Advising the Cuvelai Watercourse Commission on groundwater management
Country / Region: Africa / CUVECOM (Angola/Namiba)
BGR-Focal Point: Groundwater
Begin of project: July 1, 2021
End of project: June 30, 2025
Status of project: April 19, 2024
Cuvelai-Etosha Basin
Source: BGR
Background/Context
The Cuvelai-Etosha Basin (CEB) is a transboundary catchment covering about 173,000 km2, with about 40 % of the basin’s area in southern Angola and about 60 % in northern Namibia. About 1.3 million people are living there, about 30 % in the Angolan part and about 70 % in the Namibian part. The local population in both countries depends mainly on agriculture and is severely effected by limited water availability and thus vulnerable to climate change-induced increases in extreme weather events, both droughts and floods.
Annual precipitation is distributed unevenly with about 1,000 mm/year in the northern and about 550 mm/year in the southern part of the catchment. There is only one rainy season (December to March) with about 83 % of the annual precipitation and a dry season (April to October) with only around 9 %. Especially on the drier Namibian side, there is hardly any surface water available. The population there depends on water from the Calenque Canal and groundwater from shallow wells that are problematic in terms of quantity and hygiene. The discovery of a deep, transboundary aquifer in the late 1990s offers new opportunities for both countries in terms of water supply.
A joint, transboundary management of the (ground-) water resources is necessary to ensure that the needs of the population on both sides of the border are met through long-term equitable distribution, which will also help avoiding water-related conflicts. For this purpose, the CUVECOM (Cuvelai Watercourse Commission) was established on September 16, 2014 by the two member countries, Angola and Namibia.
Project
Transboundary challenges can only be managed in a joint effort of the member countries. The CUVECOM has the mandate to advise the riparian countries regarding the sustainable use and management of the (ground-) water resources, both technically and politically-strategically and to develop sustainable management strategies based on profound data and scientific findings. This presents a great challenge for the relatively young organization. Both its technical competencies and its organizational-institutional capacities to carry out its mandate are not yet sufficiently developed (core problem).
BGR advises CUVECOM on behalf of BMZ to enable it to fulfil its mandate in the medium term.
The module objective is: CUVECOM's capacity to advise Angola and Namibia on groundwater resources in the Cuvelai-Etosha Basin, taking into account the impacts of climate change, is strengthened.
To achieve this objective, CUVECOM and BGR cooperate in three fields of work:
Data and knowledge are the basis on which analysis and advice are built. In the area of "professional-technical competence development and information/data collection", the corresponding capacities of CUVECOM with regard to groundwater - especially in the CEB - are therefore developed, so that it has access to the necessary information/data, and/or can gather them itself.
In the component "organizational-institutional development and knowledge management", the focus lies on the development of necessary capacities and a functioning knowledge management of CUVECOM to organize the regular technical exchange of member countries on groundwater-related issues. This should be based on the data of the first component, which will be analysed within the context of an inter-institutional exchange, increasing the level of knowledge.
Building on this, the component "transboundary cooperation/strategic development and policy dialogue" will develop strategies and proposals for CUVECOM to advise the member countries Angola and Namibia on sustainable transboundary groundwater management.
Methodologically, the support of the BGR will be implemented, among others, through training on-the-job, vocational training and other education and training measures. The aim is to ensure that CUVECOM can select and apply the appropriate methods at all levels of data handling (collection, evaluation/management, analysis).
The project creates spaces in which cross-border and inter-institutional cooperation is made possible and the participants are brought together in workshops for methodological coordination. Technical skills shall be enhanced in a way that the recommendations and strategies developed can be presented in an adequate manner and the CUVECOM member countries can make joint decisions that benefit the CEB population as much as they comply with the principle of sustainable management of groundwater resources.
Partner:
Cuvelai Watercourse Commission (CUVECOM)