Groundwater management issues in Southern Africa – An IWRM perspective
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Date
2008
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Water Research Commission
Abstract
In contrast to its strategic role as essential resource to help achieve community development and poverty alleviation in the
Southern African Development Community (SADC), groundwater has remained a poorly understood and managed resource.
This was the finding of a scoping study regarding the status of groundwater resources management in SADC. The key
premise for the assessment was that groundwater resource management must take place within an IWRM framework and the
IWRM Toolbox developed by the Global Water Partnership was used as the scope and content for the assessment. The SADC
region has well- developed policies for regional development and IWRM, as well as a relatively strong focus on groundwater
resources. This article questions whether problems relating to Africa’s sustainable utilisation and management of groundwater
is a unique groundwater problem or must also be related to the challenges experienced in general with the implementation
of an IWRM approach in Africa. A key finding was that groundwater management links to groundwater-dependent sectors
like agriculture, rural development, health and environment are not well- established in policy or in practice. Internationally,
there is a recognition, that such a, quite common, situation can only be addressed through a long-term process through which
viable national, regional and local systems can evolve, within a strategic framework in which these intended relationships
between diverse sets of interventions or management approaches and the development goals are brought out. However, such
a strategic, multi-stakeholder-driven approach also still remains the major challenge in Africa for IWRM implementation as
a whole. Recent continent-wide initiatives, like the development of IWRM and water efficiency plans for each country and
multi-stakeholder water dialogue processes, have been taken to address this challenge. It is therefore crucial that groundwater
becomes an integral part of these and related initiatives. New AMCOW and SADC initiatives for groundwater provide a major
opportunity to achieve this.
Description
Keywords
Groundwater, Community development, Sustainable utilisation and management, IWRM
Citation
Braune, E. & Xu, Y. (2008). Groundwater management issues in Southern Africa – An IWRM perspective. Water SA, 34(2):699-706