In a key Note speech delivered at a Regional Basin wide Cooperation for Climate Resilience in the Nile Basin, Ambassador Ann Dismorr mentioned that, Under the theme of green economy in Rio, Sweden wishes to stress the need for structures for the development of equitable and sustainable management of transboundary water resources.
The Ambasador was speaking at a regional workshop organised by GWP Estern Africa under the “Adapting to climate change induced water stress in the Nile River Basin” project that was launched in March 2010 as a partnership between UNEP and the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), as well as DHI (The Danish Hydrological Institute) and GWP (Global Water Partnership). ( see attached speech)
The regional workshop, convened at the Kenya School of Monetary Studies, Nairobi, Kenya, was attended by participants from Nile Technical Advisory Committee from the riparian countries of the Nile and experts from climate planning agencies as well as UNFCCC focal points from the Nile Basin countries.
Ambassador Ann highlighted that environment and climate is a priority sector in the Swedish strategy for regional development cooperation with Sub-Saharan Africa.
The Swedish government will thus be hosting the “Stockholm + 40 Partnership Forum for Sustainable Development” in one month’s time. The conference will create a platform for dialogue on sustainable innovation, sustainable production and sustainable consumption. The Rio + 20 conference has the green economy as one of its central theme. Sweden’s ambition is that the conference will deliver renewed and stronger political support for sustainable development at a global level.
Under the theme of green economy in Rio Sweden wishes to stress the need for structures for Water and water resource management are core building blocks of major economic sectors and has a tremendous potential as driver for economic growth, including energy generation, food production, fishery, environmental services, urban development and health. However, this potential remains largely unused.
Ambassador Ann further stressed that, in many of the world’s poorest countries, there is often a strong correlation between rainfall variability and GDP performance. Recurrent droughts and floods have dramatic economic impacts with declines in annual GDP often exceeding 10%. Putting in place the appropriate institutional platforms as well as storage infrastructure to both mitigate water variability and to boost productive use of water would probably be an efficient way to increase growth and reduce poverty. Water scarcity is among the biggest threats to agricultural production and global food security.
‘To turn the challenges posed by climate change and water scarcity into an opportunity for green growth will require strong commitment and leadership from national and regional level’ she said.
The long-term focus has to be to create the basic preconditions for people in the region to secure their sustainable livelihoods in a situation with increasing climate variability. To increase resilience we have to take into account the different roles of women, children and men, and acknowledge that poverty and gender imbalances as causes of vulnerability the development of equitable and sustainable management of transboundary water resources.
A focus area for the Swedish regional development cooperation with Sub Saharan Africa is to strengthen regional organisations so that they can provide leadership as well as monitor national implementation of regional commitments. This includes to strengthen the mechanisms to manage shared natural resources, including water resources. The support aims to increase the knowledge about the connection between ecosystem services and poverty reduction but also to creating preconditions for peace and security.
The overall project goal is to build the resilience of ecosystems and economies that are most vulnerable to climate change induced water stress in the Nile Basin countries through building key adaptive capacity and piloting adaptation in “hotspots” with technical, policy and financial interventions. Specifically, the project aims at minimizing the projected stress of too little and too much water for conflict prevention and disaster reduction, through knowledge-based adaptation policy interventions, technology transfer and investment in key infrastructure. The project is operational at the transboundary level working closely with partners for the following ten Nile Basin countries: Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Congo DRC. The project implementation phase is for the period 2010 – 2012 (might be extended). The Swedish support to the programme is about 3,3 million USD.
Implementation of the Water Climate Development programme (WACDEP) in Eastern Africa includes synergies with the Nile Climate Resilience project on the Nile.The Bugesera Basin, the pilot project site for WACDEP in Rwanda/Burundi is part of the Kegera Basin as well as the Nile Basin.