The world water and sanitation community will meet in Senegal, from March 21 to 26, for the 9th edition of the World Water Forum on an evocative theme: “Water security for peace and sustainable development”.
This forum, organized every three years by the World Water Council, is the largest international event on water. It brings together participants from all levels and in all fields, including politics and academia. Civil society and the private sector are also represented, and in a few years the number of participants has increased from a few hundred to several tens of thousands of representatives.
This is the first time that the World Water Forum has been organized in a country in sub-Saharan Africa. “Dakar is really the city of all extremes” explains Emma Haziza. Since the end of the 1960s, Senegal has been regularly subjected to periods of intense drought. A phenomenon that is accentuated with global warming.
At the same time, Dakar is also a city that is regularly confronted with major floods, particularly in the coastal zone, because the water infiltrates more and more into the soil and in a sustainable manner.“In fact Dakar is one of the most vulnerable places on the planet”, adds the hydrologist. Africa does not lack water, it lacks distribution and sanitation infrastructure. All regions of the country are concerned, both urban and rural areas.
Cities are subject to what is known as an “urban heat island”. Each time the temperature rises, the lack of water and the drought are accentuated and the cities find themselves with drinking water supply problems. Rural areas are also affected. “In the countryside, we observe significant phenomena of soil pollution, in which there is no more organic matter, no more microbiota, which leads to energy and food problems”, continues Emma Haziza.
And to conclude: “Given the demographic forecasts of African countries, we realize that in the future, we will have more and more thirsty people, but also hungry people”.
And the population of the African continent is expected to double by 2050. One of the priorities today is to work on improving water quality because “when there is a problem of quantity, it is absolutely necessary that the quality is there”, explains the water specialist. It is absolutely necessary to find a solution for the management of waste and pollution at the origin of most water-related diseases.
Diseases that cause many deaths each year, especially children. According to UNICEF figures, 500 children die every day in sub-Saharan African countries due to lack of safe water and poor sanitation. And what is true in Africa is also a reality in India, where we dig deeper and deeper into the groundwater, and where we reach very high levels of cyanide, which directly contaminates the population.
In sub-Saharan Africa, 70% of the inhabitants are not connected to any network, which means that all discharges go into nature, causing immediate and long-term pollution of natural environments. “VSUnderstanding the water problem means understanding that there is an economic problem, but also an energy, food and health problem”.
“Those who will have power tomorrow will be those who will have water reserves and who will have the means to defend them in order to conserve them.”
Emma Haziza, hydrologistat franceinfo
One of the geopolitical issues of water is the coordinated management of international water basins. The Senegal River, for example, crosses Guinea, Mali and Senegal, which means “water sharing”! A regular source of conflict and traffic as well.
Emma Haziza is however more measured. “Contrary to what one might think, we have very little water warfare, strictly speaking”, she says. The hydrologist believes that we mainly observe conflicts that are settled by cooperation between the different countries, the problem is that this cooperation always benefits the strongest! And according to her, the strongest is not necessarily the one who has water on his territory, but the one who has the military reserves to intimidate the other.