Interview with senior water ministry official Tamene Gossa

Tamene Gossa is the head of Emergency Water Resources at Ethiopia's Water Resource Ministry. He tells IRIN how poor water management has contributed to Ethiopia’s problems and how it is hoped a new multi-billion dollar 15-year scheme will remedy that. QUESTION: Does Ethiopia face shortages in terms of water or is there an abundant supply? ANSWER: There are different reports that indicate that Ethiopia generally has abundant water resources. But the quantity within the country varies from place to place and it also varies from time to time, meaning that there are some parts that have sufficient resources in terms of ground water as well as surface water. But in other parts of the country they do not have sufficient water resources. Overall we could say it has sufficient water resources. Q: So is the problem management? A: Definitely in the past it has been a management problem, but the government has realised this now. It has issued a water resources management policy, an integrated and comprehensive water resources management policy, which dwells upon the different uses of water, including water supply and sanitation, education, hydropower, navigation, aquatic resources and so on. By integration we mean integration of all these sectors. Q: How is that going to change people’s lives? A: Policies are directions of government, they do not mean anything if they are not properly implemented. To do that the ministry has also already developed a water sector development strategy as well as a water sector development programme - a 15-year programme. These programmes address the needs of the country and different uses like irrigation, water supply and sanitation. So if it is implemented as planned it will address the problems faced by many people in the country. Q: But what specifically will it do for villagers who do not have access to clean water? A: For one thing if you consider the water sanitation and supply only, it means that from the current 31 percent coverage we have plans to boost it to 70 percent coverage in 15 years' time. This means a lot to the country and the people who need adequate water supply. We have programmes that will be implemented in the different regions. The programmes started from 2002 and the regions themselves have identified these programmes. We have now secured a proportion of the budget by grant, by allocation from the government – nearly two percent allocation is from the government itself, from the gross domestic product. But also we are expecting grants from donors and loans from international agencies like the World Bank, African Development Bank and the European Union. Q: Will this prevent future droughts in Ethiopia? A: I think so. Let’s hope that the recurrent drought doesn’t happen so frequently because development will be realised if we have sufficient water resources, which includes surface water as well. If we have recurrent drought it will hamper our development in those areas where we have to harness surface water... Water is a major contributor to the country’s economic development so I think it will have a very great impact if we develop our programmes as we plan and prevent the impact of future droughts. Q: What role do you think poor environmental control has played in reducing water? A: This has a very great impact. If you look at the lowland areas where recurrent droughts are happening we don’t have any trees, soils are degraded, rains are absent for two and three years consecutively. By developing water resources and conserving the environment, we will do our own share, but there are other sectors like agriculture and the environmental sector that are mainly concerned with this. But we consider water development and protection of the environment as one component we will have to look at when we develop. Q: Why is the situation so bad here in Ethiopia? A: It is entirely a management problem. In previous regimes, the government only considered water when droughts occurred and high importance was given when droughts occurred. Effectively it was crisis management only. But at the moment there is a wide realisation that without developing and managing water properly, we are not escaping from the drought situation. If you look at our population growth, it is about three percent annually. Water development lagged very much behind and so in terms of water supply it could not keep up. We are now trying to match this population growth in our 15-year plan. It has to surpass the population growth in order to have significant improvement and impact in our water supply coverage. Q: What are the major pitfalls ahead for the 15-year plan? A: If we don’t have sufficient financial resources then we will not be able to do it. It is about US $7.2 billion for 15 years and we have secured about 30 to 40 percent of that already. Funding is the major obstacle. In the meantime, technical skill to implement this is also another hurdle. But to deal with this the government has allocated a lot of resources for capacity building, like building technical schools for training of technicians.