2.3 Peace Indicators
2.3.3 Development and Livelihoods Sustenance
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investor priority over other users, and customary users rarely have any formal rights. A report on Mali by IIED (2011, p. 2) found that contracts gave investors more than half of the dry season critical reserve of water while local residents were left out of the negotiating process and their customary rights were ignored. Therefore, “African governments are signing away water rights for decades with insufficient regard for how this will affect millions of local users, including fishing, farming and pastoralist communities” (Hall & Lobina, 2012, p. 6). In other African countries, successful campaigns have forced some governments to back down.
According to Hall and Lobina (2012, p. 8) in Madagascar, local protests forced the government to cancel a deal by South Korean Multi-National Daewoo to physically export 1 % of Faraony River’s flow to Saudi Arabia. It also forced the government to resign.
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Peru cost USD 1 billion to treat. It estimated that USD 100 million could have prevented the epidemic. Adding to the monetary expenses, the value of lost working days, and the lives lost, and the cost-benefit ratio of preventive investments in water and sanitation became colossal.
The United Nations General Assembly argued in its 2004 High-Level Panel Report:
Development and peace are inextricably linked. A more peaceful world is only possible if poor countries are given a real chance to develop. Extreme poverty and infectious diseases threaten many people directly, but they also provide a fertile breeding-ground for other threats, including civil conflict. Even people in rich countries will be more secure if their Governments help poor countries to defeat poverty and disease by meeting the Millennium Development Goals. 17
Isakovic (2001, p. 39) supported the above view and posited that, to understand peace and violence, one needs to take into account basic human needs — for survival, freedom, well- being, and identity. Development aims to promote those needs; violence insults them; peace preserves them.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have also positioned water at the centre of economic development.18 Ait-Kadi, (2016, p. 107) argued that the Water Goal will only be achieved if the other goals are attained, and in turn other SDGs will only be achieved if the Water Goal is attained. Below is an excerpt from SDG6 on water and its eight targets.
SDG6 Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
6.1 By 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all 6.2 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
Achieving the SDGs vision is the obligation of countries, national governments and stakeholders such as civil society and local communities (see Ait-Kadi, 2016, p. 108).
Water is the key to human development. Hope (2005, p. 168) contended that people with poor access to water are often the poorest, hungriest and most vulnerable in the community.
17 United Nations General Assembly High-Level Panel Report, 2004.
18 Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Retrieved from www.un.org>disabilities>documents
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According the UN Human Development Report (2004, p. v), “human development is first and foremost about allowing people to lead the kind of life they choose – and providing them with the tools and opportunities to make those choices”. Spending money on water development provides children with the chance to spend more time in school more productively. Gleick (1996, p. 86) posited that when children spend most of their time fit, they are able to devote more time to learning and also better health increases their cognitive abilities. A study conducted by WHO in 2004 and cited by Sanctuary et al. (2005) revealed that in Jamaica, children posted improvements in the tests of auditory short-term memory and of scanning and retrieval of long-term memory after the reduction of trichuriasis, a water related disease. Using cross-sectional samples from eight countries, Esrey (1996) in Ngure et al. (2014, p. 120) estimated that an improvement in water access was associated with 0.06cm to 0.65cm increases in height for age in children. In a longitudinal survey design by Checkley et al. (2004) in Ngure et al (2014, p.120), Peruvian children at two years of age with the worst conditions for water source, water storage, and sanitation were 1.0 cm shorter than children with the best conditions.
Water resources development is the key to the improvement of rural communities. Gozo (2011, p. 159) acknowledged that the development of water resources improves the quality of lives in rural areas through unlocking the irrigation potential of their respective areas. Accessibility of water dictates how well a human society is. Policies which guarantee equitable access to water for rural people for productive uses contribute to the advancement of their livelihoods obtained from the use of their water. Maathi (2008, p. 26) maintained that a country cannot develop where there is no peace; peace in turn will not prevail if water resources are incompetently managed or put in the hands of a few at the expense of many. Molden (2006, p 7) argued that achieving access to water requires a policy and institutional environment that aligns the incentives that encourage the uptake of new technologies. Water can be made available for agricultural purposes, for example, through effective rain water harvesting and storage for use in drier and more erratic climates. The Food and Agriculture Organization (2005), in Mugagga, and Nabaasa (2016, p. 3), stated that 7% of the arable land in Africa is currently under irrigation. This shows a lack of capacity to harness water resources for the development of communities. Increasing the land under irrigation can ensure uniform and continuous supply of water to the fields throughout the seasons.
Molden (2006, p. 7) posited that employment of water and energy-efficient methods and techniques of irrigation can also ensure agricultural productivity and consequently economic
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growth. Examples of energy and cost-efficient techniques applicable to rural farmers seen first- hand by the researcher in Zimbabwe include drip irrigation, ridge and furrow and the bucket system. In drip irrigation, water is pumped from the source into a reservoir until it is full. The pump is switched off to save energy and water drips by force of gravity into supply laterals, and then into small polythene tubes with tiny nozzles from which water is finally dripped onto plant stations all the time to keep them moist. In ridge and furrow irrigation, a similar technique is used for a greater volume of water used. With ridge and furrow, water is pumped from the source into a reservoir, which is usually a tank. When the tank is full, water moves by gravity and gradient into crop stations by means of defined channels which are mostly furrows; row spaces are kept wet due to osmosis. When the field reaches capacity, the outlet is switched off.
The bucket system is sometimes called overhead irrigation: water is drawn from the water source by means of buckets and applied unto crops by sprinkling lightly until the bed reaches field capacity. No energy is used either in pumping or supply. However, these irrigation techniques are few in proportion to the population of communal farmers in Zimbabwe and therefore have limited impact.
Weinthal et al. (2011, p. 144) argued that if water was supplied in sufficient quantities, there is surety of food security and basic livelihood. The General Assembly of the United Nations drew attention to the importance of water for sustainable development and poverty alleviation by declaring 2003 the International Year of Freshwater.19 In that same year, the Millennium Development Goals targeted reducing by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and sanitation by 2015.20 According to Akhmouch (2012, p. 11), as much as 70% of the world’s water is used for agricultural purposes; therefore efforts to promote global food security and reduce poverty worldwide require successful water policies. Securing water universally is a matter of human investment and an indication of a government willing to deliver other important services. It is also an indication of good governance. Hanjira et al.
(2009, p. 1063) pointed out that investments in farming alone will not eradicate poverty. Public and private investments that increase access to water are essential but may not be enough. They therefore urged governments to improve human capital so as to reform rural practices that may limit water access for the poor and to initiate technological changes. Consequently, improvements in human capital in the form of education and health are needed to ensure that
19 UN General Assembly. (2003). International Year of Freshwater 2003. Retrieved from www.wateryear2003.org
20 United Nations (2003) The Millennium Development Goals. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org>dac
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lack of information or poor health does not limit advances in land productivity. Investments in roads and communications are also needed to augment access to markets necessary to create motivation for improved production of crops and livestock. Investments in these complementary forms of rural infrastructure will raise returns in poverty reduction by investing in farming. Weinthal et al. (2011, p. 144) posited that water apportionment policies, agricultural support programmes, introduction of new techniques and learning, governance, and the national economic framework also dictate the poverty diminishing influence of agriculture.
Kemp et al. (2010), in Khan et al. (2013, p. 94), posited that different developmental activities such as mining, damming and hydro-electric development pose great risk to human access to water. Ashton (2002, p. 236) argued that the continued deficiency of water supplies leads to a necessity to redistribute the valuable resources from less yielding sectors to those that are able to obtain greater returns in proportion to the water used. A mixed method research by Okuku et al. (2016, p. 275) in Kenya revealed that a total of 56% of the respondents observed that flooding occasioned by unexpected release of water from the reservoirs (during reservoir management operations) which led to loss of crops was a negative impact of damming. The other impacts of damming were reported as the emergence of human-wildlife conflicts (hippo and crocodile attacks leading to crop destruction and loss of life) and the emergence of an informal settlement due to inappropriate relocation plans. Damming also altered the Tan River’s natural flow, thus reducing the frequency, extent and duration of floodplain inundation and productivity. It further increased salt intrusion into Ozi village resulting in unfavourable farmland for rice farming. River Tana damming is forcing pastoralists to settle in floodplains, leading to growing incidences of social disorder, civil and ethnic conflict between pastoralists and agriculturalists.
A documentary analysis by Hall and Lobina (2016, pp. 9-10) showed that industrial activities by Coca-Cola in India, led to deterioration in groundwater levels, so that local people, in particular farmers, were left with less water for their own requirements. In Palakkad, Kerala, there were complaints and protests from the local community that the plant was using excessive amounts of groundwater, causing depletion and contamination in local wells. These protests were taken up by the panchayat – local council. The panchayat filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Kerala High Court, which ruled in the panchayat’s favour. The Minister of Water gave an order for the plant to close. In Uttar Pradesh, the Coca-Cola plant depleted groundwater levels so that levels fell by 7.9 metres in 11 years. The Lok Sabiti (people’s committee) held
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protests, with the slogan “coca cola pani chor” (‘Coca-Cola steals water’) and police were called in to arrest protestors. The two examples show the importance of rightly informed and guided water policies, as well as the negative effects of ill-informed policies. The former can turn the situation around and set the world on a better development path.