I was immediately confronted
with my biased views in the first lecture that introduced the course. My ideas
of distribution, accessibility and volume of water in Africa was completely
wrong. Furthermore I learned access to water had more to do with politics
rather than volume or variability of precipitation. My first blog can therefore
best be described as my revelation of water and politics. Specifically this
relation is what grabbed my attention most. In the beginning of blogging I struggled
with finding topics to write about. Politics is everywhere, where do I start? An
article about Ethiopian’s Grand Renaissance Dam got me interested in what is
called shared water resources management (SWRM). This comprises all water
resources that are shared between different kinds of actors that all have an
interest in the water resource. I found out that in a lot of cases water
resources cover territories in different countries. Because water bodies are
not limited to one specific territory but shared between different groups, and
interests, conflict is likely to arise. Different groups have different
interests and should therefore cooperate in fulfilling everyone’s needs. However
power relations between the different interest groups are asymmetric. Some actors
have more power than others, for instance national government have more power
than small marginalised local groups and upstream riparian states often have
more power than their downstream counterparts. These different power relations
are key to understanding why some people have access to water and why some don’t.
In my blogs I tried to
involve as many interest groups as possible and tried to unveil the different
power relations between actors in specific cases. I have discussed SWRM among
the Nile riparian states, the Zambezi riparian states and the countries that
are using the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer. I have also touched upon topics that are less place specific but happen
all over Africa such as water grabbing. And finally I have discussed global
actors in the case of the Akosombo dam in Ghana.
So what are my main findings
after writing these blogs? First of all, the (extreme) asymmetry in power between
different interest groups. Often, the national (or global) actor has a
dominance over the local and region interests. National governments make
decisions without paying any attention to local interest and often even exclude
local groups in their decision-making. They do this under the guise of national
interest and development rather than local decline. Furthermore have found out
that making decisions about water management is not as simple is one might
think. Data is often manipulated or faked due to a lack of adequate instruments
to measure water quality, volume and variability. Therefore making wrong
decisions is frequent. A third finding is the vitality of water for human kind.
The reason why conflicts over water are happening is because of its great value.
We must never underestimate the importance of water for humankind and its
survival. Conflicts about water are serious and must be solved including all
interest groups that are involved. I will never forget what the Egyptian
president said about the construction of the GERD and its possible threat to
Egypt’s water security: We would go over
war for our water resources. This statement made me realise how serious
water affairs are. I can’t blame Egypt for defending itself in survival. In the
end we all need it to survive.
My final remark on this blog
is that I feel more aware of the importance of water and the privileged position
I find myself in, having access to sufficient and good quality water. I hope
the world will shift into a world with equal water access in which we can all
flourish and don’t have to suffer from the consequence of a lack of fresh
water.