Articles

Whose water is it anyway?

Water Sewage & Effluent July 2010
By Adam Gunn

Egypt, Sudan and South Africa have adopted a dangerous approach of ignoring the rights of their downstream neighbours. Water represents a serious constraint to economic growth in southern Africa unless the Department of Water Affairs allocates and manages duty – at the cost of its neighbours.

A journal article sent to me recently by a colleague contained an interesting summary of the international water rights in the Nile Basin. Rights to water in the Nile River are regulated by agreements notably the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI). This new multilaterial agreement, signed in 1999, seeks to substitute a half-century-old Nile water usage agreement and bilateral contract between Egypt and colonial Britain, and to reflect current demographic and development realities.

Potential for contention
In essence, the NBI secured more than 87% of the Nile's flow to both Egypt and Sudan, giving these an inequitable share of the Nile water. This could clearly be a source of contention as other countries, such as Ethiopia, under colonial rule at the time, were excluded from the agreement, Ethiopia, in turn, upstream of Egypt and Sudan, could implement a number of projects such as desalination and hydroelectric plants which would dry up the coveted Nile River in Sudan and Egypt.

Explosive cocktail
More recently, certain countries along the Nile River basin, excluding Egypt and Sudan, met to sign the Nile Cooperation Agreement. Following the signing of this agreement, the Egyptian Foreign Minister warned that Cairo's water rights were non-negotiable and threatened legal action if a new deal was not reached. The new deal would be in the form of the Common Framework Agreement and would assert full equitable rights for each country. Clearly this reallocation of international water rights needs to be handled with kid gloves. There has, for a long time, been the assertion that the next world war will be a resource war – and what more politically charged and vital resource than water, particularly in the context of Middle East and North African politics - an explosive cocktail indeed.

Lesotho counts too
Closer to home, South Africa has, like Egypt and Sudan, enjoyed preferential water rights over a number of Southern African rivers. The Orange River, which rises in the Lesotho Highlands, is predominately used to supply the ever-growing and thirsty industrial and mining heartland of Gauteng and, more recently, the drive is to supply this water to developments even further afield.

Three downstream neighbours ignored
Eskom’s coal-fired Medupi Power Station, near Lephalale in Limpopo, is such a development which requires massive amounts of water. This water is not available in the area but this is not standing in the way of the development.

The Department of Water Affairs (DWA) plans to build a weir in the Crocodile River near Thabazimbi and pipe some 500 ml/day of water over to Medupi and other developments in the Marico Crocodile Water Augmentation Project (MCWAP) transfer scheme.

The Crocodile River is a major tributary of the Limpopo which then services downstream neighbours: Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Although the abstraction from the Crocodile River would seem to be in breach of South Africa's obligations to its SADC neighbouring states, the DWA does not seem to be concerned with this at the moment.  

Fallacy on return water flows
In addition, the argument is made in the EIA documents that the water in the Crocodile River is essentially synthetic water since the majority comes from Gauteng which is composed in the main part of "return water flows". Return water is the water that returns into the system via storm water drains, sewage plants and so on. The National Water Act does not recognise the distinction between return water flows or any other fresh water in the hydrological cycle. What is also interesting about the MCWAP transfer scheme is that the DWA as the proponent of the scheme is of the opinion that no water use license will be necessary to implement the scheme. Further, according to the EIA, no reserve determination or downstream aquatic impact studies will be done for the project.

Self-appointed regional water custodian
The DWA's argument is that as custodians of the country's national water resource, the DWA has the inherent power to give as much water as is necessary to itself or any government backed scheme such as Medupi. It seems the answer in Southern Africa is clear: all water belongs to the DWA.

Stick to statutory duty
Even if DWA is correct in this assumption, it leads to two further issues. If the MCWAP scheme is implemented as planned, Medupi water will be some of the most expensive in South Africa at around R30/kl. This is probably unsustainable but, no doubt, the cost will simply be passed on to the end consumers as is the case with electricity. In the longer term, water represents a serious constraint to economic growth in southern Africa unless DWA invents a water making machine to quench its insatiable thirst or allocates and manages water more efficiently - as is its statutory duty in terms of the National Water Act.