UNEP and the Government of Uganda just sponsored a two day conference here in Kampala on "Greening Water Law in Africa". My supervisor at Makerere (currently on sabbatical with the Nile Basin Initiative in Addis ababa) has been here the last half week for this conference and got me in. I was probably the youngest person there and definitely the one with the least expertise on African water issues. But, I'm thinking about focusing my research here on transboundary protected areas (or peace parks) for transboundary watershed conservation and looking at issues like community conservation (community-based watershed management committees like what we're trying to do in Honduras-Nicaragua), water and peacebuilding (as an alternative to water and conflict) and transboundary collaborative environmental governance frameworks for dealing with environmental change and insecurity (including socio-political instabilities) with an eye towards how community-level transboundary collaborative conservation can strengthen resilience to environmental change, socio-political insecurity and armed conflict. So, I was hoping that this conference would provide some insights that would stimulate some paper ideas.
It was definitely an interesting conference and I met many people who will be very helpful resources for my research here in Uganda. One of the women I cited in my thesis in the case study on the Central Albertine Rift Transfrontier Protected Area Network, which is my research focus area here, and at least a few others are environmental lawyers working in water and environmental issues across Afrca. I even met the environmental legal counsel to the Government of the Union of Comoros, the Government I used to work for at their UN Permanent Mission in NY. Hassan and I took a couple photos together and I have emailed them back to the Ambassador and my other supervisors there; I just wish I could see the surprise on their faces when they discover that we have met here in Kampala of all places. Another Comorian! I was so excited. Hassan even gave a great speech on the special plight of SIDS - how they have some great environmental laws, but they can't enforce them because they can't offer their people any other alternatives. For example, if they can't remove sand from the beaches to build their homes....what do they use? If they can't cut the few trees on the islands for firewood....what do they use? If the water surrounding their islands and flowing through their rivers is not potable....what do they use? Answer to that one is....they import from Tanzania. Can you imagine....importing water from a nation with its own water problems? How long can we depend on that? How much worse will it get with climate change?
One of the purposes of this conference that I really enjoyed is the link that it was trying to make between environmental conservation and water management. Water laws have typically treated water as a commodity or a public good, something for human use and consumption, industrialization and economic growth. As with all natural resources, they forget that it is degradable and in many ways diminishable. We forget that other Earthlings and the environment itself need water too in order to continue providing us with the environmental goods and services that we rely on. Through our water laws, we have tried to sort out how to allocate water resources for humans - riparian users, first-come-first-serve users, industrial uses, agricultural uses, etc. - following a purely anthropocentric paradigm. But we have forgotten the needs of other living organisms and Earth systems and our water and other natural resources are dwindling and degrading as result.
They say one should not bite the hand that feeds it....and yet when it comes to the environment, it's somehow too abstract for us to understand that the environment is the hand that feeds us. We deteriorate it, despoil it, diminish it, defile it, destroy it....and for what ends? Some economic or material gain for the few at the exploitation and poverty of the vast majority, not to mention the health detriment of all? Global well-being is on the decline, global economies...not much better. I'm failing to see the pros to all the cons.
As this conference's title argues, water laws need to be "greened". Ecological considerations must be figured in to legal frameworks for water management so that this essential resource for all life on Earth is sustainable in quality and quantity today and into the future. Brilliant, this is exactly what we need.
But there was one thing that was missing. The conference participants spoke so much about water conflicts, water scarcity, water insecurity.....and yet no one mentioned peace. That is, not until the last hour or so of the conference when I felt that it was time the quiet inexperienced young muzungu should speak. With surprise written across many faces, I took the mic and said that I think we should consider the issue of water and peace. We understand all the elements of water issues that contribute to non-peace, but how do we transform that? As the Rio Declaration notes, there can't be conservation and sustainable development without peace.
Rio Declaration Principle 24:
Warfare is inherently destructive of sustainable development. States shall therefore respect international law providing protection for the environment in times of armed conflict and cooperate in its further development, as necessary.
Rio Declaration Principle 25:
Peace, development and environmental protection are interdependent and indivisible.
To me, it seems so straightforward and obvious. To the conference members, I was an alien. Why was I talking about something as abstract as peace in a meeting of policymakers and water experts trying to figure out tangible ways to make water laws more green? I don't know, am I so far off? I hope not. And if I'm not, then I can see that whatever research I do here will have to address some of these seemingly ambiguous links so that even the experts will not be confused.
I'm currently thinking three words: gorillas, water and peace. I think that's what my research here will be about.
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