All major river systems of Southern Africa are shared by more than one country. Crossing borders, and sometimes changing names, their waters have to meet the needs of users in many different locations. Member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have been working together for more than 20 years to learn how to jointly manage these rivers to support economic development while preserving the ecosystem services that they provide to people. Carefully negotiated integrated water resources management (IWRM) plans now guide these efforts, with transboundary river basin organisations in place to advise national governments on their implementation.
The next step after adoption of an IWRM plan is to look at how to put its recommendations into practice. Building and maintaining water infrastructure such as storage, conveyance, and treatment systems is costly. What are the priorities? Who will pay, and for what? Because water affects so many different human activities, how can the costs and benefits of managing, developing, and using it be fairly shared?
Funding for the future
One of WACDEP’s key programme areas focused on these questions, supporting governing institutions to prepare investment and financing strategies and plans for water security, while building in resilience to climate change. A big opportunity to do this arrived in 2014, when the Orange-Senqu River Commission (ORASECOM) completed its IWRM plan. Implementing joint water management for this large and economically active basin, which serves 19 million people in Lesotho, South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia, was urgent: variability in rainfall and hydrological flow patterns was high and increasing. As a partner that had been involved in supporting ORASECOM’s programmes since the establishment of the Commission, the Global Water Partnership Southern Africa (GWP-SAF), through WACDEP, supported ORASECOM to prepare for the development of a climate-resilient water resources investment strategy. The aim of the investment strategy was to prioritise actions that would enhance resilience in the Orange-Senqu River basin system.
GWP-SAF helped to identify funding opportunities to pitch the idea of implementing an investment planning process in the basin to the African Water Facility. Supported by GWP-SAF, ORASECOM successfully argued the case for funding assistance through a jointly developed concept note. Support was also received through the New Partnership for Africa’s Development Infrastructure Project Preparation Facility (NEPAD-IPPF) to develop the Climate Resilient Water Resources Investment Strategy and Multipurpose Project Preparation for the Orange-Senqu River Basin. With confidence and trust built, more partners were drawn in, including the Climate Resilient Infrastructure Development Facility and the Stockholm International Water Institute.
Through an agreed strategy, the partners would aim to promote sustainable socio-economic growth in the basin riparian countries through climate-resilient water resources development, with an emphasis on multipurpose projects for both rural and urban areas.
Ready to roll
The first need was to identify investment goals and priorities, the appropriate actions to achieve these goals, and their timelines, institutional arrangements, and financial feasibility. GWP-SAF supported ORASECOM in this process by engaging with stakeholders and working with the Commission’s Technical Task Team to build capacity, mobilise resources, and raise awareness of climate resilience and investment planning development.
An example priority project emerging from the investment strategy was a proposed water transfer from Lesotho’s highlands to Botswana. This would involve priority transboundary work on investments in infrastructure, governance, and supporting information systems to enhance overall resilience in the basin.
From diplomacy to project planning
For the first time, ORASECOM was helping its riparian governments to prepare a transboundary project, reinforcing the principles of regional benefit sharing among the countries, and building new capacity to manage large and complex development work. Through WACDEP, ORASECOM had moved from providing knowledge about management of the basin towards influencing the way water storage and transfer schemes are prepared. These infrastructure developments stand to contribute considerably to the Orange-Senqu basin’s adaptation to climate change.
Senqu River in Lesotho, by Lschefa - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, the photo has been cropped, see the original here.