Suchergebnisse

This paper analyses groundwater governance within a transfrontier conservation landscape. Given the current heightened interest in groundwater development, it is imperative that more thought be given to how groundwater resources can best be managed in different contexts for multiple uses and users. Transfrontier conservation areas are areas of vast biological diversity whose functioning and ecosystem integrity depends on the availability of water to sustain ecosystems and subsequently derive economic benefit. Further, climate vulnerable rural communities depend on and form an important part of this landscape. The work highlighted in this paper is based on a study conducted in parts of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (TFCA), the largest TFCA in the world. Climate induced challenges such as droughts and general poor land use planning have resulted in threats to long term sustainability of freshwater ecosystems and increased incidences of human-wildlife conflicts over limited water resources. Effective groundwater governance can potentially provide pathways for alleviating these challenges.
Building on the theoretical fundamentals of polycentric governance, this paper analyses the case of the KAZA TFCA in which multiple levels of governance exist. The paper discusses how to achieve coordination and accountability within a shared landscape to foster sustainable use and management of groundwater. Groundwater within a TFCA context has the potential to alleviate human-wildlife conflict over freshwater, support groundwater dependant ecosystems and sustain smallholder agriculture for the rural communities. Understanding this role of groundwater adds to the framing of freshwater governance and conservation efforts within a TFCA and the identification and development of platforms for the integrated management of groundwater. Bringing together freshwater and conservation institutions in a multi-country context towards integrated water resource management is an initial and novel attempt which forms the foundation for achieving optimal governance approaches in the commons.

AbstractThe water–energy–food–ecosystems (WEFE) provide vital resources that are essential to human existence. Exploring synergies and trade-offs in these systems has been of interest in recent years to increase economic gain while sustaining the environment. The Tana-Beles Sub-basin of Ethiopia is challenged by population density, climate change, and ecosystem degradation that requires a WEFE Nexus thinking. To understand the current WEFE nexus interactions in the basin, a systematic review of 102 scientific research articles published from 1991 to 2021 was undertaken. Additionally, the systematic review is complemented by spatial data analysis to identify synergies and trade-offs among the WEFE nexus indicators. The analysis revealed the dominance of food–water–ecosystem interdependencies in WEFE nexus research for the Tana-Beles Sub-basin. This dominance is driven by extensive food production activities, which lead to substantial water abstraction and hydrological alterations to meet the intensive water demands of crop cultivation. Simultaneously, the energy-ecosystem interactions are critical due to excessive biomass utilization that exceeds the biomass production potential of the area. Furthermore, the available vegetation cover of the area is very limited to supplement the growing fuel wood demands, which is exerting extreme land degradation and threatening the ecosystem in the sub-basin. This study identifies gaps in WEFE understanding, highlights specific challenges and opportunities within the basin, and calls for coordinated stakeholder action for sustainable resource management through a Nexus approach.