Find water formula, Veep challenges experts
By NATION REPORTER VICE President Inonge Wina has challenged experts on water resources to find a formula on how Zambia can benefit from the more than 40 percent of the SADC water resources held within Zambia’s boundaries without affecting neighbouring countries in the SADC region. Mrs Wina has challenged the experts and stakeholders on water resources to find ways of addressing the transboundary nature of water resources within the context of international cooperation and trade. Mrs Wina said this yesterday when she officiated at the 7th Zambia Water Forum and Exhibition under the theme: Water as an economic driver: The water -energy –food nexus from the sub-Saharan Africa perspective.” She said government had since introduced specific measures to underscore the importance of developing and managing water resources in line with the water resource management Act No 21 of 2011, through statutory No 20 of 2018 which would lead to sustainable and controlled abstraction of water resources. She noted that it was important to review policies, plans and programmes for consistency in achieving the outcomes, thereby providing a conducive environment for integrated implementation of interventions while building capacity of personnel to address the challenges of the 21st century. She said the development and management of water resources had been given priority by investing in large –scale hydropower and irrigation projects as pre-requisites for driving agriculture, mining and tourism sectors. “It is against this background that an exhibition has been mounted to create awareness on the importance of water in human life and socioeconomic development of countries across Africa, therefore, I expect the participants to focus attention on enhancing provision of adequate water supply and sanitation, improving availability of water supply and sanitation infrastructure, among others,” Mrs Wina said. Meanwhile, Germany Ambassador to Zambia Achim Burkart said a collective approach to managing resources and ensuring services such as the nexus approach to water, energy and food security could increase efficiency, create synergies and help negotiate fair compromises where supplies were short. Mr Burkart said Germany was already applying the nexus approach in many of its development cooperation projects, the Sustainable Development Goals foresee that by 2030, safe and affordable drinking water was accessible to all. He said the Zambian government had defined a very similar goal for the water sector with its “vision 2030”. These objectives were now concretized with the 7th NDP. “We, the cooperating partners, appreciate very much the adoption of this 7th NDP, but the achievement of the 2017 NDP targets, show us that there is still a lot of work to be done in the field of water sector reform, however, as cooperating partners, we still see major challenges, especially in terms of governance, ownership and action to implement policies and strategies more efficiently.