Minister: Provision of access to water for productive uses crucial for poverty alleviation

“Access to water for basic domestic uses alone is not sufficient. People also require access to water for small-scale productive uses. Food security still is one of the major points on the agenda of the Government of Ethiopia. Food production needs to be stimulated, particularly at the local level. This can also create a bigger impulse to the economies. The provision of access to water for productive uses is crucial in that.” This is how Ethiopia’s Minister for Water Resources opened the MUS symposium, in a speech read by his advisor Mr. Abera Mekonnen.

Many advantages

Investing in access to water for domestic uses and for production at the same time has many advantages among which:

1. Greater synergies in investments and economies of scale can be obtained by developing services which provide for these needs at the same time.

2. A much greater impact on poverty can be achieved, as the benefits obtained from domestic and productive uses are mutually reinforcing, and allow greater impact on people’s health, income and food-security status

The approach of providing services for multiple uses of water at a local level is therefore of major importance, and we believe that this symposium provides a valuable recognition of this need.

Interest in multiple-use of water is on the rise in Ethiopia

As government agency, we need to enhance our understanding of what kinds of technical and management systems can help to support multiple use, how people can use the resource to improve their lives and how we can integrate our actions in the design and delivery of better services with work in other sectors. Much can be learned from what is already happening in practice. Interest in multiple-use of water is on the rise in Ethiopia. In recent years several organizations working in the Ethiopian water sector have been implementing and upgrading systems that provide multiple uses of water. I believe that in other countries similar experiences exist which can provide relevant lessons for Ethiopia and vice-versa.

Looking at the objectives of this symposium on Multiple-Use Services, I see that you aim to provide a platform for sharing lessons on how to apply this approach, and that you plan to discuss the way forward of this approach. These are very relevant objectives, which I hope provide answers to the questions posed above, so that we can move forward in putting the multiple-use approach into action and into policy. I therefore very much hope that the findings of this meeting can be synthesized and fed into our annual Multi-Stakeholder Forum. In addition, I hope that lessons can be shared widely beyond Ethiopia, such as through the upcoming international WEDC conference that is being held in May of next year, and at the 5th World Water Forum, where policy makers from all over the world meet.