Ethiopia: Participatory IWRM planning: - lessons from Berki Catchment

The Berki River originates in the highlands of Tigray (north Ethiopia) and flows to join Giba River, a tributary of the river Tekeze, which ultimately joins the Nile. The Berki watershed is shared by three districts (“Woredas”), namely Atsbi at the upstream and Wukro and Enderta at the downstream. The size of the catchment is about 410 km2. Hydrological conditions and ecosystem of the area are threatened by agricultural activities, fuel wood collection and free animal grazing.

Farmers in the upper Berki catchment use pumps to take water from the river and there was a plan to introduce 100 more pumps which might negatively impact irrigation activities downstream sites. There are already three diversions of streams that irrigate more than 150 ha. Moreover, there is a spring near Berki diversion that is used by the Church for spiritual purposes (holy water).

The full control of the Church who anticipated that the government would develop it to supply water to the Agula town caused a conflict with the Bureau of Water Resources of the Tigray Regional State. Moreover, a conflict between the downstream traditional irrigation water users and upstream Laelay Agula diversion water users, resulted in the destruction of the diversion weir by the downstream users.

This illustrates that water is the scarcest resource in the Berki basin and a cause of conflicts among up and downstream communities; the administrative authorities; and local businesses and NGOs. The root cause of the complex challenge is a low level of IWRM awareness and the lack of institutional framework for stakeholders’ participation.

A combination of both water supply and demand management was found to be the appropriate approach to address the grave social and economic problems of the Berki basin. The project resulted in development and adoption of the Berki Basin IWRM Plan with the concrete measures ranging from legal, institutional, financial to technical measures.

Value added of the participatory approach is that communities are now better aware of the water resources management issues, and they understand implications of their practices on others.

The existence of the partnerships also challenges long-held ideas and practices entrenched in linear planning and single agency responsibility in the region and at the watershed level. The establishment of multi-stakeholder forums at the regional, Berki and wereda levels has given the opportunity for interaction among various stakeholders. This is also providing an opportunity to lay a framework for integrating/coordinating activities by various sectors/stakeholders.

As a result of the establishment of the multi-stakeholder platforms and the various stakeholders’ consultations, water-related disputes and conflicts have been minimized. There is now recognition of the importance of the multi-stakeholder partnerships at the local level and working together is viewed as a way to resolve water issues at the local level. For example, two key conflicts in the catchment were resolved without any legal or administrative intervention.

Although most stakeholders at federal and regional levels do recognize the difficulty in harmonizing administrative and hydrological boundaries, in Berki the catchment is considered a management unit despite the administrative boundaries. An integrated watershed development and management plan has already been prepared for Berki, and NGOs and government bodies have committed to implement the plan as part of their regular development programme within the partnership framework.