Despite the acknowledgement of groundwater as a key resource for achieving water-related Millennium Development Goals on the African continent, why is there little or no management of the resource? Experts have attributed this problem to: the limited or basic information that exists on aquifer systems and their water storage; the unwillingness or limited capacity of water managers to monitor groundwater abstraction and discharges of contaminants from economic activities and sanitation systems; the inadequacy of national laws in protecting the resource; and a strangely enough a general belief that groundwater is endless because it cannot be seen.

Experiences from groundwater management training courses delivered by the African Groundwater Network in cooperation with the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), Cap-Net and the EU Project ERA-Net SPLASH also show that although lake and river basin organizations (L/RBOs) have expressed the need to address groundwater management they are often not aware of the “how to” of sustainable management of groundwater resources. This has spurred the idea of supporting the process of integrating groundwater management into the mandate of basin organisations with an initial focus on transboundary waters.

The focus on transboundary waters is in part driven by the motivation that transboundary groundwater management could serve as a nucleus for cooperation between neighbouring states. One of the implied activities is supporting information sharing between states by contributing data to existing hydrological databases.

From the onset, some critical questions to be asked are: which basin organisations do already consider groundwater in their water management strategies and what does this imply for the riparian states? What relevant processes are needed to institutionalise groundwater in existing basin organisations? And which capacity development activities are needed for achieving this? Led by BGR, Cap-Net and the partner organisations have begun answering these questions and with a needs assessment for groundwater management in transboundary basin organisations. Following this exercise, adaptation of existing groundwater training materials with capacity building networks, and a training and dialogue workshop with basin managers will be held in early 2012. This will be the kick off of what is expected to be a broader programme on this theme.

For more information please get in touch with the following people: at African Groundwater Network, Richard Owen (richard@zol.co.zw), at BGR: Vanessa Vaessen (Vanessa.vaessen@bgr.de).

Cap-Net held its annual Network Managers Meeting in Hyderabad, India from 14-16 December 2011. It was hosted by the SaciWATERs Cap-Net Network (SCaN). For the first time the meeting was held back to back with a partners meeting which started two days earlier. Both the network managers and Cap-Net’s international partners that were represented appreciated the opportunity they were given to interact face to face and identify activities where they could collaborate. Some of the other highlights of the meeting included the following:

• Partner commitments to programmatic collaboration directly with networks and also via global programmes. The collaboration will include activities on GIS and remote sensing, water integrity; gender; climate change adaptation; water law and sustainable sanitation.
• A preliminary analysis of the current strategic plan was carried out that will be used to develop ideas for a new strategy for Cap-Net and inputs from capacity building networks into the new UNDP Water and Oceans  Governance programme strategy.
• Recommendations on monitoring outcomes were given that will be taken forward to revise tools and reporting so that the programme can illustrate better to its stakeholders, the returns of investing in capacity development; and
• Ideas for new programmes and approaches to courses (or those requiring a renewed focus) to be explored in 2012 included greater use of tools and multimedia to enhance training reach, establishing learning centres at international and regional events, and greater attention to disaster risk reduction, waste management, and coastal zone management.

We welcome the newly elected members of the Management Board: Lilliana Arrieta of REDICA, Damian Indij of LA-WETnet and an alternate member Wangai Ndirangu of WaterCap. For more information contact the Cap-Net secretariat.

This year Thailand experienced its worst floods in half a century that left more than 600 victims. The city of Bangkok was one of the areas heavily devastated. From this and similar experiences, some cities have learnt that flood management has to rank high within their development plans. In their pursuit of effective and adaptable flood management, urban water managers will need competence in the design and use of not only the so called hard-engineered defences but as well non-structural solutions (such as flood zoning, forecasting and alerts and insurance). With half the world now living in urban areas, the capacity to plan and respond to urban floods becomes even more important. Cap-Net and WMO are working to develop this capacity and began their new programme with a training of trainers course hosted by Cap-Net Brasil in Porto Alegre, Brazil from 7-11 November.

One of the participants Silvia Ferreira from Argentina said flooding in her country was a huge problem in the past and in recent years. She cited floods that occurred in Santa Fe (2003 and 2007) and Santiago (March 2011) as well as mud slides and floods in the city of Tartagal in 2009. Likewise, other participants and facilitators had many examples to share. Two sessions were reported as particularly interesting: a role-play on responding to an urban flooding event and an exercise on developing a flood management plan. These sessions illustrated among other things the cooperation required between different agencies that have to respond flood events.

Because the course was a training of trainers many of the participants have planned to cascade the training to their countries and regions. In Kenya for example, a course is planned for the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa area in early 2012. A few of the participants had other plans: Alejandro Felizia a Water Resources Engineer from the National Institute of Water in-Argentina, said that the knowledge gained from the course would feed into the first phase of the flood management master plan of Reconquista – a city located north in the Province of Santa Fe.

As the recent training of trainers was for the Africa and Latin American regions, another will be held in Bangkok for the Arab and Asia regions in early 2012. For more information about this upcoming activity contact Jan Yap (jtlyap@yahoo.com.sg) or the Cap-Net secretariat.

Is water a source a source of conflict or cooperation? The water community will give contextual answers going both ways while journalists find appeal in the water wars theory perhaps because water as a source of peace may not make for interesting reading in newspapers. On the other hand, from the International Water Event Database developed by the Oregon State University, one can conclude that in aggregate, the outcome of interactions by riparian states is tilted more towards co-operative behaviour over international waters.

Within countries, reforms towards an integrated approach to water management have always carried the inherent risk that divergent views can become a destructive force towards non-cooperation by water users. Two capacity building networks have been busy with this issue in recent months- training water managers and basin stakeholders in conflict analysis, negotiation and mediation skills.

In India, SaciWATERs Cap-Net Network working with the Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India (Forum) and a host of other partners has trained various stakeholders on conflict analysis. Since 2004, the Forum has documented different types of water conflicts in India and have now been moving forward with training. At one of their courses held earlier this year in the state of Orrisa, participants got a first- hand chance to conduct an analysis of conflict between fishermen and the state government over the use and management of Chilika Lake. One of the issues concerned the location of a new lake mouth which was opened to restore salinity regimes. To date, local village fishermen believe that they knew better where to locate this opening and opposed the state lake authority decision which was based on scientific studies. This underscores the importance of the current training work which in part aims at facilitating knowledge based dialogues.

On the other side of the world in Peru, LA-WETnet together with IPROGA (Instituto de Promoción para la Gestión del Agua) and partners have held 3 courses bringing together water resources managers as well as leaders of irrigators associations, administration boards on sanitation services, local authorities and officials from public and private companies. Together these stakeholders were able not only to identify the issues, actors, and processes for their own conflicts and but to go further and develop action plans with strategies and tools for resolving them. One of the courses was held in Apurimac where the region’s authorities are well aware of how water conflicts can escalate into violence. In 2004 they witnessed clashes between the police and residents of the neighbouring region of Ayacucho when a gold mine was planned to expand to include “Cerro Quilish”, a small mountain that has spiritual significance for locals and part of the main watershed that supplies them with water. Following the course, Apurimac’s technical committee on water resources planned to use the knowledge for further development of an Early Warning System for Water Conflict.

From the current global population and economic growth trends and the implied pressures on water resources, the work on conflict management is becoming even more important. For more information about the above conflict courses contact the Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India waterconflictforum@gmail.com and Jayati Chourey jayati@saciwaters.org; and for Peru Ms Magdalena Guimac, mguimac@iproga.org.pe and Damian Indij damian.indij@gmail.com

The water sector has been consistent in citing that in order to achieve the MDGs it requires to increase its financial flows and improve governance, management and operations and maintenance practices . Improving financial flows to the sector is not going to be easy under the current economic crisis. With this in mind, WaterCap (the Kenyan capacity building network affiliated to Cap-Net) with support from BFZ, InWent, Cap-Net and EUWI-Finance Working Group convened a training workshop on Innovative Water Sector Financing targeted at water services providers (WSPs) and the national water resources management authority. Wangai Ndirangu, coordinator of WaterCap, said that the workshop provided a contextual overview of financial issues surrounding water resources and services subsectors in Kenya and the East African region, and got participants to understand the functions of commercial accounting and performance monitoring in evaluation of financial risks and credit access.

During the discussions, participants learnt that revenue generated by WSPs had increased considerably (for example in the city of Nairobi from 80 million Kenya shilling per month in 2004 to 500 million in 2010), but without attracting proportionate interest from financial institutions. Noting that water sector funding from traditional sources is diminishing, participants were exposed to the requirements for accessing private investment. Private commercial financial institutions were invited to interact with water managers. Some of the main lessons learnt which participants considered taking forward included:

• Developing, Public Private Partnerships which, though primarily aimed at matching private resources for investments, offer additional gains by improving management efficiency. Case studies of two water utilities -Nyeri and Embu exemplified this point.
• Re-use of wastewater and energy efficiency measures present a new front for involvement of private investors and operators thus providing for risk sharing. This was also considered an effective method for accessing expertise and technology.

For more information on the course and its outcomes, contact Wangai Ndirangu at wangai@batiment.co.ke

Cap-Net is happy to announce that a new funding agreement has been signed with the Government of the Netherlands through the Directorate-General for International Cooperation. Under this agreement, UNDP will receive funding for Cap-Net to the amount of US$ 5,625,000 for 2012- 2014. Combined with existing funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency,this  brings contributions to Cap-Net’s budget for Phase 3 close to 11 million dollars. These contributions are well appreciated  especially noting that they have been committed during a global economic crisis.Thank you to our funding partners.

To all Cap-Net friends and partners: may this end of year be rich with the laughter and closeness of friends and family. We thank you all for the good collaboration we have had in 2011 and look forward to an even more rewarding partnership in the coming year. Happy holidays.

The water sector has come a long way, from the time when euphemisms were used in place of the “C word”- (corruption), to seeing the word now being commonplace in many publications and some capacity development activities. For example, a Google scholar search for articles with the words water and corruption in the title brings up 56 articles - up from three just 10 years ago.

According to the Transparency and Accountability Initiative, improving transparency and accountability means also tackling 3 associated problems (efficiency, effectiveness and empowerment). Some case studies on financing water resources management also suggest a link between transparency and user willingness to pay for water services. For these reasons and others, many water organisations now view integrity and accountability as a priority area for capacity development. Working with the UNDP Water Governance Facility at SIWI (WGF), Water Integrity Network (WIN), and affiliated networks such as WaterNet, Cap-Net’s work on water integrity has picked up over the years starting with case studies in 2008, then trial training courses and recently a training manual and a fully fledged programme. In the same vein, LA-WETnet a Latin American network has proposed hosting a global thematic action group dedicated to this theme. The first activity of the group will be to carry out a review of experiences with the use of water integrity tools and guidelines. In Africa, a new project has just been initiated in collboration with WGF and WIN with dedicated funding for water integrity work for the next 3 years.

At a recent course prior to the World Water Week in Stockholm, participants from NGOs, basin organisations, donors, governments and training institutions gathered for a primer on corruption. They went through some hands on exercises that included diagnosing corruption risk areas in their own countries. An interesting point emerging from discussions was how simple interventions such Water Watch Groups used in Zambia to represent consumer interests in services areas can be very powerful in improving transparency. This certainly underscores the need for balancing capacity development within two different target groups: water users and stakeholders so that they demand accountability; and regulators and service providers so that they become more transparent and responsive. Something else is also clear - that good practice exists around the world. These will form the basis for peer to peer knowledge sharing.

A course Water Integrity is coming up soon ahead of the WaterNet symposium in Southern Africa. To know more about the upcoming course contact David Love dlove@waternetonline.org.

In the business of water education, young children are an important target group, more so in poor communities where literacy levels of parents are low. In such cases, educating kids leads to wider knowledge transfer and improvement of the knowledge base of the general populace.

Cap-Net Lanka is one network that has made commendable strides to improve accessibility of water information to school going kids. The National Water Supply & Drainage Board (NWSDB), the principal authority for providing safe drinking water and facilitating the provision of sanitation in Sri Lanka and Cap-Net Lanka have released a book for School children called “Ma jala binduwak nam!” - Sinhala for “If I am a water drop!. Reading materials on water treatment for safe water supply are rarely available in local languages in Sri Lanka - especially for teachers and students in primary schools. Cap-Net Lanka launched the book at Dharmaraja College, Kandy at a function organized for school students.

While the process of water treatment is quite complicated for students to learn, in the book it is illustrated as a story of a water drop undergoing the treatment process. This book was designed for easy reading with simple illustrative drawings that explain the process effectively for children. It will help the young generation to realise the importance of efficient use of water and conservation of water resources. Cap-Net Lanka is looking for collaboration with interested organizations for publishing the English and Tamil versions.

For more information Contact Dr Mohammed Mowjood (mmowjood@pdn.ac.lk)

We welcome Agustina Mohando (also called Agus) on attachment for 3 months at the Cap-Net Secretariat. With her assistance, Cap-Net and affiliated networks will be monitoring the outcomes of capacity building activities carried out in 2010 and 2011. Agustina works for the Water Resources Programme at the National University of Cuyo in Mendoza, Argentina. Her university department is a member of ArgCapNet. She has also been involved with the Parliament and a Water & Human Rights Ombudsman Project in Mendoza. She has a bachelor in Political Science and Public Administration from the National University of Cuyo and a master in Water Management from Cranfield University in the UK. With this background, her main interest is in water governance - especially the different forms of participation in both water resources management and water services delivery. . Because her first language is Spanish, she will also strive to strengthen Cap-Net’s communications with all its Latin American partners. We look forward to an exciting 3 months with her. Agustina can be reached at agustina.mohando@cap-net.org

Malaysia’s 27 million people are becoming more and more concentrated in urban areas. For many local authorities this implies rapidly extending water services, in some cases through groundwater exploitation. The Department of Irrigation and Drainage (DID) in Malaysia indicates that the city of Kota Bharu in Kelantan State has the largest groundwater aquifers in Malaysia on which it relies heavily for its water supply. Natural recharge is however extremely slow in urban groundwater aquifers and this can restrict withdrawal and reduce base flow in nearby streams and water bodies. There is also a risk of pollution from irrigated tobacco schemes in the state.

As part of the Malaysian roadmap to integrated water management, the water authority in Kelantan State is implementing a project on Best Management Practices for Groundwater Management. As part of this initiative, the DID in Kelantan state, together with a Malaysian capacity building network, MyCBNet, brought together 25 representatives from government and private organisations within their jurisdiction to go through a course on Groundwater management from 25-27 July.

After going through a course that followed 11 modules of the Cap-Net groundwater manual discussions were held on how to improve groundwater management focusing on 3 themes: legislative requirements; incentives for industry to participate; and research development requirements. Many issues were raised ranging from the limited resources (dedicated funding, expertise and data) allocated for groundwater management to the poor participation by private sector industry players. Concluding remarks were given in the full context of the water needs of the state, including that rainwater harvesting should be promoted and that political intervention was needed through the development of sustainable groundwater development policy. For more information contact Athira Lim athirah@mywp.org.my

ArgCapNet have just completed a workshop on water allocation for the mining industry in Mendoza, Argentina. The main output of the 3 day workshop that started on 29 October was a draft document providing guidelines for the local government on how to allocate water for the mining industry. The network considers this draft document to be a great success considering the polarised views of some of the stakeholders.The workshop was necessitated by the tensions between residents, farmers and miners which have resulted from changing water allocation regimes.

Mendoza is an arid mid western province of Argentina with a traditionally wine dominated economy that in past years has used as much as 90% of the areas available water. But with mining recently gaining prominence, there has been much public outcry that this industry will pollute and reduce water availability in an already dry region. The perception of mining among many of Mendoza’s residents has been negative as seen for example, in a protest early this year were demonstrators demanded that local government reverse their decision to accept an environmental impact study of a mining project.

ArgCapNet believe the answer to this impasse lies in developing a robust water allocation system that considers both current and potential future water uses. They convened a workshop with over 100 stakeholders and experts some of whom came from as far as Bolivia, Chile and Peru. Before convening a smaller focused workshop to develop allocation criteria, they considered expert opinions on the costs and benefist of different water uses, environmental problems from mining, and the legal provisions for allocation. The dialogue is continuing and the document will be revised in another meeting next year. For more information contact Graciela Fasciolo at gfasciolo@hotmail.com

Training of Trainers’ course on Integrated Urban Flood Management .From 7 – 1. Nov 2011, Porto Alegre, Brazil. Organised by Cap-Net Brasil and partners. More info>>

Regional ToT Course on Groundwater Management in IWRM. From 1-4 Nov 2011 in Malaysia .Organised by the MyCBNet and AguaJaring and members and partners. More info>>

Training Course in Integrated Lake Basin Management & Workshop on Capacity Building Needs Assessment. From 17-22 Oct 2011, Myanmar. Organised by AguaJaring and partners. More info>>

For more activities. Visit the Network Activity Calendar on our website

Cap-Net and the International Network of Basin Organizations (INBO) convened a seminar at the Stockholm World Water Week last month to explore issues of performance measurement using indicators in transboundary basins and financing water resources managment  at the basin level.

Experiences from the Senegal River showed that in transboundary basins states tended to concentrate on only one or two issues where they have a heavy stake (such as transport, infrastructure or water quantity). While this made agreement on one set of indicators difficult, it makes the negotiation process as important as the result in that the information products produced from the indicator monitoring, were acceptable to the whole basin and beyond.

Three case studies were presented on financing. In Indonesia the RBO, Jasa Tirta I Public Corporation, has increased revenue 700% in the last 20 years. There is evidence from surveys that customer satisfaction is one of the key factors that has resulted in high willingness to pay. In Argentina the RBO (ACUMAR) evolved in response to serious pollution and was given a mandate by a Supreme Court ruling. It is funded from government and loans. Polluters are required to carry out remediation plans but not to pay for pollution. In South Africa, the RBO (Breede Overberg CMA) is financed by charges and general taxes. Institutional uncertainly has hampered the effectiveness of financing because the concept of RBOs managing river basins has not been fully embraced. The cases illustrated the impact of the prevailing national socio-political priorities on water governance at the basin level. This influences the viability of river basin organisations and can severely limit the opportunity to use financial and economic instruments as a water management tool. Participants concluded that 3 main factors could improve financing: institutional stability and a good governance structure supported by legislation; transparency and accountability; and a clear and full mandate for managing resources.

To download the presentations from the seminar click here. For more information about Cap-Net work on financing water resources management contact Dr Paul Taylor paul.taylor@cap-net.org. For more information on INBOs Key Performance Indicators (KPI) project contact Yannick POCHON y.pochon@oieau.fr

The millennium ecosystems assessment provides compelling evidence that human activity is reducing both the resilience and biocapacity of ecosystems. The over abstraction of surface and groundwater and pollution from water users clearly contribute to the problem for water related ecosystems. While it is important to maintain the functioning of ecosystems so that they may continue to provide services for human wellbeing (such as groundwater recharge, flood control, water purification etcetera), the issue has only recently been given consideration in water management, although sometimes being viewed as add on activity that is not integral to the decision making process of water managers. Cap-Net, UNEP, UNESCO-IHE, together with partner networks in Bangladesh and Central America have been developing a programme addressing ecosystem based management and water resources management. In a recent workshop from 27-29 October in Delft, the Netherlands, the partners met to work on a training material package called “Ecosystem Functions and Services in IWRM”. Following this workshop, a Training of Trainers course is planned from 22-26 November in San Jose, Costa Rica, after which the programme will be cascaded to other regions and countries. One of the key questions for water managers will be –how do we keep our ecosystems alive? The training will show the water manager how the energy and material cycles in ecosystems have some benefits for water users, and then go on to provide the tools that are necessary to make decisions that maintain ecosystem functions.

For more information contact any of the following members of the team: REDICA Coordinator,Lilliana Arrieta (liliarrieta@hotmail.com); Daniele Perrot-Maitre from UNEP (Daniele.Perrot-Maitre@unep.org); or Nick Tandi (nick.tandi@cap-net.org)

We welcome Kone Bougadare on attachment for 3 months from WA-Net (West Africa). With his assistance, we are once again monitoring the outcomes of activities (carried out in 2009 and 2010). Kone is a Research Fellow at the University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. He has also worked for various organisations providing project management services for government and NGO projects based at the community level. He has 3 main interests in the water sector, Wetlands Management, Monitoring and Evaluation and Gender. Kone is educated in Economics and in IWRM and Wetlands Management. With the support of the WA-Net manager, he is also supporting the implementation of the west African network’s workplan. Because his first language is French, he is also strengthening our engagement with francophone network members. We look forward to an exciting 3 months with him. Contact Kone at kone.bougadare@cap-net.org

The Support Base Partners (SBPs) of the Integrated Flood Management HelpDesk met with WMO staff in Geneva on 4 and 5 October to take stock of what has been done so far after one year of operations and what could be done to improve it. As a repository of relevant documentation, cases and tools the HelpDesk provides an opportunity for self-help by web site visitors (http://www.apfm.info/helpdesk.htm) but request for assistance can also be directed to the Technical Support Unit (TSU) of the Associated Programme on Flood Management (APFM).

The general feeling is that the HelpDesk is meeting demands for assistance in developing and implementing integrated flood management that come to the TSU either through the web site, through direct requests to the TSU, or through contacts of WMO departments. At the same time it has been acknowledged that the role of the SBPs should be further developed. The long-standing and fruitful collaboration between Cap-Net and WMO/APFM served as a model of how such involvement could be strengthened. It was suggested to put a monitoring and evaluation strategy in place to assess the effectiveness of the platform and its activities. A communication strategy has been drafted that should answer the question who should contact the HelpDesk, for what reason and what may be expected.

For more information on the IFM HelpDesk, please contact Giacomo Teruggi (GTeruggi@wmo.int) or Kees Leendertse (kees.leendertse@cap-net.org)

Mrs Karidia Sanon teaches Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences, University of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. She has a PhD from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands and the University of Ouagadougou. A married mother of two children, she is active in WA-Net. Here are some of her thoughts on the water challenges in Burkina Faso and the role of capacity building.

What do you think are the major water challenges in your country?
I think that there are 3 major water challenges. Firstly, the low level of development of water resources (both surface and groundwater) to support agriculture, forestry and pastoral activities. This hinders the economic and social development of the country whose economy relies mainly on the agriculture sector (around 45% of GDP, 80% employment). Second is climate change. Changes in rainfall and season duration have been observed and there are now many disasters related to water, such as frequent floods causing significant damage. The last challenge is that the application of IWRM faces the practical difficulties of inadequate capacity of local actors.

How can the situation be improved?
It should be noted that efforts have already been undertaken by the Government with the construction of dams. But Burkina is an extremely hot and dry country and evaporation losses are high. We need to seriously consider the use of groundwater. This will modernize our agriculture and make it more efficient. This should be coupled with a good strategy for communication and capacity building (technical and financial) of actors (local water committees, Basin Agencies, local authorities etc) for the effective implementation of IWRM. It is on this issue where the most effort is still required.

What role can the network play in improving the situation?
Our role has mainly been the creation and dissemination of knowledge though both academic and action oriented research. For example, one of our recent projects (PARCODIEau) contributed to solutions for better participation of local communities in water policy in Burkina Faso. The results of this project have even been used to improve the new water management framework (IWRM Plan 2). Contact Dr Karidia Sanon at karidia.sanon@yahoo.fr

Training of Trainers. Ecosystem Functions and Services in IWRM. 22-26 November. San Jose. Costa Rica. For more information contact REDICA Coordinator,Lilliana Arrieta liliarrieta@hotmail.com.

Cap-Net is supported by:

The Cap-Net Team

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Web: www.Cap-Net.org

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