非洲大陸擁有世界最長的兩條河流: 尼羅河與岡果河, 卻要面對水荒? 問題的根源不是水供應不足, 而是政體...
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The crisis-weary African continent, which has two of
the world's longest rivers -- the 6,400-kilometre Nile River and the
4,370-kilometre Congo River -- is suffering from a virtual economic
paradox: a shortage of water amidst potentially plentiful supplies.
"In
spite of a few large rivers like the Congo and the Nile, 21 of the
world's most arid countries, in terms of water per person, are located
in Africa," South Africa's Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry told
a symposium marking "World Water Week" in the Swedish capital.
The
Nile and its tributaries flow through nine countries: Egypt, Uganda,
Sudan, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, Tanzania,
Rwanda and Burundi. The Congo, the world's fifth longest river, flows
primarily through DRC, People's Republic of Congo, Central African
Republic, and partially through Zambia, Angola, Cameroon and Tanzania.
Addressing
over 1,400 water experts and representatives of non-governmental
organisations, Buyelwa Sonjica said that in arid and semi-arid
countries, rivers only flow for short periods in the rainy reason,"and
you need dams to store water for dry periods."
"The
need for water resource infrastructure in Africa is clear. The same
arguments are also applicable to many other countries in the developing
world," she added.
But
she warned that the construction of dams should be conditioned on two
factors: first, people affected or displaced by a dam should be
guaranteed benefits of some nature -- "and they should also be better
off after the construction of the dam than they were before." Secondly,
she said, the impacts on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems should be
mitigated.
Unfortunately,
Sonjica said, most developing countries lack sufficient infrastructure
for water management. "And this applies particularly to my home
continent. Africa is the least developed continent on the globe with
respect to water resource infrastructure."
In
North America, the quantity of water storage per person is about 6,150
cubic metres, she pointed out. But in Ethiopia, for example, it is just
43 cubic metres per person. Even in South Africa, the most developed
country in the continent, the quantity of water storage per person is
only 746 cubic metres.
With
only 36 percent of its population having access to basic sanitation and
some 288 million people lacking access to safe drinking water, Africa
faces "the most daunting challenges" in its efforts to reach the U.N.
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on water and sanitation, according
to the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI).
The
eight MDGs include a 50 percent reduction in poverty and hunger;
universal primary education; reduction of child mortality by
two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; the
promotion of gender equality; the reversal of the spread of HIV/AIDS,
malaria and other diseases; environmental sustainability, including
access to safe drinking water; and a North-South global partnership for
development.
A summit meeting of 189 world leaders in September 2000 pledged to meet all of these goals by the year 2015.
But
in an attempt to meet the MDGs and mobilise political commitment, a new
initiative has been launched: the African Ministers Initiative for
Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for All (AMIWASH), in partnership with
the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSC) of the
World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva.
Sonjica
told delegates that the hydropower potential of Africa has huge
development benefits. The Congo River's potential for hydroelectric
power, generated by water, could play an important role in providing
power regionally to central and southern Africa.
The
proposed Grand Inga Hydropower Project on the Congo River "will be the
biggest engineering project in Africa since the construction of the
Suez Canal".
Linking
water with democracy -- two widely divergent subjects -- she said that
"the progress that is currently being made towards peace and the
democratisation of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) can unlock
the hydropower potential of the Congo River, and this can be the key to
unlock the economic potential of the whole African continent."
According
to SIWI, poor countries with access to improved water and sanitation
services enjoyed an annual average growth of 3.7 percent of gross
domestic product (GDP); those without grew at just 0.1 percent.
In
Kenya, improved resilience to the effects of floods and droughts could
make its GDP grow annually at a rate of at least five to six percent --
the amount needed in order to start effectively reducing poverty --
rather than the current 2.4 percent annual growth rate, SIWI said.
Prof.
Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at the New York-based
Columbia University, points out that the epicentre of the current
global economic crisis is sub-Saharan Africa, "where rapidly growing
populations are exposed to endemic disease, hunger, environmental
degradation, and lack of access to basic education and infrastructure".
Much of the
African continent is stagnating, he says, with some countries
experiencing regression in income, poverty, hunger, child mortality,
and life expectancy.
This lack of progress is worrying for many reasons, Sachs said.
"If
the MDGs are not achieved by 2015, then the world will have failed to
reach its goals to save 30 million children who would otherwise die; to
provide 300 million more people with access to basic sanitation who
would otherwise lack it; to ensure an adequate food supply for 230
million who would otherwise be hungry; to ensure equality for women and
men; and to ensure a sustainable environment for the coming
generation," he stressed.
Such failure, Sachs warned, will lead to rising insecurity "since extreme poverty is an important driver of conflict."
His comments are most applicable to Africa, which is home to the largest number of conflicts of any continent.
轉載自 Z-net