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Framing sustainable water resource
management from the vantage point of climate-
resilient infrastructure and a green economy
Denton F. Paulos, M. Amha, Y, UN Economic Commission for Africa
N
atural resource management in Africa has been seen
largely in binary terms, and often expressed meta-
phorically as a curse rather than a blessing. In the
twenty first century, where development adversities range
from climate change to rapid urbanization, with the latter
often coupled with the absence of critical health, energy and
water infrastructure, it is imperative to take advantage of
this new momentum to frame the water challenge.
Water is a critical resource for Africa’s development. For
decades, though, the literature on water in Africa sees it as a
‘problem’ resource, one that underscores Africa’s underdevelop-
ment, and one that is gradually depleted, degraded and poorly
managed. In transboundary terms, although water is viewed
in terms of peace and co-operation, especially among riparian
countries, water is also often perceived as a resource that has
the ability to produce conflicts in stressed geopolitical environ-
ments. The management of the Nile Basin is a case in point.
Yet, Africa’s water sector is a tale of several paradoxes.
Close to 85 per cent of Africa’s water resources comprise large
river basins shared between several countries.
1
And Africa is
blessed with abundant water resources. The region is home to
roughly a third of the world’s major international water basins
greater than 100,00Okm
2
, and boasts 17 rivers and approxi-
mately 160 lakes greater than 27 km
2
(UNECA/AU/AfDB,
2000). Most major African river basins are shared by 5 or more
countries possessing a huge potential for energy production
through hydropower – 1.4 million GWh per year.
2
Further,
renewable fresh water on the continent accounted for 9 per
cent of global water resources. Crucially, unleashing the full
potential of such potentially vast water resources could stimu-
late economic development in water-dependent sectors such
as agriculture, livestock, energy, manufacturing, fisheries and
aquaculture, construction, retail and hospitality, and natural
resources exploitation (including mining) thereby benefiting
the African economy as a whole. But, most importantly water
is a critical resource for life, sanitation and survival.
In this article, we suggest first, that given the pressures
related to megatrends such as climate change, demographic
bulge and rapid urbanization, there is an urgency to reframe
the water challenge and to focus on the investment oppor-
tunity related to water resource management. Water is a
renewable resource, but appears to be rapidly becoming a
scarce resource in Africa. Without an urgent reframing of the
water and development narrative, the momentum for Africa
to achieve the implementation of the 2030 and 2063 agendas
and to transition towards climate resilient infrastructure and
green economies will be lost. The opposite argument is also
true in that if water is not framed as a business case, then
we could well witness a cascading set of devastating impacts
as a result of water stress, resulting in economic hardship,
disease outbreaks and negative impacts of extreme events
on lives and livelihoods. Second, we argue that there is an
imperative to move the recognition of a problem to an actual-
ization of what needs to be done. In other words, we propose
that a new momentum created as a result of climate change
can be used to address the imperative for climate resilient
infrastructure and the design of green infrastructure. Third,
we argue that the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA),
through support in the management of trans-boundary rivers
in Africa, can work through partnerships to help frame a new
water agenda and narrative for the continent, thus opening
new avenues of entrepreneurial activities and new jobs for
vulnerable women and men.
Understanding Africa’s megatrends from a
water perspective
The African region has delivered steady and remarkable rates
of economic growth in recent years. This growth has been
largely uneven across the continent, which has not managed
to sever ties with poverty. Currently, millions of African
youth have no real prospects outside the perceived allure of
migration, partly due to drought/El Nino weather phenom-
ena with induced economic hardship and other insidious
forms of poverty. The irony is even more telling in a conti-
nent rich in water, yet thousands of its young people will see
their lives claimed by scarcity of the very resource that could
translate into decent jobs and economic prospects.
Today, the imperative to manage and use water sustain-
ably, to provide safe drinking water and to increase access
for sanitation as well as stimulate growth and create jobs is
perhaps more important than ever. This is mainly because
water is at the centre of several megatrends, not least climate
change. Vital water resources in Africa are already under a
great deal of stress. Even in the absence of climate change,
current population trends and patterns of water use highlight
that increasingly more countries will go beyond the limits
of their economically usable land-based resources by 2025.