Botswana is committed to SADC river basin management - Rathedi

CHANDAPIWA BAPUTAKI
Staff Writer | Thursday April 22, 2010 00:00

Officially opening a workshop of the Fourth SADC River Basin Organisation (RBO) at GICC on Tuesday, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of the Environment, Wildlife and Tourism, Samuel Rathedi said this commitment was demonstrated by Botswana's active participation in and membership of four river basin organisations that are at various stages of development.

The workshop was attended by 150 delegates from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and is themed Benefit Sharing and Trans-boundary Water Management and Development in SADC. 

The RBOs that Botswana is party to are the Orange-Senqu River Commission (ORASECOM) which covers the Molopo and Nossop catchment areas in the south-western part of the country; the Limpopo River Commission in the north-eastern part of the country; the Zambezi River Commission (ZAMCOM) in the northern end of the country; and the Okavango River Basin Water Commission (OKACOM) in the famous Okavango Delta. 

'We must all be in agreement that strengthening the management of these river basins requires that functional and credible institutions be established,' Rathedi said. He singled out OKACOM as a model river basin commission in the region. 'OKACOM has engaged my ministry fully since it was established in 1994,' he said.

'Others can learn a lot from them.'

However, Rathedi said there was a number of challenges that limited the region from achieving the intended goals. Among them were having a limited organisational capacity in the management of water and other natural resources within river basins; limited financial and human resource capacity to effectively manage the river basins and the differences in development and resource use priorities; lack of mechanisms to manage these differences; and difficulties in ensuring fair and equitable beneficiation from the resources obtained in river basins.

Rathedi encouraged representation in actual river basin management to work through relevant sectoral and national projects to embrace the interests of civil society organisations, saying success should be measured by the level of accepted, relevant and sustainable programmes that contributed to the objectives of the sub-region.  This was an important point because river basins in the SADC region were endowed with resources that could support livelihoods for communities living in those areas, yet their poverty levels continued to be high. 

The objective of the workshop is to update participants on progress made in implementation of activities proposed at the third RBO workshop last year. The delegates are also expected to share best practices related to the implementation of benefit sharing arrangements in the region and beyond and to consult the representatives of RBO member states on the development of SADC guidelines on benefit sharing.  

The workshop is sponsored by the German Development Co-operation (GTZ), Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, UK Aid, inwent and USAID. The workshop ended yesterday.