Groundwater management issues in Southern Africa – An IWRM perspective

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.

Implementation of Simple Strategies to Improve Wellfield Management in Arid Regions: The Case Study of Wadi Al Arab Wellfield, Jordan

“…In many countries, especially those located in arid to semi-arid regions, precautions are taken against water scarcity [1,2]. Optimization of well field management practices and water quality protection received much attention in different regions in the world [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. One of the effects of water scarcity is the lack of enough drinking water supply to the population and this issue can be worsened by improper wellfield management.…”

Diamonds on the Soles of Their Feet: Groundwater Monitoring in the Hout Catchment, South Africa

“…Participatory approaches in general have been implemented in river basin management since at least the 1970s, when a bottom-up approach-in the ideal-was recognized as key in the sustainable management of water resources to achieve economic efficiency, social equity and ecosystem sustainability within the now familiar Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) paradigm. Although there is consensus that water should be managed closest to its source of use, the issues of ownership, use, conservation and management have found little resolution-and this despite decades of grappling with ways to improve WRM at the local sphere (Braune & Xu, 2008;Goldin, 2013Goldin, , 2015.…”

The Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Climate Risks and Opportunities in Southern Africa

“…For example, five SADC countries have water resource dependency ratios of over 50%, that is, they rely on water generated outside their borders to supply more than half of their total water requirements [29,30]. Although groundwater abstraction has increased in recent years, little is known about the aquifers, most of which are also transboundary in nature [31]. As already alluded, the shared natural resources form the basis for the development of regional instruments that support joint management for inclusive development and cement regional cooperation and integration.…”