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Africa Groundwater Initiative
Framework for Groundwater Recharge Estimation in Southern Africa
Countries involved: Botswana, Namibia, South Africa

Water shortages and pollution are becoming more severe in Southern Africa, and the costs of water supply are escalating due to long-distance water transfer schemes, desalination plants, and pollution abatement. Global environmental changes are further aggravating regional water shortages. Changes in temperature, rainfall patterns, land use and land cover are expected to impact future water supply and management systems. The possible case scenarios pose several challenges to water management including:

To what extent water supply can be sustainably expanded and at what costs;
People’s basic water needs, including questions concerning priority use;
Optimal allocation of water resources to benefit people’s livelihoods and support poverty alleviation and economic growth.

Global environmental change compounds the challenges of sustainable groundwater management as it is expected to significantly impact the groundwater levels and recharge capacity as well as regional water demand. Changes in rainfall levels and increased hazards from floods and droughts will further impact recharge and groundwater stocks. Global warming is expected to increase evapo-transpiration of surface water, and in turn make groundwater storage and artificial recharge a more attractive option than surface water storage. Changes in land use cover and biodiversity are also expected to influence groundwater resources. It is becoming clear that global environmental change will aggravate existing regional water scarcity and thus needs to be accounted for in future water management. As current water management efforts largely ignore global environmental change, the African Groundwater Initiative addresses an important gap in water management.

The objective of the Africa Groundwater Initiative is to improve the integration of groundwater resources in Southern Africa by incorporating stock and recharge data as well as value and cost data. It is particularly important to incorporate the possible effects and impacts of global environmental change.

The subsequent goals beyond phase one included scenario analysis -based on different impact scenarios of global environmental change- and to link these with a decision model to improve water management and optimize groundwater use.

The project has been completed and has produced tangible results. Primarily, each of the countries involved has prepared water accounts, and is currently up-dating the accounts (Namibia and South Africa) or has plans to do so (Botswana). Water accounting contributes to integrated water resources management by:

Linking physical resource planning with economic growth and development models; and
Monitoring the amount, quality, and use of water resources over time.

Each case study shows that the countries involved are in different stages of water account preparation. While Botswana and Namibia pursue the same accounting model, Namibia has revised and improved its accounting framework with the introduction of water transfers within the flow accounts (transfers of water among water providers) and consideration of waste water flows and stocks.