By Sharon Atieno
Water security remains a challenge in the East African region, with one in five people lacking access to clean and safe water. Recurrent droughts and floods due to the climate crisis are likely to worsen the situation.
Against this backdrop, the International Water Management Institute (IMWI), an international research-for-development organization, has launched a six-year (2024-2030) transformative strategy to enhance water security, support climate adaptation, and drive sustainable agriculture across the region.
“Water security means considering how much water you have, water of sufficient quality and being able to manage risks – drought, floods, extreme events – in ways that livelihoods and lives, the economy and ecosystems can all thrive together,” said Mark Smith, IMWI’s Director General during the launch at the sidelines of the CGIAR Science week in Nairobi, Kenya.
“Water security is necessarily systemic and our strategy reflects that… If you can get water security right, then you can trigger transformation across different systems as you open access to water and enable more sustainable and fairer sharing of water across different uses.”
The strategy focuses on three main priority areas, including mitigating water risks, managing water sustainability and overcoming global inequalities.
Under mitigating water risks, IMWI will concentrate on reducing risks from droughts, floods and compound systemic water risks, decarbonizing water systems, reducing water pollution, and building resilience in communities affected by fragility, conflict and migration. The main goal is to reduce water risks and ensure climate action integrates strategies to anticipate and respond with agility to current and future changes in water risks.
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.
