Water Management
In today's circumstances, we need a global management of water. World
water demand is of course less than world water supply. Yet, water demand from
sectors such as agriculture and other industries has been increasing very
rapidly. The problems that emerge from the situation therefore indicate to the
nature of water demand. As suggested earlier, there will be water scarcity at
least in 30 countries the world over by the year 2000. Hence, to improve the
availability of water and also the quality of water, proper management is a
necessity. There are at least two significant means in water management that
need to be looked into. They are:
1.
Investing on the activities that help store
water from the hydrological cycle and related activities such as dams; and
2.
Demand management is making efforts to get water
supplied where it is needed.
Building dams across the rivers try to satisfy multiple demands at the
same time. Flood control, improving hydroelectricity generation and other uses
of water including of irrigation are all included in this activity. The dams
are also useful as multipurpose resources, freshwater fish, prawn cultivation
and recreation resources. For example, the Aswan Dam in Egypt has been a good
effort at national development. It provides for 50 per cent of the national
demand for electricity and also gives protection from the floods. There are
also negative impacts. There have been, for example, heavier clayey and sandy
sediments, amounting as much as 100 million tonnes, deposited in the command
area. The dam which once made the lands of the command very fertile causes
sediments in the Nasar Lake.
As a
result, to provide nutrients to make the lands fertile enough for production,
the import of fertilisers has been on the increase. Besides, the brick kiln
operators of Cairo do not get adequate raw materials for their brick
production. It has also been found that the nutrients that were supplied to the
sea from the Nile have now become scarce or even rare. The delta has gradually
been receding over the years. Land salination and water-logging have increased,
causing a degardation of land. The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of
the United Nations has estimated that 35 per cent of the land in Egypt has been
affected by salination while 90 per cent of the land in that country has been
water-logged. This brings us to the fact that in water management, basin
management is the foremost in importance.
Basin Management
In half the countries of the world, the demand for water would double by
the year 2000 due to population growth. The pressures emanating from this fact
would hasten the problems of the basins. This impinges on other resource
problems in our lives. It is therefore important that the river water is a
significant part of the water management efforts, too. This is also important
for the reason that a problem affecting one part of the basin would
automatically affect other parts of the system: an event occurring at one end
of the river would impact upon the other end of the river.
River basin, like other resources, should be shared. Hence, water
management through participatory approach would provide benefits for all people
in the basin. Just as there are conflicts in 148 of the 200 major river basins,
there are opportunities in all of these for integrated efforts at management.
As of now, however, several countries have transformed their problems into
crises. At the global level, there are only a few countries which cooperatively
and understandingly approach the problem for solutions. From the experiences
and successes of these countries, participatory approach emerges as the most
effective for resolving the problems.
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