World Water Week 2023 - Seeds of Change: Innovative Solutions for a Water-Wise World
World Water Week 2023: 20 –24 August
Theme: Seeds of Change: Innovative Solutions for a Water-Wise World
If you’re among the 9 out of 10 people on the planet who have clean water access close to your home and around the clock, count yourself lucky. Hundreds of millions of people are not so fortunate, and their families pay the price daily.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to World Water Week!
My name is Sofonie Dala, today we are going to address the situation of the Angolan aquatic system and the challenges that the population faces due to the scarcity of drinking water.
World Water Week is the meeting place for everyone who wants to understand how water can help us address the world’s greatest challenges. Started in 1991, this event is now the leading annual conference on global water issues. World Water Week is held the last week of August every year and was initially part of a public water festival in the Swedish capital, Stockholm.
At World Water Week you can explore water aspects of challenges like the climate crisis, food security, energy, and many other topics.
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Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 is to "ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all." In other words, water and sanitation for Everyone Forever.
Water For People's strategy is rooted in SDG 6, with an audacious plan to make this goal a reality for all.
By 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations.
If you’re among the 9 out of 10 people on the planet who have clean water access close to your home and around the clock, count yourself lucky. Hundreds of millions of people are not so fortunate, and their families pay the price daily. Water-related diseases sap their energy. Carrying buckets of dirty water for hours prevents moms from earning money and kids from attending school. They don’t have the water they need to irrigate crops or water livestock. And at the end of the day, it’s hard to rest knowing the next day will be the same.
These are people who lack basic water service. Instead, they must walk from 30 to 90 minutes round trip to a water source every day.
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Angola: 43% lack basic water services
Nearly one quarter of Angola’s 36.8 million people uses water from an unsafe surface river or pond. In some places, water is plentiful — but it’s not the water you want to drink. Carrying water home is most often the work of women and girls who may spend hours a day carrying heavy jerrycans of dirty water to meet their family’s needs.
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In 2019, World Vision brought piped water systems, boreholes, and rehabilitated water points to 16 Angolan communities that increased their access to clean water from 0% to 59%. These communities have already seen health benefits. With a much shorter walk for water, women and girls have more time for school, housekeeping, and growing home gardens.
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WATER - A DAILY BURDEN FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS IN SOUTHERN ANGOLA
The burden of water collection, washing dishes, and other water-related tasks falls disproportionately on women and girls, indirectly contributing to Angola’s high adolescent girl school drop-out rate.
In underserved rural areas, women and girls use a variety of strategies to go about their daily chores. Ana Joaquina Comaco, the 42-year-old mother of six children, was busy doing laundry with her grandchild strapped to her back in a small creek near the village of Mukuyu. “We haven’t had regular rains for almost five years,” she said. She depends on rain to produce beans, maize, millet, and sorghum; uses well-water to drink; and heads to the creek for washing.
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As she spoke, knee-deep in the creek, other girls were bathing, washing dishes or carrying heavy buckets to carefully water spring onions in an adjacent field.
These water-related tasks typically fall on girls’ and women’s shoulders and indirectly contribute to Angola’s high adolescent girl school drop-out rate.
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In Southern Angola, a Race to Manage Scarce Water While Promoting Economic Growth
Over the past decade, the southern provinces of Angola have suffered consecutive droughts, with far-reaching consequences for the water and food security of the communities.
Water is also increasingly scarce in an area that has been hit by record droughts in the last few years. Just when the country is hoping to boost water access and diversify its economy, erratic weather is forcing a reckoning with water management practices all over Angola. The challenges are particularly salient in southern provinces and coastal areas.
Beer is 95% water (the rest is alcohol and gas). In Lubango, a city on a high plateau in Southern Angola, the makers of N’Gola beer depend heavily on a water source of exceptional quality. Rainwater seeps into the vertical crevasses of Tundavala, breathtaking rock formations 2,200 meters above sea level. It collects in the rock then rushes downhill to Lubango, producing at times 200 cubic meters of water per hour. The source is so special it is mentioned on the N’Gola beer label and stylized as a golden waterfall with a crown.
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“Africa is a continent of great promise for large beverage companies. But water supply is the bottleneck for us here,” said Marc Meyer, the manager of the N’Gola beer factory which employs about 700 people and is a major source of revenue for the municipality of Lubango. “It could hinder our expansion.”
Lubango residents, businesses and institutions have had no choice but to adapt to intermittent water supply. When the Tundavala source slowed to 20 to 30 cubic meters an hour in 2022, the N’Gola factory, was forced to operate at about 60% of its capacity and truck in extra water and extra beer to keep its share of the market.
At Elementary School number 98, where about 1,500 students go to school in two shifts, water access dropped to once a week at the height of the water crisis. The school garden died. This year, water reaches the pipe two or three days a week. The school guard fills up containers whenever water is available, and that reserve helps the school meet its basic needs. “We usually manage to keep enough water. But if we go too many days without, we have to close the toilets,” said Filomena da Conceição de Freitas Barros, the school director since 2012. “It would be nice to have enough water to grow back the garden,” she said wistfully. “I have faith things will improve.”
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Currently, Lubango’s water comes from a combination of vertical boreholes and a couple of natural springs like the Tundavala one. Under the Second Water Sector Institutional Development Project (PDISA2) financed by the World Bank and the French Agency for Development, Lubango’s main field of boreholes has been rehabilitated and modernized. The boreholes are located in a vast and well-protected natural reserve where vegetation promotes water infiltration. But like the natural springs, the boreholes are subject to climate variability and have seen a steady decrease of water levels during the drought as lack of rainfall affects the recharge of the aquifer.
More than a million people live in the sprawling city and its periphery, with more people moving in each year, often in unplanned neighborhoods. Only about 23% of the population has a water connection at home.
The only way to increase supply and meet growing demand would be to invest massively in new water production, tapping distant rivers, pumping water from the Cunene river up to Lubango for example, or building more water storage systems and dams. “We can’t cover everyone with the system we have,” she said. Plans for new water connections are on hold while solutions are being sought out.
To achieve 40% coverage by 2030, Lubango would need to increase water production from about 20,000 cubic meters today, to about 55,000 cubic meters a day. But this could be done in several ways.
Better managing water resources, reducing water losses, diversifying water sources, managing demands and increasing the existing storage capacity may be more affordable and sustainable paths to increase water availability than a single focus on pursuing large-scale infrastructure. “Non-revenue water,” a term that covers both commercial and physical losses, accounts for about half the water produced in Lubango.
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The Desert and the Sea
Driving west from Lubango, the green highlands drop dramatically and give way to red desert, grey dust, and the occasional baobab trees. A few oases appear here and there. Then olive trees, corn rows, tomato plants, and - finally - the blue splash of the Atlantic Ocean. In Moçâmedes, the coastal capital of Namibe province, the weather is Mediterranean, and the mood is light. People sit on benches in the shade of palm trees between brightly painted houses, or watch children run from the sand to the sea.
“Everything grows here. We have very fertile soil, and the weather is ideal. We can cultivate year-round with irrigation,” said Emma Guimarães, the Vice Governor of Namibe province in her office in Moçâmedes. The province is rich in fisheries, agriculture, and mining; there is good potential for tourism. Yet water concerns weigh on her mind: “We have several rivers nearby, but they are intermittent. This creates water access insecurity.”
Highly productive commercial farms draw water from hundreds of boreholes. Smallholder farmers occupy dry riverbeds between rainy seasons and pump water that lies just below the sandy soil to water their rows. Water trucks filled by contraptions known as “giraffes” zigzag through the area to supply off-grid settlements. Residents fill containers for their personal use in between water access days. And women continue to carry heavy jerrycans of drinking water to complement less-potable supplies.
At Hotel Chik Chik, a couple of blocks from the beach, owners have invested in their own 100,000-liter reservoir: “It’s essential. Without water, we could not function. Clients need to take showers; we need to wash towels and sheets,” said Eugénio Mateus, the hotel manager. The hotel pays about 180,000 kwanzas (about $150) in water utility fees a month.
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The Plains of the Cunene River
The roar of water is audible even before stepping on the road crossing the hydroelectric dam of Matala on the Cunene River. About 175,000 cubic meters of white churning water rush through the gates. Temporarily out of service while its turbines are being replaced, the dam can produce about 46 MW of electricity. Overall, 70-83 % of Angola’s power comes from hydro – an important contribution to sustainable energy goals, in a country perhaps better known for its oil production.
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The Matala dam is also vital for small and medium farmers who draw water from the dam along a 43-kilometer-long canal. “I wouldn’t be able to grow any of this without irrigation,” said Jose Vianja, a 60-year-old farmer, pointing to rows of cabbage, potatoes and garlic, irrigated by simple furrows. “I can grow more high value crops than if I depended on rain,” said the owner of a five-hectare parcel. The canal, built in the 1960s and renovated in 2002, after the war, benefits about 1,200 farmers grouped in farmers’ associations and has the capacity to irrigate 10,000 hectares of farmland.
About an hour away, recent events have underscored the importance of water storage infrastructure to protect farmers and livestock owners. Cattle was swept away, and other assets destroyed by floodwater, when a large structure known as the Sendi dam collapsed in 2019. Drought hit the same year, leaving cattle to die of thirst and residents to scramble. “Some cattle raisers had to leave the area. We brought water to residents by truck,” said Antonio Luis Cassimbo, deputy administrator for the economic and social division of Quipungo municipality.
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