Mechanisms to Influence Water Allocations on a Regional or National Basis

Abstract

One of the more pervasive challenges facing SADC is the variability in water availability over space and time. In response, SADC States have largely opted for large scale water storage and transfer infrastructure. However as climate and demographic changes, together with rapid economic growth, increase water stress and variability, larger scale infrastructure solutions will become increasingly expensive and environmentally unsustainable. As more basins face closure this will become a regional rather than national challenge, raising pressures around the reasonable and equitable use of water. A Virtual Water and nexus perspective may offer a different view for national planners, making better use of the total water footprint to support economic growth, as well as to meet social and environmental needs. This will require the allocation (or re-allocation) of water between sectors to formalise and regulate entitlements which optimise allocations across the full water footprint and which balance the water requirements of food and energy production. Similarly, inter-state allocations based on the reasonable and equitable use principles espoused in the SADC’s Revised Protocol on Shared Watercourses, may have to consider both the blue and green water contributions to the national economies of the riparian states. On a regional basis, while there has been some attention paid to importing of Virtual Water in agricultural products rather than to produce them locally, this concept has not gained much traction. It is therefore perhaps unrealistic to suggest that Virtual Water and Nexus based allocations per se would be a viable option to introducing the concepts to SADC. Nonetheless, the author argues that the introduction of the concepts into the national planning processes places other options on the table, promoting better trade-offs and an improved understanding of the contribution of water to the economy as a whole.