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By Andualem Sisay - Capital
27 March 2007
The ‘water tower’ of the horn of Africa, Ethiopia, celebrated the World Water Day (WWD) on March 22, 2007 with the theme “Coping with water scarcity”, which perfectly point to the water shortage the country is in.
While addressing the gathering on Thursday at the Ministry to celebrate the day, “Ethiopia has started the celebration since 1994 manifesting its high consideration of this finite but important natural resource,” said Asfaw Dingamo, Minister of Water Resources.
Today, some 1.2 bln people live in areas of water scarcity. Studies indicate that instead of showing improvement, the scarcity will worsen in 2025, affecting 1.8 bln people.
“Ethiopia, which is not exceptional to this global fact, is frequently challenged with severe droughts; as a result of which food security and provision of reliable water supply and sanitation service is becoming challenging, though we had favorable harvests during the past three years,” Asfaw said.
While the Authority was celebrating World Water Day in its compound, the inhabitants of most of Addis Ababa were seen here and there with plastic buckets seeking water. “It is a shame for Addis Ababa, which is the capital of Africa, to be unable to provide us a drop of water for over 80 days,” says Abdourahman E. Ismael, a Diplomat from the Embassy of Djibouti who lives in the Mekanisa area.
The annual renewable surface water resource potential of Ethiopia is estimated as 123 bln cubic meters of water. The water resources problems in the country are uneven, spatial and temporal and inadequate distribution of these resources, according to Minister Asfaw.
“About 85 percent of the country’s water resource is found in the west and southwest part of the country where the population is less than 40 per cent. On the other hand, over 60 per cent of the population lives in arid and semiarid regions where less than 15 per cent of the country’s water potential exists,” he explained.
Another person who commented to Capital on the water problem of Addis Ababa is Col. Linz Reinhard, Military Liaison Officer for EU-AU, who lives near the Golf Club. He has not had water for up to ten days at his residence. He recommends water discipline education as a solution from his experiences in Mauritania and Morocco, “if indeed there is a water shortage.”
He also describes miscalculation and mismanagement as another problem related to the scarcity. “While the days that we not get water increase, we are also required to pay four times more than the days we get water properly. Even after we changed the counter, the problem remains.”
According to UN-Water, people experience water scarcity below a threshold of 1,700 cubic meters per person per year. “The current Ethiopian per capita water availability of 1720 cubic meter per person per year will go down to 1015 on the average. This will even go from bad to worse by reaching 200-300 cubic meters per person per year in the Eastern and North-Eastern part of the country calling for water security measures in an integrated manner,” says Asfaw.
As experts agree, the most significant intervention to cope with the problem is the introduction of Integrated Water Resource Management. The government of Ethiopia has issued Water Resource Management Policy in the year 1999. “Since then,” the Minister says, “based on the country’s Integrated Water Resources Management, Ethiopia has entered into a scaled up implementation of water supply, sanitation, irrigation and hydropower development activities.”
The United Nations General Assembly, following the Rio de Janeiro Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, designated March 22 of each year as World Water Day.