WATER FOR GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

WATER FOR GROWTH AND POVERTY ALLEVIATION

Introduction

3. Ethiopia

Ethiopia is located in East Africa and constitutes a major portion of the Horn of Africa. Its terrain consists mostly of a huge central plateau and surrounding lowland plains, producing three climatic zones: tropical in the south and southwest, cold to temperate in the highlands and arid to semi-arid in the northeastern and southeastern lowlands. As a result, the amount of rainfall and surface run off is highly variable and depends on location and altitude.

Ethiopia is a country of great geographical diversity. Altitude ranges from 110 mbsl (meters below sea level) to 4620 masl (meters above sea level) while mean annual temperatures range from about 0^oC in the highlands to about 40^oC in the lowlands. Half of the Ethiopian population live at around 2,200 metres above mean sea level (masl), in the areas with cooler temperatures, higher rainfall and fewer instances of malaria. Another 40 percent lives between 1,400 and 2,200 masl. The remaining population lives at altitudes below 1,400 masl. Thus, Ethiopia’s population is also unevenly distributed, with nearly 80 percent of the inhabitants living in only 37 percent of the total area of the country. In general, about 85 percent of the people are living in the highland areas where mixed agriculture is the main practice. The larger proportion of the country (about 57 percent) is lowland occupied by about 15 percent of the population and pastoralism is the main activity of the people.

The rainfall of the country is associated with high spatial and temporal variability. The mean annual rainfall in the southwestern highlands is over 2500 mm while it is less than 100 mm in the eastern lowlands. About 90 percent of the annual runoff goes to the rivers that flow into neighbouring countries and that is why Ethiopia is known as the “water tower” of North-eastern Africa. On the aggregate the surface water potential amounts to over 110 billion cubic meters per year. In fact, four basins located on the western part of the country contribute 83 percent of the national surface water potential, while other areas produce very low surface runoff.

Ethiopia has nine major rivers and twelve big lakes. Lake Tana, for example, in the north is the source of the Blue Nile. However, apart from the big rivers and major tributaries, there is hardly any perennial flow in areas below 1,500 m. While the country’s annual renewable freshwater potential is 122 billion cubic meters, only 3 percent of this amount remains in the country. It is estimated that 54.4 billion cubic meters of surface runoff and 2.6 billion cubic meters of groundwater can be developed for utilization. Currently less than 5 percent of surface water potential is used for consumptive purposes.

Water for agriculture

On average, it takes about 3,000 liters of water per person to produce our daily intake of food (Table 1). The water absorbed by plants is used to raise nutrients from the soil, at which point the water is released into the air through transpiration. By far, most of the water used by crops is derived from rainfed soil moisture. Irrigation provides only about 10 percent of agricultural water but has a significantly strategic role: it supplements rainfall where soil moisture is insufficient to reliably satisfy the needs of the crops. It is especially important in areas vulnerable to excessive climatic variability or where multiple cropping requires the provision of water outside the rainy season. By ensuring water supply, irrigation guarantees crop production and encourages farmers to invest in more productive agriculture. However, although it represents only a marginal part of the water used in agriculture, irrigation is, by a substantial margin, the largest consumptive user of the freshwater resources.

During the second half of the twentieth century, the global food system responded to a twofold increase in the world’s population by more than doubling food production. During the same period, the group of developing countries increased per capita food consumption by 30 percent and nutritional situations improved accordingly. In addition, agriculture continued producing non-food crops, including cotton, rubber, beverage crops and industrial oils.

Drinking water intake typically varies between 2 and 3 litres per person per day (liters/ person /day). In addition, there are domestic water requirements for personal and household hygiene and related requirements, which are quantified at 30 to 300 liters/person/day, according to standard of living and quality of water supply. Producing food requires much more water: from 2,000 to 5,000 liters/person/day, depending on diet and climate differences and the efficiency of local food production systems. Most of the water used to produce food or other crops comes from rain that is stored in the soil, where it is captured by crop roots. Irrigation is practiced in places and times where rainwater is insufficient for adequately supplying water to crops.

Agriculture is the most water-demanding sector, in addition to being a major source of employment and a major contributor of the national gross domestic product (GDP) of many of our case study partners in Africa. Agriculture in Ethiopia, for example, provides 86 percent of employment and generates 57 percent of its GDP. However, the industrial sector is also becoming increasingly important.

Ethiopia is largely dependent on the agricultural sector, which provides 86 percent of the country’s employment and 57 percent of its GDP. Rainfed crop cultivation is the principal activity and is practised over an area of 27.9 million hectares (ha). Rain-fed agriculture is currently practiced on about 99 percent of the cultivated land. Most potential rainfed agriculture cropland is already under cultivation. Frequent and severe droughts cause serious decreases in the incomes of rural inhabitants who tend to rely heavily on agriculture.

At present, only less than 5 percent of the 3.7 million hectares irrigation potential has been developed. To make matters worse, projected large- and medium-scale irrigation schemes will likely do little to secure the food supply for the rapidly growing population.

Water for domestic purposes and sanitation

The status of water and sanitation infrastructure is very poor in Ethiopia: only 10 percent of Ethiopians have access to proper sanitation facilities and 31 percent to safe water. Service coverage is considerably higher in urban areas than in rural areas (74 percent and 23 percent respectively). Furthermore, almost 25 percent of water installations in rural areas are not functional at any given time. Central Statistic Authority (CSA) results from 1998 showed that 64 percent of people living in rural areas had to fetch water from a source within a distance of 1 km. The situation gets worse during dry periods, as water carriers have to walk longer distances for even smaller quantities of lower quality water. Accordingly, the incidences of diseases related to unsafe water supply and inadequate sanitation are very high. Women and girls are particularly vulnerable to water-borne and water-related diseases as they more frequently come into contact with contaminated water (they are usually responsible for fetching water for the family).

Water for energy

Only an estimated 2 percent of Ethiopia’s hydropower potential of 160 thousand GWh/yr has been utilized. Electricity and petroleum covers 5 percent of the total energy supply and the percentage of the population with access to electricity is low, currently less than 6 percent. The main source of energy production in Ethiopia is biomass. About 95 percent the energy supply comes from fuel wood, dung and crop residues. The wood consumption levels exceed annual forestry yields. The use of agricultural residues and dung as fuel instead of fertilizer leads to diminishing soil fertility, and in turn, lower agricultural productivity and food security problems. At present, the contribution of hydropower to annual energy production is approximately 1 percent. Household consumption accounts for 88 percent of total energy consumption, while industry accounts for 5 percent. As Ethiopia’s economy depends almost entirely on subsistence agriculture, the need for electricity has been quite low. However, this situation is expected to be changing as urbanization and industrialization increase energy demands.

Drought risk management

Drought is a recurrent natural feature, which results from the lack deficit of rainfall over an extended period of time. It is a temporary deviation of rainfall and moisture conditions from the mean, thus differing from aridity and seasonal aridity. Depending on the likely impact, the phenomenon can be categorized in several ways, such as meteorological, hydrological and agricultural. Storage capacity of the soils and underground aquifers may delay the effects of absence of rainfall. However, if the lack of rainfall continues, these storage possibilities will be exhausted. The spatial extent of drought is much greater than for any other hazard, and is not limited to basin or political boundaries. Its impact is difficult to quantify and accumulates over years and varies according to the society and the regions concerned. Long lasting droughts lead to degradation of soils, plant and animal habitats and social disruption.

Droughts are also a part of the water cycle and take place with varying frequency and severity. In Ethiopia, there have been about thirty major drought episodes over the past nine centuries, thirteen of which were severe at the national scale and put millions of Ethiopians in urgent need for basic food assistance.

During the past recent years, three-quarters of the droughts in the world have occurred in Africa. It is a condition of life for many residents of Africa, especially those of the Greater Horn region. Countries in reporting the highest frequency of drought include Ethiopia and Kenya. Over the past three decades, while the number of extreme natural events encountered by developed and developing countries has roughly been the same, three-quarters of the disasters and 99 percent of the human casualties have been in developing countries. In Ethiopia, this has meant an increase in economic losses and donor fatigue.

The process by which a country learns to minimize the impact of natural hazard events is developed incrementally over time. Like other learning processes, the rate of improvement can be accelerated by taking advantage of the know-how and best practice techniques developed elsewhere and by adapting the methods used in other countries. For example, over the last half century, developing countries such as India and China have made great progress in drought mitigation.

The most common natural disaster in Ethiopia is drought. Drought is the most deadly natural disaster. Drought is a frequent natural disaster in Ethiopia. Recent observations have shown that the frequency of droughts have increased over the last few decades. There have been about thirty major drought episodes over the past nine centuries. Of these drought episodes, thirteen were very severe at the national level. Table 2 shows the number of people affected by droughts and the population which required basic food assistance between 1990 and 2004.

Growth of Ethiopia is hostage to hydrology

In Ethiopia, climate seasonality, variability and/or rainfall extremes are often marked, while the capacity, institutions and infrastructure needed to manage and mitigate these potentially major challenges are generally inadequate. Catastrophic hydrological events such as droughts and floods can have dramatic social and economic impacts with tragic losses of life, displacement and declines economy. Such situations seriously undermine economy-wide investment and hence growth, even in years of good rainfall. In Ethiopia, climate variability is relatively high, water-related investments are low. In such a situation, a strong correlation between rainfall variability and GDP performance has been observed (Brown and Lall, 2006). In turn, since the economic performance is closely linked to rainfall and runoff characteristics, growth becomes hostage to hydrology.

In Ethiopia, the current economic cost of hydrological variability is estimated at over one-third of the nation’s average annual growth potential, and these diminished rates are compounded over time. Yet, with much greater hydrological variability than North America (Table 3), Ethiopia has less than 1% of the artificial water storage capacity per capita to manage that variability (World Bank, 2006). Clearly, substantial investments in infrastructure and in institutions are essential to meet this challenge.

Economy-wide models that incorporate hydrological variability in Ethiopia show that projections of average annual GDP growth rates drop by as much as 38 percent as a consequence of this variability (World Bank, 2006) In Ethiopia, so sensitive is economic growth to hydrological variability that even a single drought event within a twelve-year period (the historical average is every 3-5 years) will diminish average growth rates across the entire 12-year period by 10 percent. The effects of hydrological variability emanate from the direct impacts of rainfall on agricultural output.

Lessons from developed countries

Ethiopia has to learn from past experiences of the currently developed countries. In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, all industrialized countries invested heavily in hydraulic infrastructure and institutions to facilitate their remarkable economic growth. In all industrial countries, the flows of almost all major rivers are regulated and managed, storing water for multiple uses, reducing peak flows, increasing low flows and protecting water quality, thus reducing the risk of water-related shocks and damage, increasing the reliability of water services for production, and reducing other negative impacts, such as disease. Early and large investments have been made in bulk water infrastructure and in the human capacity required to operate and maintain these investments. These investments in institutions and hydraulic infrastructure were clearly a pre-condition to harnessing hydrology for sustained and broad-based growth and development.

There is are-emerging consensus that water resources development and management are essential to generate wealth, mitigate risk, and alleviate poverty; that poverty demands that many developing countries will need to make large investments in water infrastructure at all levels; and that this development must be undertaken building on the lessons of experience, with much greater attention to institutional development, to the environment and to more equitable sharing of benefits and costs. A responsible path is particularly important in water development because, given the longevity of water infrastructure, many of these decisions will have long-term consequences. Furthermore many decisions - both decisions to act and not to act - may have irreversible consequences.

Almost all developed countries have followed a broadly similar path of early and extensive investment in water resources institutions and infrastructure to achieve water security and underpin growth. In many industrial countries, often following periods of significant economic growth, there tends to be a great deal of emphasis on re-operation or re-engineering of existing infrastructure systems to optimize performance and to meet evolving environmental and social priorities. Today, most wealthy countries invest almost exclusively in improving water system operations and in institutional strengthening.

Many developing countries, on the other hand, find their infrastructure stocks to be inadequate and therefore see an overarching imperative to invest in new water infrastructure in an attempt to reduce the destructive costs and increase the productive value of water in their economies. Achieving basic water security, harnessing the productive potential of water and limiting its destructive impacts, has been a constant struggle. Water resources development and management remain at the heart of the struggle for growth, sustainable development and poverty reduction. This has been the case in all industrial countries, most of which invested early and heavily in water infrastructure, institutions and management capacity. It remains the case in Ethiopia as well as many developing countries today, where investments in water development and management remain an urgent priority.

Combating natural variability

In Ethiopia, most of the river flows occur during short but intense rainy seasons. This imposes a serious problem for those who plan to use river flows for domestic use, perennial crops or hydropower, the analysis totally depends on the characteristics of lowflows particularly magnitude and reliability levels. In the northern part, for example, average flow that is equaled or exceeded for 99 percent of the time with reliability level of 80, 90 and 95 percent reliability levels are about 0.7, 0.4 and 0.2 percent respectively, of the mean flow (Admasu, 1986). This amount is extremely low compared to the potential that the rivers have (see Figures 1 and 2). It is evident that if it is desired to use make use of the river to a significant level storage facilities must be provided. Dealing with variability in water runoff has to lead to storing water so that adequate volumes would be available to match the needs and demands of the users.

The construction of dams to create reservoirs should come as response to the growing demands for water to provide irrigation, hydropower, potable supplies, fishing and recreation, as well as to lower the impacts and risks to our well-being from high-intensity events such as droughts and floods. These facilities collect natural runoff, frequently quite variable in its location, duration and magnitude, and store it so that its availability is more constant and reliable.

In the highlands, there are many natural sites convenient to create large reservoirs by building small to medium height dams with relatively low costs. The most important advantage of these reservoirs is their relatively low cost per unit volume of utilizable water for irrigation, hydropower and other purposes Once the storage facility is created somewhere at upstream highland, the water can be used at different downstream sites. In general, intensified degradation of forests and soils is becoming a major concern that requires a special focus of creating large-reservoirs in the highlands that could intensify hydro-electric production as an alternative energy source at affordable low cost and irrigated agriculture in order to make use of moisture-deficit lands for crop production.

Water storage is a classic way to mitigate water variability - one that must be incorporated in development programs as a risk mitigation measure. The most obvious way of managing flood and water scarcity is to develop physical infrastructures to increase water storage capacity in the region. However, due to the high level of investment required, the development of these structures has been grossly inadequate. Per capita water storage capacity in North America is about 6,150 cubic meters while in Africa it ranges from 746 cubic meters in South Africa to 34 cubic meters in Ethiopia (Table 3). Per capita water storage of North America and Australia is about 157 and 124 times that of Ethiopia implying that Ethiopia’s condition is much below the desirable situation. If Ethiopia has to manage natural risks, eradicate poverty and attain sustainable growth it is obvious that it must invest adequately in water infrastructure.

Conclusions and recommendations

In conclusion, if Ethiopia makes building large reservoirs in the highland areas a political and financial priority, it would avert the current food and energy crisis and then meet the growing demand for food and energy. This approach will have a significant contribution to alleviate poverty and sustain economic growth. Irrigated agriculture can provide employment to millions of poor farmers where other opportunities for work are lacking.

The lesson how developed countries have dealt with hydrological vulnerability, and how they have used strategic investments in water infrastructure to reduce risk, alleviate poverty and catalyze growth need to be thoroughly considered. Water resources development and management remain at the heart of the struggle for growth, sustainable development and poverty reduction. This has been the case in all industrial countries, most of which invested early and heavily in water infrastructure, institutions and management capacity. It remains the case in Ethiopia as well as many developing countries today, where investments in water development and management remain an urgent priority.

Tables

Table 1: Virtual water content of selected products

Product		Litres of water per kilo of crop
Wheat		1,150
Rice		2,656
Maize		450
Potatoes		160
Soyabeans		2,300
Beef		15,977
Pork		5,906
Poultry		2,828
Eggs		4,657
Milk		865
Cheese		5,288
	Source: Adapted from Hoekstra, 2003.

Table 2: Number of people affected by recent droughts

Year

Population

Affected

Food assistance requirements

(number of people)

1990 3,429,900 374,400

1991 1,850,000 838,974

1992 5,228,530 1,288,737

1993 1,644,040 739,280

1994 889,000 577,586

1995 3,994,000 492,460

1996 3,153,000 253,118

1997 1,932,000 199,846

1998 5,820,415 572,834

1999 2,157,080 1,138,994

2000 7,732,335 836,800

2001 6,242,300 639,246

2002 5,181,700 557,204

2003 14,490,318 1,461,679

2004 9,369,702 964,690

Source: Adapted from UNWWDR, 2006.

Note: Additional data obtained from other sources regarding drought-affected population in 1985 and 1986 were 7 and 6.14 million, respectively.

Table 3: Per Capita Reservoir Storage (as of 2003)

Country/Region	*(m³/capta)*	*Ratio*

Ethiopia	38	1
South Africa

Submitted to the ETHIOPIAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION

Abstract