By Joyce Gyekye
All 15 member states of the Economic Community of West Africa States, ECOWAS are unlikely to meet Sustainable Development Goal, SDG 6 which aims to ensure availability and sustainable water and sanitation management by all by 2030.
The President of the Technical Committee of Global Water Partnership of West Africa, Dr. Boubacar Barry said this at a maiden Water Forum dubbed “Water Talk” organised by the International Water Management Institute, IWMI and ECOWAS in Accra. He noted that other SDGs with water as underpinning would also suffer.
He referenced data collected by member countries of ECOWAS in 2015, indicating that members were far from achieving SDG 6. Dr. Barry stated that West Africa has more economic water scarcity than physical scarcity adding that lack of resources to lift water from where and distribute it is the problem
He mentioned high population growth which surpasses economic growth with its attendant effect on food, water, and energy as a contributory factor to insecurity on the continent.
On climate change, he mentioned, “Because of Droughts and floods we’re losing our GDP and if you lose your GDP, you lose prosperity. This is because drought affects water sources, leading to energy crisis, food insecurity and militant insurgence for instance in the Sahel region whereas floods lead to destruction of infrastructure.”
He called for more investment in irrigation which should be backed by policies, good governance and education of citizens to protect water resources.
On international water basins, Dr. Barry, who has more than three decades in water research, urged ECOWAS member countries to invest in shared water basins and share the benefits such as electricity and transport as done by Guinea, Mali Mauritania and Senegal instead of countries sharing the water basins.
The President of the Network of Female Professionals in Water Supply Sanitation and Hygiene, Dr. Boluwaji Onabolu, mentioned that lack of basic services, including water security, contributes to anger, unemployment, exclusion, and insurgency like Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria.
She stated that people mostly miss the link between water and other development indicators like health saying “The number of children who die daily from waterborne diseases is more than the number of people who die from wars.”
Dr. Onabolu entreated ECOWAS member countries to be intentional to use modalities of Foreign Direct Investment, FDI indicators in developing and accessing water projects by looking at productivity, employment and low carbon emissions to reduce conflicts.
A Director, Ghana Water Resources Commission, Dr. Bernadette Adjei applauded the cooperation among countries bordering the Senegal water basins that has led to benefits sharing and not the allocation of the resource as pertains in some countries where states maximize what they can get out of the resource. Dr. Adjei called for diplomacy and data sharing among countries sharing common water resources.
