SANF 04 no 65
The launch of the Zambezi Watercourse Commission (ZAMCOM) this week marks a significant advance toward regional integration in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
The Zambezi river and its dense network of tributaries and associated ecosystems constitute one of southern Africa’s most important and valuable natural resources.
These natural resources “define our wealth as nations” and are critical to “collective economic independence in an increasingly globalising world,” President Joacquim Chissano of Mozambique said in the Foreword to a book that has become the leading reference source on the basin, State of the Environment Zambezi Basin 2000.
Chissano said the Zambezi basin represents “the best of what we have in SADC in terms of our natural capital”, noting that the region depends on its water, land and soils, forests and wildlife to define its economic activities ranging from agriculture and forestry, manufacturing and mining to conservation and tourism.
Since these resources are shared, sustainable management requires “regional cooperation, an integrated ecosystem approach and a common understanding of the natural resource base”, to achieve a balance between human demands on natural resources and the natural environment’s ability to meet these demands.
The Zambezi river drains an area of almost 1.4 million sq. kms, bigger in size than any of the SADC member states except the Democratic Republic of Congo, and some 40 million people inhabit its basin. It is the largest shared river basin wholly within the SADC region, encompassing about 25 percent of eight countries, or basin states.
The Joint Permanent Commission with representation from the eight basin states, launched this week in Kasane, Botswana, will be responsible for sustainable and integrated management of the basin and its natural resources. The eight states are Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe
The Zambezi river basin is notable not only for its water resources but for all of the ecological, social and economic resources that draw on it, such as people, wildlife and the natural environment, as well as agriculture, industry and energy development.
The river rises on the Central African Plateau in the Kalene Hills in north-western Zambia at 1,585 metres above sea level and flows 2,650 kms through Angola, Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique to its delta on the Indian Ocean.
Its major tributaries include the Luena and Lungoe-Bungo in Angola; Chobe in Botswana; Shire in Malawi; Luiana in Namibia; Kabompo, Kafue and Luangwa in Zambia; and Manyame, Sanyati and Gwayi in Zimbabwe.
The giant Cahora Bassa and Kariba dams are on the Zambezi river, and generate a significant portion of the region’s power supply.
In recognition of the role water resources play in the well-being of the people of the region, SADC established a Water Sector in 1996 to attain sustainable, integrated planning, development, utilisation and management of water resources. This later became the Water Division under the Directorate for Infrastructure and Services, during the recent restructuring of the SADC secretariat.
The SADC region moved towards integration of the regional use and management of water resources by ratifying the Protocol on Shared Watercourse Systems in 1998, which was further reviewed in 1999/2000.
The Revised Protocol on Shared Watercourses, signed by Heads of State or Government at the 2000 SADC Summit in Windhoek, came into force in 2003 upon ratification by two-thirds of member states.
The central objective of the Protocol, which establishes and governs the operations of institutions such as ZAMCOM, is to foster closer co-operation for sustainable and co-ordinated management, protection and utilisation of shared watercourses and advance the SADC agenda of regional integration and poverty alleviation.
To fulfil this objective, the protocol seeks to facilitate the establishment of agreements and institutions for the management of shared watercourses; advance the sustainable, equitable and reasonable utilisation of shared watercourses; promote a co-ordinated and integrated environmentally sound development of shared watercourses; as well as the harmonisation and monitoring of legislation and policies for planning, development, conservation and protection of shared watercourses, and allocation of the resources.
(SARDC)
