Better Water Management Can Save Lives in Ethiopia
blurb:isstoday:11062008ethiowater
11 June 2008: Better Water Management Can Save Lives in Ethiopia
A critical factor behind the dismaying image of misery in Ethiopia is water shortage, which leads to poor agricultural productivity. Ethiopia is not the driest country on earth. It has a numerous rivers and lakes, which either traverse territorial boundaries or form part of such boundaries. Unfortunately, only about 2 percent of the total water in Ethiopia is utilized, leaving the remaining 98 percent to replenish the oceans.
Developing water resources to ensure food security, energy, and economic development, while maintaining the integrity of aquatic ecosystems, is essential to meeting basic human needs in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is entering a period of increasing water scarcity, not because of lack of water availability but as a result of lack of water resource management and environmental degradation caused by deforestation and water pollution.
Water and food security are closely related. Reliable access to water increases agricultural yields, providing more food and higher incomes in the rural areas that are home to three-quarters of the world’s hungry people. If water is a key ingredient in food security, lack of it can be a major cause of famine and undernourishment, particularly in food-insecure rural areas where people depend on local agriculture for both food and income such as in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia has been synonymous with disastrous famine since the 1980s. In the years since, drought and famine have continued to plague the country.
Hunger in Ethiopia has become so chronic and widespread, international donors fear that the number of hungry Ethiopians is increasing beyond the world’s ability to feed them. In the year 2000, about 13 million Ethiopian were saved by 1.7 million tons of food coming from the U.S. alone. It is however imperative to move away from reliance on emergency aid to long-term investments, including irrigation and watershed management.
Relying on rain-fed agriculture to feed a nation over 77 million people is like trying to catch a cloud in the sky. The present government has lost 12 years without eradicating starvation even though it has allocated a huge amount of budget and manpower in the so-called “Extension Program.” The failure of the “Extension Program” is only because the farmers relied on rain fed agriculture. Weather is the most difficult phenomenon to predict and to control. Hoping to feed about 100 million Ethiopians by the year 2015 by relying solely on rain fed agriculture is difficult to imagine. Satisfying adequately the demand for water that is required to forge a productive farmer is the most decisive and difficult issue for Ethiopia to tackle.
If Ethiopia is to improve and expand its agricultural production, it must involve a co-ordinate management of river flows and transfer of water for irrigation and hydropower development. The availability of irrigation water enables more crops to be grown per year. The benefits involved in the selling of produce, in irrigation and in year-round farming increases employment opportunities, which has direct economic benefits for local communities.
Irrigation is a complicated solution for many countries, but in the case of Ethiopia where surface water is abundantly available this technology represents a well distributed and energy-efficient option.
Until recently, the development of irrigation schemes in Ethiopia has been minimal. Yet the lowlands of the country, with their large flat and fertile land hold great potential for the development of large- scale irrigation schemes. The potential gross irrigable area is estimated to be 3.5 million hectares. To date, only 5 percent of the total potential is utilized.
Poor countries such as Ethiopia attempting to venture into a new agricultural production system find that they must compete with already established agricultural firms in developed countries with vastly superior technology (and also superior managerial skills, financial abilities that includes subsidies). The implication is that some protection or subsidization of the infant agriculture and energy would be required initially before exposing it to international competition. Therefore, while the Ethiopian government promote and reform their policy toward providing basic clean water, sanitation facilities, protect the environment, and subsidize the agricultural and energy sector, the international and donor community need to adjust their development and aid policy toward Ethiopia to help the country realize these goals.
Despite the fact that the international community and multilateral institutions promise development in Africa, Africa remains underdeveloped and impoverished. Disease related to poverty continues to spread throughout Africa. This may be because the policy that is implemented by international institutions is not working. A possible option to change this state of affairs would be to reverse the policy and enhance people’s involvement in the developing process.
The above shortcoming has had a negative effect on water development projects in Ethiopia. One should realize that although the need for foreign assistance in Ethiopia is crucial for the country’s development plan, what must be avoided are external resources that divert programs from its goals or create long-term dependency on funds that may be unilaterally withdrawn or used as instruments of outside pressure.
Subsidizing farmers in Europe, the United States, and Japan have been part of the economic policy of these countries and it is destroying livelihoods in developing countries including Ethiopia. Reforming the system in which the farmers and agribusiness get rich on subsidies in the developed countries, while poor farmers in Africa suffer the consequences, is an essential step towards food security, alleviating poverty, strengthening institutions, forest and water conservation, environmental education and awareness and water quality monitoring in sub-Saharan Africa.
In Africa, enlightened multilateral cooperation over the shared resources is not possible without strong political will and authority at the highest levels of national leadership, supported by an environment of domestic stability in all of Africa. Unresolved conflicts over resources will continue to adversely affect interstate relations, domestic politics, and quality of life in Africa. To balance the needs of a sprawling civilization with vulnerable water supply, we ought to carefully examine every potential solution. If we don’t it would mean indifference to the suffering of thousands of children who die every day from water scarcity, waterborne diseases, drought and famine in African, including Ethiopia.
Dr Debay Tadesse, Head of Coordination, APSTA, ISS Addis Ababa
