NBD Newsletter

KENYA NDF

The Kenyan National Discourse forum (KNDF) was established in 2003. A number of civil society organisations took part in a series of meetings that kick started KNDF, which has operational offices and is based in Kisumu.
The Country Coordinating Institution, HEMET, is hosting the coordinator. The registration of Kenya National Discourse Forum is still in process. Civil society consultations have been held in Kenya to familiarize the NBD/NBI discourse activities.

In an effort to streamline the discourse content and formalize KNDF secretariat engagement with its constituency, six meetings in six administrative clusters were held within the country. The meetings in these clusters dubbed as ‘focal point’ brought together a wide array of civil society organizations with interest in Nile Basin development issues. Discussions resulted in the creation of six main focal points based on 28 administrative districts in Nyanza, Western and Rift Valley provinces of Kenya. 340 Civil Society organisations participated in the focal point forums.

A transparent election process resulted in the appointment of five officials for each focal point and a hosting office was also identified. Each of the six focal points developed has a Chair, vice chair, Secretary, Treasurer and a Coordinator. The CSOs’ expectations to know more about KNDF, NBD, and NBI and to learn about possible avenues of engagement with NBI were met.

The focal point officials in the KNDF with the involvement of NBI had a three-day validation workshop for 30 officials at Polyview Hotel from the 9th-11 August 2006. Three NBI facilitators also attended the session. Among them included representatives of CBSI, NTEAP and Sio-Malaba-Malakisi SAP in Kenya. All the focal point officials have since been actively creating awareness at community level. CSOs from the focal points were also urged to involve themselves actively in lobbying for Kenya’s stake in the cooperative framework being developed.


NILE BASIN DISCOURSE

The Nile Basin Discourse is a network of Civil Society Organizations that work with communities in the ten riparian countries of the Nile River Basin. The Discourse is and cooperating and interacting with the Nile Basin Initiative to ensure that there is “a voice for the voiceless”. The Secretariat is currently located in Entebbe Uganda.

NBD was conceived to respond to the challenges facing poverty reduction as one of the millennium development goals and it has engaged a number of partners in Africa to come together and achieve this, especially for those countries along the Nile Basin. The countries that are members of the Nile Basin Discourse are Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda

NBD brings together the civil society organizations’ involvement in the NBI because it is critical and essential when there is need to address fundamental development concerns like poverty reduction, livelihood security and environmental protection. This cohesion and long term social-economic development will bring direct benefits to local communities as well as to national governments. With the history of the civil society lagging behind in the Nile Basin Initiative process and how to influence the major development process unfolding, there is the urgent need to engage it through research and outreach within local communities in project areas, establishing long term capacity building and training activities, effective knowledge development and dissemination, and establishing channels of detailed consultation to ensure that civil society can effectively monitor and evaluate impact at all levels.

Thus, the main objective of the formation of the NBD is to promote sustainable and equitable development, poverty reduction and cooperation among all stakeholders in the Nile basin.

With the intent to provide legitimacy and accountability to the civil society within each participating country, National Discourse Forums were established in the riparian countries in October 2003 which comprised of civil society sectors and individuals. Each NDF has a national coordinator and is hosted by an institution. These have a wide range of interests e.g. development, poverty, environment, peace and security, human rights, etc

The NDF’s elected 3 key people to represent their interests at the General Assembly (GA) of which one of them from each member state is a member of the steering committee (SC), the NBD management board. The SC comprises of 10 members while the GA has a composition of 30 members.


NILE BASIN INITATIVE

Nearly a third of Africa’s total population of about 300 million people lives in the 10 countries of the Nile Basin. Although the Nile River can be a good source of livelihood, poverty is widespread along the Nile basin with up to 100 million people living on less than a dollar a day. The HIV/Aids pandemic, violent conflicts across borders and loss of lives caused by water related diseases like malaria have not helped the situation.

The Nile basin being a potential area of growth, there has been the need to improve the livelihoods of the people thus the establishment of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI). The Nile Basin Initiative is a partnership initiated and led by the riparian states of River Nile to fight poverty and promote socio-economic development in the region.

The NBI is governed by a structural authority with one of the ministers of water affairs from the member countries chairing the council of ministers on an annual rotational basis. The council of Ministers serves as the highest decision making body of the NBI and is supported by the Nile Technical Advisory Committee (NILE-TAC), composed of two senior officials from each member state

The NBI’s primary objectives are:

• To develop the water resources of the Nile Basin in a sustainable and equitable way to ensure prosperity, security and peace for all its people
• To ensure efficient water management and the optimal use of resources
• To ensure cooperation and joint action between the riparian countries seeking win-win gains
• To target poverty eradication and promote economic integration

With the NBI facing the challenge of engaging the civil society which to a great extent brings direct benefits to the local community, there was a need to involve a third party to more closely connect the two bodies to promote the sharing and exchange of information on the Nile basin.
This cohesion will more greatly build the capacity of the civil society to craft ideas for development that will focus on reducing poverty of the local communities throughout the basin.
Programs have been launched consisting of two complimentary programs, a Shared Vision Program (SVP) and Subsidiary Action Program (SAP). While SVP is being promoted at the basin wide level, building commitment and clear goals, it needs to filter down to the national and local levels, getting nourishment from the SAP
Under the NBI, there are quite a number of projects under SAP:

• Applied training project (ATP)
• Nile Trans boundary Environmental Action Project (NTEAP)
• Regional Power Trade Project (RPT)
• Confidence Building and Stakeholder Involvement Project (CBSI)
• Efficient Water Use for Agricultural Production Project (EWUAP)
• Water Resources Planning and Management project (WRPM)
• Socio-economic Development and Benefit Sharing project (SDBS)
• Shared Vision Program Coordination project
• Nile Equatorial Lakes Subsidiary Action Program (NELSAP)
• The Eastern Nile Subsidiary Action Program (ENSAP)

River of Hope and Promise
by Mahmoud Abu Zeid

The River Nile is one of the world’s great rivers. For millennia, this unique waterway has nourished varied livelihoods, an array of ecosystems and a rich diversity of cultures. The river basin is characterized by a variety of landscapes - with high mountains, tropical forests, woodlands, lakes, savannas, wetlands, arid lands and deserts - culminating in an enormous delta on the Mediterranean Sea. It serves as home to world-class environmental assets, such as Lake Victoria (the second largest body of fresh water by area in the world) and the vast wetlands of the Sudd. It also serves as home to an estimated 160 million people within the boundaries of the Basin, while roughly 300 million live within those ten countries.

Generally, rivers and their associated ecosystems and biological diversity provide life support for a large proportion of the world’s population. Worldwide, poor management of land and water resources in many river basins has led to major floods, water shortages, pollution and loss of biodiversity.

Despite the extraordinary natural endowments and rich cultural history of the Nile Basin, its people face considerable challenges. Today, the Basin is characterized by poverty, instability, rapid population growth and environmental degradation. Four of the Nile riparian countries are among the world’s ten poorest, with per capita incomes in the range of $100 to $200 per year. Population is expected to double within the next 25 years, placing additional strain on scarce water and other natural resources. It is interesting to note that only one other river basin - the Danube - is shared by more countries than the Nile, and the transboundary nature of the river poses complex challenges. Yet, the Nile holds significant opportunities for “win-win” development that could enhance food production, energy availability, transportation, industrial development, environmental conservation and other related development activities in the region.

The 1995 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted that as a result of man’s interventions in the biosphere, the climate of the earth will change considerably over the next 100 years, with major consequences for man in human health, agriculture, forests, coastal zones and species, and natural areas. Intimately linked to all these are the changes in the distribution and quality of the earth’s water resources.

One of the early regional projects in the Nile Basin was Hydromet, which was launched in 1967 with the support of the United Nations Development Program, followed by the Technical Cooperation Committee for the Promotion of the Development and Environmental Protection of the Nile Basin, started in 1993 in an effort to focus on a development agenda.

Also in 1993, the first in a series of ten Nile 2002 conferences commenced with the support of Canada. In 1998, recognizing that cooperative development holds the greatest prospects of bringing mutual benefits to the region, all riparian countries, except Eritrea, joined in a dialogue to create a regional partnership to facilitate the common pursuit of sustainable development and management of the Nile waters. The transitional mechanism was officially launched in February 1999 (as NBI).

The shared vision of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) is: “To achieve sustainable socio-economic development through the equitable utilization of, and benefit from, the common Nile Basin water resources.” To translate the shared vision into action, the riparian countries have developed a strategic action program that focuses on two complementary ideas: a shared vision and action on the ground. The ideas are mutually reinforcing. A common vision provides a framework for activities on the ground, and these activities in turn realize the vision. These ideas are being translated into actions through two complementary programs: the basin-wide Shared Vision Program (SVP), to create an “enabling environment” for cooperative action through building trust and skill; and the Subsidiary Action Programs (SAP), to plan and implement investments and activities “on the ground” at the lowest appropriate level, taking into account the benefits from and impacts of these activities in all riparian countries.

The first meeting of the International Consortium for Cooperation on the Nile took place in June 2001, to establish partnerships that will lead to sustainable development and management of the River Nile for the benefit of all. The meeting was a major milestone for the NBI and brought together for the first time Ministers and senior officials from the Nile Basin countries with a broad range of bilateral and multilateral donors and other interested parties, such as civil society, professional organizations, the media and non-governmental organizations. It also offered an avenue for raising and coordinating funding from a variety of sources. As a first step, around $140 million was raised to support both SVP and SAP programs for the Basin.

The River Nile is truly the “river of life” that has revered the region since ancient times. The current regional and international commitments toward joint sustainable development in the Basin provide hope and promises for a better and prosperous future on the Nile.

By Mahmoud Abu Zeid, The Chronicle