By Alfaritsy
By Sharon Atieno
Water security continues to be a significant issue in the East African region, where one out of every five individuals lacks access to clean and safe water sources. The recurring cycles of droughts and floods caused by the climate crisis are expected to exacerbate this problem further.
In light of this situation, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), an international research-for-development organization, has initiated a program.
A six-year (2024-2030) revolutionary plan
To boost water security, aid in climate adaptation, and promote sustainable agriculture throughout the area.
“Water security involves assessing your available water supply, ensuring it meets necessary quality standards, and managing risks such as droughts, floods, and extreme weather events so that livelihoods, lives, economies, and ecosystems can flourish cohesively,” stated Mark Smith, the Director General of IMWI, during the unveiling event held alongside the CGIAR Science Week in Nairobi, Kenya.
Ensuring water security inherently involves an integrated approach, which our strategy emphasizes… By achieving water security, you can instigate widespread change across various sectors as you enhance accessibility to water and promote more sustainable and equitable distribution among differing usage needs.
This approach zeroes in on three primary focus areas: reducing water-related hazards, ensuring sustainable water management, and tackling worldwide disparities.
In addressing water-related hazards, IMWI aims to mitigate risks associated with droughts, floods, and interconnected systemic water issues. Additionally, they plan to decrease carbon emissions within water infrastructure, minimize water contamination, and enhance community resilience against vulnerabilities linked to instability, disputes, and population movements. The primary objective is to lessen overall water threats and guarantee that climate initiatives incorporate approaches for proactively and flexibly managing both present and impending shifts in water dangers.
In managing water sustainability, the focus is on improving food security and farmer livelihoods, moving water out of agriculture where future demand is not sustainable, biodiversity conservation and ecosystem restoration, and water infrastructure and allocation decisions. This is aimed at ensuring sustainable water solutions to meet growing and competing demands for freshwater are applied with increasing scale and speed.
In overcoming global inequalities, the issues covered include equality in accessing and managing water resources; incomes, livelihoods and water and food security; use of diverse water values and knowledge and youth leadership. The main outcome is to ensure gender equality, youth and social inclusion are improved to make the benefits of water security more equal, reduce poverty and ensure that water management leaves no one behind.
IWMI’s Regional Representative for East Africa, Abdulkarim H. Seid, highlighted the regional priorities and how the strategy will contribute to sustainable development goals by leveraging cutting-edge research and partnerships.
“The challenges facing East Africa, as with other parts of the world, require collective action. The strategy will guide IWMI’s work in the region, ensuring that we co-design and co-develop solutions with local communities, governments, academia, private sector and other key partners to build resilient and innovative water systems for a sustainable future,” Seid explained.
IMWI’s strategy goes hand-in-hand with the new One CGIAR Water Systems Integration Roadmap (2024-2030), which breaks new ground in leveraging the power of partnership in CGIAR and beyond to apply science in building water security.