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Landmark report tackles myths and fears about water scarcity in Africa

by Daniel Yeo | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Friday, 27 April 2012 11:44 GMT

* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

 

By Daniel Yeo

DFID-funded work by the British Geological Society has revealed that there are huge amounts of groundwater available in Africa – 100 times the amount found on the surface.

This is being widely reported as a landmark study – “we’ve finally found water in Africa!”. And it is a landmark study – not because we now know that there’s enough water in Africa (we’ve always known this...), but because it tackles the public story on water. The “world’s water crisis” is often told as a story of scarcity and running out of water – this is not the truth and this report takes on the myths and helps take the scare out of scarcity.

Groundwater: hidden and misunderstood...

The vast majority of the world’s water is groundwater – around 30% of the world’s freshwater is in the ground, compared to less than 0.5% on the surface (the rest is locked up in glaciers and snow). Yet we tend to ignore it because it is not visible.

People are aware of the concept of ‘the water table’, which evokes an image of a nice, level pool of water hiding just beneath the surface. Groundwater is much more complex – water is stored in a variety of underground pockets. Some big, some small, some like a sponge, some like a cracked pavement. Some are easy to get water out of, some less so. This report is the first time that this complex mess has been quantified in this detail.

...essential and resilient

Why is groundwater so important? Firstly, it’s generally a more reliable source of water, naturally protected from contamination. Groundwater acts as a natural buffer from drought – helping smooth out rainfall patterns, thereby increasing resilience to climate change. Finally, it can generally be found close to the point of demand and 85% of Africa’s groundwater is close to the surface. It’s for these reasons that groundwater is the main source of drinking water in low income countries – only 2% of the rural population in Southern Asia, 5% of the rural population in South-Eastern Asia rely on surface water sources (although this rises to 20% of rural dwellers in Sub-Saharan Africa).

The world’s water crisis?

So if Africa has enough water, what’s the problem?

Water-related diarrhoea is the biggest killer of kids in sub-Saharan Africa. Not because the clean water isn’t there, but because the services to deliver clean water aren’t there. A crude analogy is that we have lots of water here in the UK, but we need taps and pipes to make use of it. In low income countries, water availability is not the problem – it’s the lack of basic services.

There are two core issues behind this lack of services. Firstly, governments have not made water a political priority. A groundbreaking study estimated that to meet their MDG targets, countries in sub-Saharan Africa need to spend 3.5% of their GDP on water and sanitation. Most countries where WaterAid works spend less than 0.5%.

Secondly, this underinvestment means that there aren’t enough people with the right skills and resources to deliver water services to everyone. Whilst these two issues make for a less exciting story than one of running out of water and impending doom, they are as important, if not more so, for people’s lives.

A solvable crisis

These challenges are also solvable – which could save 2.5 million lives a year. The Sanitation and Water for All Partnership of developing and developed countries works together to prioritise sanitation and water and make sure that governments spend money better to accelerate sanitation and water for all. Last Friday’s SWA meeting was a huge success – but to really transform poor people’s lives, we need concrete action to follow up political commitments. The UK’s DFID has taken a lead by doubling its work on water and sanitation, now it needs to make sure that it spends this money in the right places – and other donors need to follow suit.

However, this is only part of the story – permanent safe water is only possible if the overall water resources are fairly managed – for different, at times competing uses, including industry, agriculture and the environment. When it comes to these wider water issues, the key challenges are different again: better Information about the resources; more effective and equitable Institutions; and better Investment in infrastructure. Change in these areas takes time – but there are immediate steps we can take. WaterAid and Oxfam are working with local communities to help them understand and better manage their own water resources through Community-Based Water Resource Management.

Water is a complex issue – it is solvable, but unless we look at these two sets of issues together, we won’t make much progress. To truly tackle the world’s water crisis, we need to give it more attention and focus on the real issues – not just a nice story.

Daniel Yeo is a senior policy analyst at WaterAid.

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