 5 million litres. To boost the volume of water stored, several sand dams can be built along one river.

Those numbers suggest that the 1,528 sand dams already built as part of the project will be able to store up to 7.7 billion litres of water, which can be used to irrigate thousands of hectares of land and supply thousands of households for months after the rains stop.

To use the water, community members scoop out sand from the river bed to expose it. It can then be pumped out for irrigation or other uses.

Over 3,000 households are now using water from the dams to grow vegetables, tomatoes, drought-resistant legumes, fruit trees such as grafted mangoes and oranges, and other crops.

“For the first time, we have had water throughout two years. This is not a common phenomenon in this area,” said Florence Munyoki, the treasurer of Woni Wa Mbee and a smallholder farmer in Utaati village. More

The top of the dam is I believe, supposed to be level or just below the the normal river bed. Pictures and drawings that I have seen in other areas in Africa are built in the way I describe. Built in this manner they will not act in a way that may obstruct the run of the river. Editor

A River Runs Dry in Tanzania

DAR ES SALAAM, Jan 8 2013 (IPS) - Avelina Elias Mkenda, a 52-year-old small-scale farmer in the Mbarali district of Tanzania’s southwestern Mbeya region, can sense a change in her environment.

A resident of the Great Ruaha River basin, she has never had trouble watering her crops and livestock.

But over the last few years, the river has been delivering less and less of the precious resource; the grass that was once plentiful is now scarce, leaving cattle hungry, while production of coffee, the region’s prize crop, has plummeted.

Referred to as Tanzania’s “ecological backbone”, the Great Ruaha River originates in the Kipengere mountains and stretches roughly 84,000 kilometres, flowing through the wetlands of the Usangu Valley and the Ruaha National Park, eventually emptying into the Rufiji River.

Its basin catchment area waters a massive expanse of the Tanzanian countryside. Over a million small-scale farmers produce a significant portion of the country’s food on the lush soil in the Ruaha basin, which also provides 70 percent of Tanzania’s hydroelectric power, according to government sources.

But officials from the Rufiji Water Basin Office (RWBO), which administers the Ruaha basin, along with academics from Tanzania’s leading Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), are now warning that the river is under “alarming stress”.

“The river has been drying up for lengthy periods of three months (at a stretch), up from the short period of three weeks,” Damian Gabagambi, an agricultural economist at SUA, told IPS. He believes the crisis is largely due to an increasing number of farmers diverting the river for irrigation purposes.

“Prior to 1993 the river was never dry,” Andrew Temu, an SUA professor, told IPS, adding that the three-month-long dry spells began in 1999. In this time period, river basin inhabitants increased from three to six million people.

“With the increasing population, there is a corresponding demand for more water,” he said. Intensive grazing and deforestation have also contributed to the looming crisis.

Furthermore, a lack of proper irrigation infrastructure means that much of the water goes to waste, Gabagambi added.

RWBO Community Development Officer David Muginya told IPS that agricultural projects by both large and small-scale farmers have failed to honour the 2009 Water Resources Management Act, which obliges all water users to deploy proper infrastructure in order to avoid waste. More

 

Nile dam project a hydropower hope, but regional sore point

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AlertNet) – Ethiopia has begun construction of a 6,000 megawatt (MW) hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile river, a move that has been greeted enthusiastically by many Ethiopians but that is causing concern in the downstream nations of Sudan and Egypt.

The project, which is scheduled to take six and a half years to complete, is being managed by the state-owned power utility company, Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCo). The dam is being built about 900 km (560 miles) north-east of the capital, Addis Ababa, and just 40 km (25 miles) from the Sudanese border.

Ethiopia’s government hopes to capitalize on the energy potential of a river that is revered by the Ethiopian population but that until now has not been significantly exploited to feed the country’s growing need for electric power.

Ethiopia is the source of the Blue Nile, and its territory contributes up to 86 percent of the river’s water. The Blue Nile in turn is responsible for more than half of the water in the Nile, the world’s longest river system. The other main source, the White Nile, originates on the Ugandan side of Lake Victoria.

The new project is not the first dam to be constructed on tributaries of the Nile in Ethiopia. Three smaller projects with a combined capacity of about 760 MW have already been completed, and EEPCo is seeking financing for a 278 MW dam on another tributary, the Chemoga-Yeda River. But the planned Grand Renaissance Dam (GRD) dwarfs these projects in scale and cost.

The 6,000 MW dam will be built by Italian construction company Salini Costruttori, which received the construction contract in late 2010, while electromechanical work is being done by a local company, Metal and Engineering Corporation.

Ethiopia has been dubbed “the water tower of east Africa” because of its numerous river and lake systems. The Nile is an emblematic part of the country, immortalized in poems and songs and even on coins and bank notes. But its potential for hydroelectric power has until now gone largely unused.

For many Ethiopians, the new planned dam is not only about lighting their houses and providing power for businesses and to export, but it also holds a symbolic significance, a way of looking forward from memories of famine and conflict.

WORRIED NEIGHBOURS

Despite its popularity among Ethiopia’s population, the dam project has caused consternation in neighbouring Sudan as well as in Egypt, both downstream countries that rely upon the Nile for almost all their water and fear the dam will cause a reduction in water available to them.

The new dam will eventually create a lake containing more than 60 billion cubic metres of water, twice as much as Lake Tana, Ethiopia’s largest body of water.

There are also concerns about the potential environmental impact of the dam, although the scale of opposition has been smaller than that provoked by the Gibe III dam. Gibe III has provoked opposition from groups concerned about the drying up of Kenya’s Turkana Lake, the world’s largest desert lake, which is fed by the Gibe river, and the possible displacement of tribal people in Ethiopia and Kenya.

Gossaye Mengiste, an official of the ministry of water and energy, which oversees EEPCo, said he believed the environmental impact of the project would be minimal and that because the area around the dam is sparsely inhabited, no mass relocation of people would be necessary. More

 

Rift on the Nile: Challenges lie ahead for Nile water sharing

"Egypt, the gift of the Nile” is a phrase coined by the Greek historian Herodotus 3,000 years ago in his book about Egypt. His description continues to be true today, as Egypt is the only place in the world where a river cuts across a thousand miles of desert, creating a civilization along with it.

The Nile is the lifeline of Egypt, with people crowded on its sides, cities located along its banks, and roads shaped along its bends. But what Egyptians have long taken for granted, the abundant Nile always flowing through their lands, may be facing a dramatic shift.

Although the post-revolutionary atmosphere gave rise to many gestures of goodwill that have eased differences over the distribution of Nile water, Egypt is still facing serious pressure from irritated Nile Basin countries to agree on a new water-sharing package.

The Cooperative Framework Agreement that was signed in 2010, which reduces Egypt’s quota of the Nile water, has become even more pressing since Burundi joined five other Nile Basin states in the agreement last year, giving it the necessary majority to begin implementation.

Although Egypt and Sudan have firmly refused the agreement, it has become obvious that this rigid stance will not resolve the issue. This realization has pushed Egypt to shift its diplomacy regarding the issue, trading a harsh tone for attempts at exercising soft power, calling for more cooperation and joint projects.

"Egypt must first realize that it faces a major threat to its national security; water is vital to a major agricultural country like Egypt, and the Nile provides the country with 86 percent of its water needs and about 92 percent of the water used in agriculture,” explains Mohamed Ibrahim, an assistant professor of agricultural economics at Alexandria University.

Ibrahim adds that in order to resolve this crisis, Egypt has to adopt a multi-dimensional strategy. Diplomatically, Egypt must show more flexibility toward the terms of the new Nile Basin cooperative agreement and more openness to negotiate. Economically, Egypt has to help fund agricultural and development projects in the other Nile Basin countries as well as work on finding better ways to reduce wasted water that results from inefficient, old-fashioned practices of rolling out threats of military actions.” More

 

Land grabs leave Africa facing ‘hydrological suicide’ - report

LONDON (AlertNet) - A scramble for cheap African farmland by foreign investors threatens to leave millions of people without water and could ultimately drain the continent's rivers, a report warns.

"If these land grabs are allowed to continue, Africa is heading for a hydrological suicide," said the report’s co-author Henk Hobbelink, coordinator of GRAIN, an organisation supporting small farmers.

Foreign governments and wealthy individuals are snapping up millions of hectares of land on the continent for large-scale agriculture projects to grow food and biofuels for export.

But the report warns there is simply not enough water in Africa's rivers and water tables to irrigate all the newly acquired land.

In some cases communities are already being moved off land to make way for these mega-projects. In others, the plantations will divert water from rivers that local people depend on for their own farming and everyday needs.

"Millions of Africans are in danger of losing access to the water sources they rely on for their livelihoods and for the survival of their communities," Hobbelink said.

“The worst case scenario is indeed we end up with a situation where the entire continent’s river systems will dry out.”

Hobbelink said the land deals – many of them along the Nile and Niger rivers - were already creating tensions in some parts and could fuel conflict.

Countries leasing land include Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Egypt, Zambia, Kenya Tanzania, Mali and Senegal.

The report, Squeezing Africa dry: behind every land grab is a water grab, said those acquiring farmland knew that the access to water they were automatically gaining – often without restriction - could well be worth more in the long term than the land deals themselves. More

 

Poor Spring Rain Projected in Africa

ScienceDaily (Apr. 12, 2012) — Spring rains in the eastern Horn of Africa are projected to begin late this year and be substantially lower than normal. From March-May, the rains are expected to total only 60 to 85 percentage of the average rainfall in this region. This is a significant deterioration compared to earlier forecasts.

Lower rain amounts would have significant impacts on crop production, rangeland regeneration for livestock, and replenishment of water resources.

This would put greater stress on the region, particularly Somalia which is still recovering from a famine declared last year, as well as Kenya and Ethiopia which also experienced a severe food crisis. An increase in food insecurity and in the size of the food insecure population is likely.

The State Department released a statement on this forecast and their intent to provide additional funding to aid refuges and drought-affected communities.

Famine Early Warning Systems Network

The rainfall projections were completed by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), which helps target more than $1.5 billion of assistance to more than 40 countries each year. FEWS NET monitors high risk areas of the developing world with the most food insecurity, identifying critical situations in which food aid will be needed.

FEWS NET is sponsored and led by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of Food for Peace. Implementing partners include the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Chemonics International, Inc., National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

USGS Science

The USGS led the climate analysis for the recent FEWS NET rainfall projection.

"Rainfall projections were estimated by looking very closely at all the prior droughts from March-May since 1979 in the eastern Horn of Africa," said USGS scientist Chris Funk, who led this research. "We found that sea surface temperatures in the western/central Pacific and the Indian oceans are key drivers of rainfall during that time period. So we compared sea surface temperatures from past years to March 2012, and developed an updated rainfall forecast for this spring season."

Climate modeling analysis was done in collaboration with others, including Greg Husak and Joel Michaelsen with the Climate Hazards Group at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as Bradfield Lyon at The International Research Institute for Climate and Society. Lyon's research identified the important role of the Pacific Ocean in recent droughts.

The USGS also contributes satellite remote sensing data and analysis of vegetation and rainfall to support FEWS NET activities throughout the world. Remote sensing from space allows scientists to provide rapid, accurate assessments of a broad range of environmental and agricultural conditions. A newly completed vegetation monitoring system allows FEWS NET analysts to track conditions across all of Africa in tremendous detail.

"The concerning picture that emerged from FEWS NET climate monitoring services was that despite the good rains of the past winter, the situation east Africa has deteriorated very rapidly, to a point that the water deficits and vegetation health looked as bad as this time last year," said Funk. More