Ethio-Water Audit

Project: Ethio – Water Audit Project

Acronym: WaRDUIS ( Water Resource Development and Use Information Systems)

Project Lead: Tena Alamirew

Introduction:

Water Audit (Water Resource Development and Use Information System) Project owner is the erstwhile Basin Development Authority now Ministry of Water and Energy. This was signed to in February 2021 and expected to run for 18 months. As per the TOR, the objective of the project is to make inventory of water resource infrastructure and status of their use in the three basins – Abay, Awash, Rift Valley Lakes Basins.

The overall objective of the project (as provided in the TOR) is: to improve information management systems for more equitable growth and efficient water use by collecting water resources data and relative information. The specific objectives include: design the data collection mechanism from the three basins, collect data in hard and soft copy’s, establish mechanisms for regularly updating the data, and link the data to the main basin information systems.

Rationale for the Basin Information Systems Development:

1. The Basin Authorities have been established to serve as the custodians of water resource and ensure that water resources are effectively and efficiently developed and managed to positively impacts economy and society with no permanent damage to the environment.

2. The national water policy of the government prescribes that ‘planning, development and management of water resources shall be based on the principles of IWRM and shall take full cognizance of the cross-cutting nature of water.’

3. For this basin development offices have been established at least for the three re major basins. Like any basin development organisation, these offices expected to undertake the following tasks: basin planning, water allocation, monitoring and regulation, information management, water quality and pollution control, stakeholder participation, economic management, and flood and drought.

4. Water resource planning, development and management without reliable information is near impossible. Cross sectoral coordination and stakeholder communication of information in a way that increases the probability that it will be owned, accepted, valued, and used will be low unless debate is supported with factually correct.

5. It is with this rationale that MoWE has launched two project: Hydrological Information Systems and the Water Audit project. According to FAO (20013), a
Figure 1. Components of a Basin Information systems