SOUTHERN PROVINCE

HUYE — Members of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) will announce measures to prevent further degradation of water catchments in the Nile basin by the end of this year.

The announcement was made during a two-day meeting of representatives from Burundi, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) held in Butare last week.

The meeting aimed at looking at findings of the first phase of their studies on key environmental issues facing the River Nile basin.

NBI, launched in February 1999, is a regional partnership which countries of the Nile basin have united to pursue a long-term development and management of the Nile waters.

According to participants, the new policies also aim at preventing water pollution due to human activities and stem poverty among residents of riparian countries.

"Should we have good quality output at the end of the year, then we will have contributed to the reduction of the key problems of the Nile basin areas,” said Dr. Hellen Natu, acting regional project manager of the NBI’s Socio-Economic Development and Benefit Sharing project (SDBS).

The SDBS is a group that manages the water and natural resources cluster of NBI.

The water and natural resources cluster is constituted by research institutions from Rwanda, Burundi, and DRC.

The three countries appointed their research institutions to carry out research activities and design both policies against the identified problems and investments programmes to benefit poor people in riparian countries of the river.

"The investment programmes are supposed to help improve lives of the poor,” Dr. Natu said. A majority of countries under the river Nile basin are some of the poorest in the world with per capita income of less than $ 250.

Under the cluster, the National University of Rwanda (NUR), as an institution appointed by the government will conduct study on degradation and management of water catchments of the Kagera and Mara rivers of the basin.

Burundi’s national university will work on the reduction of social and environmental effects caused by tourism development in the region while the DRC will do the same on Bunia and Cyoga rivers.

"Environmental degradation is a concern in all the riparian countries,” said NUR’s Dr. Herman Musahara who coordinates the NBI’s water and natural resources cluster.

"The cost of degradation is very, very high.”
Musahara said that there is need to integrate environment in all the countries’ policies to reduce poverty.

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