Implementing Integrated Water Resource and Wastewater Management in Atlantic and Indian Ocean SIDS

The constraints to effective water resource management can be summarised generally as an absence of effective strategy and policy; the absence of workable and intersectoral legislative and institutional mechanisms, inadequate financial sustainability; absence of a strategy to deal with extreme or chronic events that threaten the resources (e.g. flooding, drought, saltwater intrusion); lack of access to or awareness of appropriate and cost-effective technologies and methodologies; inadequate capacity at the institutional and individual level; an imbalance between long-term planning for development and that for resource and environmental sustainability; short-term strategies for the prioritisation of water needs (tourism and agriculture); and inadequate information to support sustainable policy-making and management strategies. If these constraints and barriers are not addressed, the long-term implications will be a deterioration in water quality, access and availability (along with reduced environmental quality); a failure of coastal and watershed ecosystem functions (including associated biodiversity and natural habitat losses); overall land degradation; increased LBS pollution to the IW environment; and an overall deterioration in human welfare within the SIDS. This Concept Paper proposes the development of a Full GEF Project in partnership between UNEP and UNDP to help African SIDS to: (a) address water-related surface and groundwater supply constraints that the SIDS face; (b) remove barriers to progress through development of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) mechanisms and Water Use Efficiency strategies consistent with WSSD; (c) support policy and legislative reforms as well as institutional and human resource capacity building; (d) adopt an integrated and participatory management approach; (e) adopt strategies to deal with extreme and chronic events and to consider more appropriate resource valuation and pricing policies. As part of the achievement of its Objectives, the Project will identify and implement a series of IWRM demonstrations within each of the SIDS that will provide real, on-the-ground solutions to common problems, and which can be transferred and replicated throughout the 6 SIDS, and ideally throughout other SIDS on a global basis, as appropriate.