Building climate-resilience into basin water management
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Start date: 1 March, 2019 End date: 28 February, 2025 Project type: Research projects in countries with extended development cooperation (earlier Window 1) Project code: 18-13-GHA Countries: Ghana Thematic areas: Aquatic environment and resources, Climate change, Water management and sanitation, Lead institution: Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Ghana Partner institutions: Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), Denmark Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet), Ghana Hydrological Services Department (HSD), Ghana Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana SIRCOOL Mineral Water Company Limited, Ghana Aarhus University (AU), Denmark Central Queensland University (CQU), Australia Project website: go to website (the site might be inactive) Project coordinator: Emmanuel Obuobie Total grant: 11,998,167 DKKProject summary
Anthropogenic activities including illegal and uncontrolled mining and logging have seriously degraded the landscapes of many river basins in West Africa posing significant challenges to sustainable water resources management (WRM). Climate change (CC) is projected to impose additional stress on the water resources of these basins. The Pra (23,200 km2, 6.2 million people) and Densu (2,600 km2, 2.5 million people) are 2 river basins of high economic importance to Ghana that also face the above problems. They are the main sources of domestic water supply for major cities such as Koforidua (1.7 million people) and Accra (40% of a population of 3.2 million) and contribute substantially to the livelihoods of basin dwellers via irrigated agriculture and bottled water production. Both basins have existing WRM plans but new ones are required soon. These can benefit from a more robust climate change impact analysis using the newest IPCC scenarios. Existing impact studies on West African basins have not focused on a fully integrated analysis of the consequences of CC, LULC changes, and changes in the socio-economic and political developments.
This study proposes an interdisciplinary and cross disciplinary approach that considers WRM in two key river basins in Ghana in an integrated manner. The systems approach integrates CC, Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) and LULC change scenarios, water supply sources, quantities and quality, and competing demands (industrial, irrigation, livestock, municipal, ecosystems etc.) with analysis of current and projected future water uses, water infrastructure portfolios, existing natural water infrastructure in the basins, indigenous knowledge in WRM and water governance in the impact analysis. The generated trade-offs in WRM decisions and the developed stakeholder framework for basin WRM ensures that the study approach also supports and facilitates the much desired stakeholder engagement in sustainable WRM in river basins.
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