DURBAN, South Africa (PAMACC News) - Arising from the 2017 World Water Day Celebrations and the Global Launch of the UN World Water Development Report 2017 entitled: “Wastewater: The Untapped Resource" which ended yesterday in Durban, the Republic of South Africa, water and sanitation ministers from across Africa have adopted the Durban Political Declaration for accelerating the implementation of the sustainable development goals (SDGs).
The adoption of the political declaration which coincided with the announcement of the “Call for Action” towards the implementation of the SDGs with particular emphasis on Goal-6 (Water and Sanitation) was graced by members of the High Level Panel on Water (HLPW), leaders of the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW), Inter-sectoral Ministers, UNESCO Special Envoy for Water in Africa, UN Agencies, private sector and civil society leaders.
The Durban Political Declaration agreed by all Political leaders mirrors the key principles, pillars and vision of the African Union, AMCOW, and HLPW Action Plan in support of the implementation of the SDGs. The Political Declaration seeks to encourage the acceleration plans and programmes and commit to the rollout of the Action Plan initiative.
In this latest declaration which recalled the African Union Heads of State and Government decision on the implementation of the July 2008 Assembly Declaration on the Sharm El Sheikh Commitments for Accelerating the Achievement of Water and Sanitation Goals in Africa; the eThekwini Declaration on Sanitation and its accompanying actions adopted in South Africa in February 2008; as well as the recent Dar Es Salaam Roadmap for Achieving the N’gor Commitments on Water Security and Sanitation in Africa adopted in Dar Es Salaam, United Republic of Tanzania 26th July 2016, water, sanitation and inter-sectoral ministers from the five Africa sub-regions resolved and committed themselves to supporting and strengthening the implementation of SDG-6 and related goals by ensuring coherence in the implementation of our policies in line with the HLPW Action Plan.
The ministers also declared their commitment to supporting and sharing the best Practice Models initiatives championed by regional leaders who serve as members of the High Level Panel on Water, notably Presidents of Senegal, South Africa and Mauritius. This, according to the declaration, is in line with the Africa Water Vision 2025 which envisages “an Africa where there is an equitable and sustainable use and management of water resources for poverty alleviation, socio-economic development, regional cooperation, and the environment”.
Recalling the aspirations and commitments espoused in Africa’s Agenda 2063 which envisions the optimal use of Africa’s resources towards ensuring positive socio-economic transformation; the 2004 Sirte Declaration on integrated development of Agriculture and Water in Africa; and the 2008 Tunis Declaration on Accelerating Water Security for Africa’s Socio-Economic Development; the High Level Political Declaration commits African governments to increasing budgetary allocation to match the central role of water security and sanitation in Agenda 2030 and in line with the Sharm El Sheikh declaration.
To drive this, the ministers urged the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW, African Development Bank (AfDB) and African Union Commission (AUC) in collaboration with development partners, to convene meetings of Ministers responsible for Water, and Finance to develop and implement appropriate financing policies and models for water and sanitation.
The declaration further requests the African Heads of States and Government through the AUC to prioritize Water and Sanitation as essential ingredients to Africa’s Economic Development and Growth. On this note, the ministers advocated the designation of AMCOW as the Technical Advisory Committee within AU Specialized Technical Committee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Water and Environment to champion the implementation and monitoring of SDG-6 at the political level.
African ministers and members of the High Level Panel on Water welcomed AMCOW’s launch of the Pan-African web-based monitoring and reporting system for water and sanitation sector which is linked to the global monitoring processes and called for efforts to strengthen and institutionalize harmonised monitoring and reporting system at member states, sub-regional, and basin levels to report on actions taken to implement these High Level Declarations including Political Declaration commitments.
NAIVASHA, Kenya (PAMACC News) - After weathering the strain of decreasing water levels, Lake Naivasha, the largest fresh water body in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, is faced with a new threat: pollution.
Solid waste load from the surrounding economic society is on the rise. Filthy water used to clean fish is drained back into the lake. As pastoralists stress the lake further by driving their livestock into the water body for a thirst break.
But it is the increasing volumes of effluent from the surrounding horticultural farms that has led the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) to sound alarm about the threat facing the lake.
According to Joakim Harlin, head of the Freshwater Unit at UN Environment, nutrient loading from the use of fertilizers and other chemicals by the farm is leading to the spread of colonizers like the water hyacinth.
“This has led to the death of fish populations in the lake and the clogging of waterways used by fishermen, leisure boats and wildlife,” says Harlin.
Pollution is also putting pressure on the Lake Naivasha habitats, argues Fleur Ng’weno, of Nature Kenya.
According to her, hundreds of migratory bird species which nest in the Lake could be affected by the increasing pollution.
Unique plant life found there too is being affected by pollution, including the irregular rise and fall of water levels, she says.
Yet, the Nakuru County government depends on tourism flow there, which is second to Mombasa, to boost its revenues. The community also depends on the lake to feed their domestic water needs, she adds.
“Lake Naivasha is now supporting a powerful horticultural industry, a growing population of flower farm workers, geothermal energy production, intense fishing and a runaway building boom,” says Ng’weno.
However, not everything looks cloudy for the lake. UNEP, in collaboration with partners pooled a group of volunteers to help clean Lake Naivasha to mark the World Water Day.
The volunteers managed to collect solid waste weighing hundreds of tonnes, which was later taken to the community cooker for incineration, according to Lis Mullin Bernhardt, the cleanup lead.
“The purpose of the cleanup was to raise awareness about the increasing pollution facing the lake and show the community that they are not alone in conserving this water body of international importance,” said Bernhardt, who is also the UNEP Freshwater Unit Programme Officer.
ABUJA, Nigeria (PAMACC News) - Nigeria has reaffirmed its commitment to creating jobs for millions of its unemployed citizens through the completion of dam projects across the country. The Minister of Water Resources, Engr Suleiman Adamu, made this known on Wednesday in Abuja at an event held to commemorate the 2017 World Water Day.
According to Engr Adamu, “the ministry has completed the construction of Galma Dam in Kaduna State, which will provide over 1.1 million jobs after the irrigation system has been properly deployed."
“Other abandoned dam projects like Central Ogbia Water Supply, the Adada River Dam in Enugu State; among others, have been resuscitated," he said.
The minister believes that the recently launched water sector roadmap for Nigeria articulates the objectives of the Federal Government in developing the nation’s water resources toward the actualisation of the sector’s potential over short, medium and long term periods.
“The road map will support sustainable development in the water sector, the nation’s food security goals and guarantee lasting prosperity for Nigeria“ he added.
Engr. Adamu also linked the theme for this year’s celebration “Water and Wastewater“ to the Federal Government’s commitment to harnessing wastewater resources for sustainable development.
Speaking earlier, Mrs Rabi Jimeta, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Water Resources, said the 2017 World Water Day highlights relationship between water and wastewater in the quest for sustainable development.
“Participants at this meeting will get an opportunity to learn more about the theme of this year’s World Water Day, and how wastewater is perceived as valuable resources in the secular economy,“ she said.
EARTH MEANDERS ESSAY By Dr. Glen Barry
PAMACC News - Given long-predicted and self-evident abrupt climate change and ecosystem collapse, and resultant perma-war and rise of fascism, despite decades of scientific warnings which went unheeded; will you now listen to science, embrace an ecology ethic, and act to avoid biosphere collapse and the end of being before it is too late?
Essentially every warning from ecological and climate scientists regarding the limits to growth have come to pass. Climate models have been amazingly accurate, if anything under-predicting the magnitude of the climate apocalypse dramatically playing out in Polar Regions and radiating heat globally. Water, farmland, soil, wetlands, oceans, old-growth forests, and the atmosphere are, as forecasted, in precipitous decline.
Whole regions are collapsing ecologically and are on track to being uninhabitable and will have to be abandoned. Yet demands for inequitable consumption placed upon nature by seven billion top predators continue to grow exponentially (as a billion live in opulent splendor, another billion face abject soul-sucking poverty, and a handful enjoy half of Earth’s wealth).
There are few naturally evolved large ecosystems remaining to cut, burn, and otherwise plunder for short-term ill-gotten gains as the biosphere and society bear the unpriced external costs. Those natural ecosystems that remain are under threat as the oil oligarchy consolidates its power in order to access and burn every last drop of oil and chunk of coal, destroying our atmosphere and last natural ecosystems in the process.
The global ecological system – our one shared biosphere that makes Earth habitable – is collapsing and dying as human industrial growth overruns natural ecosystems and the climate.
Resource scarcity resulting from ecosystem loss, albeit delayed through the advent of information technology, nonetheless underlies the surge in uncontrolled mass migration and diminished economic prospects for the formerly affluent Western middle classes. Landscapes ravaged by industrial capitalism in the developing countries in particular are barren wastelands unable to support indigenous and other local self-reliant lifestyles that provided for quality lifestyles for millennium.
As foreseen by this author and others, authoritarian fascism has arisen to exploit both environmental decline and surging inequity between the super-rich and multitudinous have nots. A state of perma-war and institutionalized war murders masked as a clash between cultures are more accurately depicted as a scramble for dwindling resources upon which to base overly consumptive and clearly unsustainable lifestyles for the privileged few for a while.
Fascist demagogues have arisen that spout charlatan alternative facts as they stifle voices of ecological and other truths.
Environmental and climate crises long perceived as distant or affecting others, but not you, are increasingly impacting average people in their daily lives, particularly in the over-developed world. Food and water systems are failing and prices rising, as regular patterns of seasonality are lost. Jobs based upon ravaging natural ecosystems are a thing of the past, as they are exhausted, and are not coming back. Foreigners from hard scrabble over-populated countries will work far harder for much less and increasingly take even domestic high-tech positions excluding locals.
Our present state of environmental collapse, driven by inequitable over-population and ecosystem loss, fomenting precipitous social and economic decline, was foreseen by ecological scientists. Numerous warnings from a host of ecological visionaries sought to highlight the problems and the course of action required to move towards not only sustainable, but also just and equitable sustainable development.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s the preceding work of Malthus, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson and others went mainstream as the self-evident need to protect land, air, and water led to bipartisan efforts. The ground-breaking Limits to Growth publications highlighted once again the irrefutable fact that exponential growth can only lead to collapse. The advent of micro-processors has pushed back some limits, as others like the absorptive capacity of the atmosphere have clearly been breached.
It has been two years since I proposed a 10th Planetary Boundary in my peer-reviewed scientific journal article entitled Terrestrial ecosystem loss and biosphere collapse regarding how many natural ecosystems can be lost before the biosphere collapses. Noting how smaller ecosystems, indeed anything from which portions are cut, fragment and fall apart at around 40% loss; I proposed a threshold of 66% natural and semi-natural terrestrial ecosystem retention as being required to avoid biosphere collapse.
Despite my findings being subsequently validated in other studies by scientific luminaries, precisely nothing is being done by world governments and even leading environmental NGOS to begin the process of ending natural ecosystem loss and beginning an age of ecological restoration.
With about 50% of natural ecosystems having been destroyed already there can be no other outcome (after unknown lag times) than biosphere collapse and the end of being.
It is not through lack of effort by others and me that deep ecology has not caught on. Indoctrination into a nationalistic, consumptive worldview is pervasive and all-encompassing. Very few are able to escape the religious, racist, nationalistic, and economic lies forced upon them in youth.
Much of humanity has forgotten that it is possible to live in peace and within the bounds of nature. Social cohesion has dangerously frayed. Poorly educated folks falling from middle class lifestyles, as well as the well-off feasting upon the last ill-gotten fruits of nature, are unable and/or unwilling to grok causal connections between declining natural systems and limited economic prospects, and that such growth can only end in collapse.
Our fatally flawed education system fails to provide the necessary cognitive skills to grasp basic truths –like nothing grows forever, ecosystems make life possible, and water is required for life – upon which our existence depends.
Nothing grows exponentially forever, it is a physically impossible.
To deny Malthus, indigenous wisdom, and all subsequent iterations upon ecological knowledge and intuition found in science is sheer utter madness.
The truth of the matter is that while ecological trends are clear, the breaking point of ecosystems and societies is not known with certainty. There may be sources of ecological resiliency of which we are unaware. And given the drive for self-survival of a species can be found in all genetic code, including the hairless ape with the amazing opposable thumb, it would be incautious, indeed ludicrous, to give up.
But we need to quickly change our ways personally and societally to embrace an ecology ethic. We need to listen to ecological and other scientific experts and dramatically reduce industrial and population growth, as well as inequitable over-consumption, or we are faced with ecological apocalypse and biosphere collapse.
One last time swords must be beaten into plowshares (and restored ecosystems).
It is known with certainty that human prospects depend upon functioning natural ecosystems. And the personal and societal changes required to maintain such systems are known with surety as well.
Simply, pollution of land, air, and water must end or we all needlessly die.
To sustain local ecological patterns and processes globally, old-growth forest logging and industrial scale marine fisheries MUST cease immediately, and massive investments in ecosystem restoration be made. Decentralized renewable energy grids and nega-watts from energy conservation must be embraced with utmost urgency as fossil fuel burning ends. Massive investments in women’s education, birth control, and tax incentives for small families must be made worldwide to slow growth and then reduce human population. Genetic modifications and oil intensive agriculture must end as we return to family farming embracing organic permaculture. And all sources of sacred water must be protected at any cost.
Fascism and the threats posed by both large governments and corporations must be eliminated. A guaranteed minimum income must be established worldwide. Armies must be demobilized and international institutions strengthened to pay the price for our continued existence, while ending systematic war murders. Liberty, justice, and equity for all members of the human and all species’ family must be ensured.
This course of action is based upon scientific truths, and further ignoring of ecological limits is a willful death wish.
Humanity heeds the warnings of its sage elders and embraces such an ecology ethic now in all haste or we face intensified abject human misery prior to biosphere collapse and an imminent end to being. Let’s come together now to make it so.
