Enhanced Cross-Boundary Water Resource Management in the Senegal River Basin

Community of West African States (ECOWAS) at the regional and national levels, as well as by the Organization pour la Mise en Valeur du Fleuve Senegal (OMVS) at the basin level, have helped to increase the resilience of the Senegal River Basin’s population to drought and climatic uncertainties and to improve the livelihoods of the population. The OMVS is a good example of equitable sharing of water resources, through development and management, between co-basin states of a transboundary river.  This project aims at strengthening these efforts.

The economy and livelihoods within the sub-Saharan Africa depend heavily on soil, water, energy and vegetation, but the state of these resources has been steadily deteriorating as a result of expanding human settlement, erosion and increasing demand for food, fodder, fuel wood, and water.

Initiatives led by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) at the regional and national levels, as well as by the Organization pour la Mise en Valeur du Fleuve Senegal (OMVS) at the basin level, have helped to increase the resilience of the Senegal River Basin’s population to drought and climatic uncertainties and to improve the livelihoods of the population. The OMVS is a good example of equitable sharing of water resources, through development and management, between co-basin states of a transboundary river.  This project aims at strengthening these efforts.

In the Senegal River Basin, water is shared amongst a range of livelihood-related sectors in the region: agricultural and agro-pastoral zones, fisheries zones, municipal water supply and hydropower. In the riparian countries, water scarcity relates primarily to a lack of infrastructure and capacity to access much of the available water, rather than physical water scarcity. Water withdrawals along the Senegal River remain relatively low, thus the development of water infrastructure to facilitate greater exploitation of the available water resources may help to reduce levels of water scarcity.

As a result of previous and current projects and programmes implemented in the Senegal River Basin, progress has been made in relation to cross-boundary water management and infrastructure development. Most recently, under the Multi-Purpose Water Resources Development Programme (PGIRE), support was provided to improve multi-sector planning (particularly across agriculture, fisheries and hydropower). One output of this programme was the production of the Master Plan for Water Resources Management on the Senegal River (SDAGE), which aims to advance water resources development, while mitigating the negative impacts of socio-economic development. However, several activities related to priority areas of the SDAGE are yet to be implemented, due to a number of technical and capacity gaps constraining OMVS.

This project plans to fill the critical technical and capacity gaps, enhancing cross-boundary water resources management in the Senegal River basin via:

  1. Improved tools for multi-objective water resources management (hydro-agricultural component, fisheries component);
  2. Established hydro-economic modelling for Senegal Basin and sub-basins and increased understanding of benefits of joint water resources management;
  3. Identification of cross-boundary investment areas to enhance cooperative and joint management of water resources; and
  4. Assessment of trade-offs between water for energy production and water for agriculture/fisheries development.

Each of the activities will include follow-up capacity building actions, consultation workshops or roundtables involving OMVS staff and a range of relevant stakeholders from across various groups of the four countries. The activities focus on the adoption of technically feasible workplans and strategies, and on the development of a set of concrete actions which will lead to substantial socio-economic benefits to the populations while ensuring environmental sustainability.

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