News Article by UN posted on March 02, 2005 at 13:24:45: EST (-5 GMT)

Nile River Basin Countries to Benefit From UN-Aided Water Management
Plan

UN News Service (New York)
March 2, 2005

The 10 countries within the Nile River basin will benefit from better
access to information on the availability, use and development potential
of the Nile resources they share under a new project to improve water
management in the region, the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) announced today.

"The Nile waters bear tremendous potential as a lever for social and
economic development, but at the moment, the inability to jointly plan
water development, reach agreement on equitable sharing of benefits and
attract investment has delayed the use of this resource for the benefit
of the people living in the Nile basin region," FAO's Chief of Water
Resources, Development and Management Service Pasquale Steduto said.

With an average per capita gross domestic product of $400, far below
the African average, the 10 countries - Burundi, the Democratic Republic
of Congo (DRC), Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania
and Uganda - can ill afford further delays in making the most of the
important resource of the world's longest river.

The $5 million project, funded by the Government of Italy and with FAO
assistance, will support basin-wide initiatives to integrate technical
data with demographic, socio-economic and environmental information to
examine how specific policies and projected water use patterns will
affect water resources.

It will develop surveys and case studies on the links between water
management practices and rural livelihoods and food insecurity. Within
this context, a basin-wide survey will be conducted to assess current
and potential water use and water productivity in rain-fed and irrigated
agriculture. A further case study concerns the analysis and improvement
of water productivity through crop management.

The project will be carried out under the umbrella of the Nile Basin
Initiative, a regional partnership launched by Nile riparian states in
1999 to facilitate the common pursuit of sustainable development and
management of the Nile basin, an area of some 3.1 million square
kilometres, around 10 per cent of the African continent.

Earlier work has already produced tangible results, including the
establishment of a trans-boundary hydro-meteorological monitoring
network and national databases containing hydro-meteorological and water
use data, as well as information on land use, land cover and soil type.