There is no contradiction about it! Afghans are resilient fighters and don’t easily give up on a struggle for something to which they are committed. They indeed pride themselves for having ignominiously defeated major world powers – including the British and Soviets. Written history also bears witness to the fact that Afghans were a “hard nut to crack” during ancient invasions of Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great and others. No doubt those empires collapsed not before long – owing to incessant “liberation attacks” from rag-tag, but highly motivated tribal militias. This historical resilience is in fact behind the growing anxiety within American and NATO barracks, and the sticky campaign against the Taliban guerrillas.
Despite these impressive historical successes at the battlefront, Afghans appear to have conceded, or on are on the verge of conceding an ignominious defeat in a war of survival. Long years of trading rockets and bullets against each other, absence of a credible governance system, rise of warlordism and massive displacements of the population have over time, threatened the livelihoods of the majority poor. These events have triggered a humanitarian disaster characterised by desertification, land degradation, food short shortages, drought, lack of social services, and so on. In particular, the rise of warlordism deprived the central government of enabling power and authority; effectively rendering it too impotent to respond to people’s livelihoods needs, or set up safety nets that would guarantee a decent lifestyle for the population.
Of all the ills associated with Afghanistan wars and lack of governance, environmental degradation stands out in prominence. Indeed, the UNEP Post Conflict Environment Assessment predicted “a future without water,” and warned of dire consequences if action was not taken to arrest the escalating situation. Destruction of forests by warlords and destitute community members; overgrazing by pastoral communities, inappropriate farming methods, lack of a national landuse policy, destructive water access/use regimes – are some of the factors that have contributed to the Afghan water disaster.
Estimates from Ministry of Energy and Water (MoEW) indicate nearly 80 percent of the people in rural areas and 70 percent of those living in cities do not have safe drinking water. Both United Nations and Afghan government have warned that some 2.5 million people face an imminent food crisis due to the water shortage, while a further 6.5 million people are seasonally or chronically food insecure.
Although agriculture is the major water consumer in Afghanistan, years of drought coupled with neglect of irrigation infrastructure have triggered an 81 percent decrease in irrigated land. This is a catastrophic development for a country, whose 85 percent of the population depends on agriculture for their livelihoods. In addition to precipitating crop failures, receding water resources have catalysed cultivation of illegal drought-tolerant crops such as opium poppy and hashishi. Latest (2007) UN figures show poppy cultivation having shot up by over 30% compared with the 2006 production levels – in effect making Afghanistan the leading producer in the world.
Acute shortage of water for both drinking and irrigation has become a serious problem in western and southern provinces of Afghanistan, forcing some families to leave their villages and migrate into urban centres or neighbouring countries. The drought is bad news for pastoralists too, especially the transhumant Kuchis. Most of the shallow wells providing water for human and livestock consumption have run dry and some rivers have no water. Nearly 80 percent of pasture and brush land is quickly being replaced by sandy desert in southern and much of the central provinces. An equally catastrophic transformation is taking place in the northern region, away from collapsing banks of Amu Darya River – where a 100-kilometre stretch of land is turning into sandy desert at a rate of 1 meter per year.
Is the battle for water lost in Afghanistan? Have Afghans, renown for their valour and commitment to wining surrendered at the water battlefront? I would say: if not yet, they are well on the verge doing so! Its not too late though. The resilience of Afghans, which saw them defeat British and the Soviets should no doubt see them win yet again, this historic battle for conservation of their water resources. There are opportunities on which they can build. For instance, the country still has appreciable water resources, estimated at an annual 75 billion cubic metres; 57 billion cubic metres of surface and 18 billion cubic metres of ground water. Current off take is estimated at only 20 billion cubic meters, implying there is a surplus of 55 billion cubic meters of water. Much of the shortage impinging on the population is therefore caused by absence of proper water-resources management and development plans rather than scarcity.
The struggle to win the Afghan water war will therefore need to be fought at the policy, technological and institutional reform front. The need for sustainable water access incentives and regulatory instruments is long overdue. There will be need to improve water extraction and utilisation technologies, with particular emphasis on waste reduction and utility enhancement. Farmers will need support to effectively control water runoff, seasonal flooding, deforestation, desertification and to protect wetlands. Sustainable land management options, especially using the watershed approach could be vital for winning the water war. The Bakiga say that “orabire omubicupa taratiina ebyatikira byenkyeka” (a person who has safely walked over broken glasses does not fear broken calabashes or clay pots). Afghans have fought and won so many wars. Will they cowardise now and concede defeat to the receding water war? Hopefully not, because the cost of such a defeat will without doubt exert unprecedented livelihoods implications on the already impoverished population. There is no shortage of options; rather, commitment – at national, sub national, community and household level will guarantee Afghans another sweet, priceless victory.
Denis Mutabazi
August 2007
28 August 2007
23 August 2007
The Good & Bad of World Bank Grilling at AHI
It was one of those rainy, January 2006 days in Kampala – less than four months after I had joined the World Agroforestry Centre as Programme Officer for its African Highlands Eco-regional Initiative (AHI). I had just finished tucking my files away and with my laptop computer strapped over my shoulder, angrily rambled out of my 1st floor office off Luthuli Avenue.
It hadn’t been quite a good day, having taken a bloddy hell of thorough grilling – along with my colleagues of course, from the World Bank Science Council mission. We had been harassed for “slipping into intellectual slumber” and not doing enough to churn out “International Public Goods (IPGs)” (research papers, working papers, policy briefs and so on) out of the watershed management studies our research teams were conducting in the ecologically fragile highland regions in East and Central Africa. We had also been roasted for having lost not only concentration but also a sense of direction as an Eco-Regional Programme of the CGIAR/World Agroforestry Centre.
The Science Council repeatedly challenged us to demonstrate in emperical terms, to what extent we had achieved our goal of "arresting environmental degradation in fragile highlands of East and Central Africa" to which we inadequately responded. Each time the challenge was posed, Chris Opondo who had led the presentations, would unconfortably drift his gaze from me, to our boss Laura German, to Tilahun Amede, to Tanui Joseph and back to me; hoping to get "reinforcements" and rescueing arguments. Poor Chris, none of us volunteered any appealing ideas so he ended up being crucified much more painfully than the rest of us. Aparently everybody feared crossing the path of the angry Science Council missioners - so we unwillingly gave up Chris Opondo as the sacrificial lamb! Throughout my long integrated conservation and rural development career, I had faced several “hostile” donor evaluation missions, but this particular World Bank Science Council grilling left me physically and emotionally bamboozled.
When I agreed to join AHI of the World Agroforestry Centre in October 2005, I already knew that the institution faced a credibility crisis due to prolonged lack of visibility and programme impact; and a management vacuum to some extent. I however believed that given my intense inclination to impact-oriented project management principles, I would gradually influence an institutional shift in orientation to focus at more programme visibility and relevance to people’s livelihood priorities. Sadly, I could not engineer this envisaged shift as fast as I had hoped, owing to a rigid programme management structure and a restrictive “programme mandate” which placed emphasis on IPGs rather than tangible livelihood outputs.
When the Wold Bank mission arrived, we quite frankly expected some hard talking although not at the magnitude we eventually witnessed. AHI had faced numerous challenges in meeting its targets in the previous two years. Our stakeholders within East and Central Africa were unanimous in their view that “we only hear about AHI but don’t see it;” while farmers with which we worked to “test” watershed management models were increasingly getting disillusioned with our bla –bla “pen and paper” approaches. Donor support for our watershed research programmes was precariously wobbling and this had imposed a severe strain of the institution’s financial base. No body on the AHI team doubted that indeed, we needed to turn over a new chapter, to engage in “business unusual,” and apply “cutting-edge science” to meet our IPG targets, arrest environmental degradation and catalyse livelihood improvements in ecologically fragile highlands of East and Central Africa. The million-dollar question though, was HOW!
In my mind, I was in no doubt as to how we could achieve this. Essentially, we needed to:
1.Mainstream our watershed research activities with development work supported by governments and other non-government players
2.Strengthen the involvement of farmer institutions in identifying their priority watershed research questions
3.Not only to focus on producing IPGs, but also collaborate with and support knowledge, information and technology disseminating institutions to package and scale out our research findings
4.Put more passion in the way we promoted our innovative programmes such as Landcare, which we had hitherto left to run without proper follow up mechanisms, lesson-learning regimes, and institutional capacity building input
5.Collate lessons learnt and feed them into government and private sector agricultural extension support systems
I recall sharing these points with my colleague Chris over a bottle of beer at Rhino Pub (don’t get us wrong – we only wanted something cool after the grilling) and while we agreed that these were loaded suggestions, we pondered over whether the programme structure and senior management would be flexible enough to embrace those suggestions. We resolved that whatever the outcome, we had to present them to the rest of the AHI team for discussion. It’s indeed amazing what the cruel heat of the Science Council grill could do: hearts had gotten soft, cohesion and collective thinking among the team had increased, opposition to livelihood focus had waned. The the team consequently accepted our proposals without ado! We agreed on a roadmap for reforming the African Highlands Eco-Regional Initiative and set out to do what we believed would make a difference.
I would have loved to witness the AHI reforms unfold but I painfully couldn’t resist a call by UNDP in June 2006, to go and serve the battered communities of Afghanistan as their Capacity Building Specialist for Green Afghanistan Initiative. I was at the World Agroforestry Centre for only six month, but I learnt a mountain of lessons worth more than six months. No wonder I have nostalgia for AHI! I hope some body still on the team will loop me sooner, into how the reforms we initiated are going.
Denis Mutabazi
August 2007
It hadn’t been quite a good day, having taken a bloddy hell of thorough grilling – along with my colleagues of course, from the World Bank Science Council mission. We had been harassed for “slipping into intellectual slumber” and not doing enough to churn out “International Public Goods (IPGs)” (research papers, working papers, policy briefs and so on) out of the watershed management studies our research teams were conducting in the ecologically fragile highland regions in East and Central Africa. We had also been roasted for having lost not only concentration but also a sense of direction as an Eco-Regional Programme of the CGIAR/World Agroforestry Centre.
The Science Council repeatedly challenged us to demonstrate in emperical terms, to what extent we had achieved our goal of "arresting environmental degradation in fragile highlands of East and Central Africa" to which we inadequately responded. Each time the challenge was posed, Chris Opondo who had led the presentations, would unconfortably drift his gaze from me, to our boss Laura German, to Tilahun Amede, to Tanui Joseph and back to me; hoping to get "reinforcements" and rescueing arguments. Poor Chris, none of us volunteered any appealing ideas so he ended up being crucified much more painfully than the rest of us. Aparently everybody feared crossing the path of the angry Science Council missioners - so we unwillingly gave up Chris Opondo as the sacrificial lamb! Throughout my long integrated conservation and rural development career, I had faced several “hostile” donor evaluation missions, but this particular World Bank Science Council grilling left me physically and emotionally bamboozled.
When I agreed to join AHI of the World Agroforestry Centre in October 2005, I already knew that the institution faced a credibility crisis due to prolonged lack of visibility and programme impact; and a management vacuum to some extent. I however believed that given my intense inclination to impact-oriented project management principles, I would gradually influence an institutional shift in orientation to focus at more programme visibility and relevance to people’s livelihood priorities. Sadly, I could not engineer this envisaged shift as fast as I had hoped, owing to a rigid programme management structure and a restrictive “programme mandate” which placed emphasis on IPGs rather than tangible livelihood outputs.
When the Wold Bank mission arrived, we quite frankly expected some hard talking although not at the magnitude we eventually witnessed. AHI had faced numerous challenges in meeting its targets in the previous two years. Our stakeholders within East and Central Africa were unanimous in their view that “we only hear about AHI but don’t see it;” while farmers with which we worked to “test” watershed management models were increasingly getting disillusioned with our bla –bla “pen and paper” approaches. Donor support for our watershed research programmes was precariously wobbling and this had imposed a severe strain of the institution’s financial base. No body on the AHI team doubted that indeed, we needed to turn over a new chapter, to engage in “business unusual,” and apply “cutting-edge science” to meet our IPG targets, arrest environmental degradation and catalyse livelihood improvements in ecologically fragile highlands of East and Central Africa. The million-dollar question though, was HOW!
In my mind, I was in no doubt as to how we could achieve this. Essentially, we needed to:
1.Mainstream our watershed research activities with development work supported by governments and other non-government players
2.Strengthen the involvement of farmer institutions in identifying their priority watershed research questions
3.Not only to focus on producing IPGs, but also collaborate with and support knowledge, information and technology disseminating institutions to package and scale out our research findings
4.Put more passion in the way we promoted our innovative programmes such as Landcare, which we had hitherto left to run without proper follow up mechanisms, lesson-learning regimes, and institutional capacity building input
5.Collate lessons learnt and feed them into government and private sector agricultural extension support systems
I recall sharing these points with my colleague Chris over a bottle of beer at Rhino Pub (don’t get us wrong – we only wanted something cool after the grilling) and while we agreed that these were loaded suggestions, we pondered over whether the programme structure and senior management would be flexible enough to embrace those suggestions. We resolved that whatever the outcome, we had to present them to the rest of the AHI team for discussion. It’s indeed amazing what the cruel heat of the Science Council grill could do: hearts had gotten soft, cohesion and collective thinking among the team had increased, opposition to livelihood focus had waned. The the team consequently accepted our proposals without ado! We agreed on a roadmap for reforming the African Highlands Eco-Regional Initiative and set out to do what we believed would make a difference.
I would have loved to witness the AHI reforms unfold but I painfully couldn’t resist a call by UNDP in June 2006, to go and serve the battered communities of Afghanistan as their Capacity Building Specialist for Green Afghanistan Initiative. I was at the World Agroforestry Centre for only six month, but I learnt a mountain of lessons worth more than six months. No wonder I have nostalgia for AHI! I hope some body still on the team will loop me sooner, into how the reforms we initiated are going.
Denis Mutabazi
August 2007
15 August 2007
To the Memory of my Departed Parents; Canon Eldad Masheija (23rd Nov. 2001) & Noreda Masheija (21st Nov. 1997)
The Lyrics of Luther Vandross - A Dance With My Father
----------------------------------------
Back when I was a child
Before life removed all the innocence
My father would lift me high
And dance with my mother and me and then
Spin me around till I fell asleep
Then up the stairs he would carry me
And I knew for sure
I was loved
If I could get another chance
Another walk, another dance with him
I’d play a song that would never, ever end
How I’d love, love, love to dance with my father again
Ooh, ooh
When I and my mother would disagree
To get my way I would run from her to him
He’d make me laugh just to comfort me, yeah, yeah
Then finally make me do just what my mama said
Later that night when I was asleep
He left a dollar under my sheet
Never dreamed that he
Would be gone from me
If I could steal one final glance
One final step, one final dance with him
I’d play a song that would never, ever end
‘Cause I’d love, love, love to dance with my father
again
Sometimes I’d listen outside her door
And I’d hear her, mama cryin’ for him
I pray for her even more than me
I pray for her even more than me
I know I’m prayin’ for much too much
But could You send back the only man she loved
I know You don’t do it usually
But Lord, she’s dyin’ to dance with my father again
Every night I fall asleep
And this is all I ever dream
----------------------------------------
Back when I was a child
Before life removed all the innocence
My father would lift me high
And dance with my mother and me and then
Spin me around till I fell asleep
Then up the stairs he would carry me
And I knew for sure
I was loved
If I could get another chance
Another walk, another dance with him
I’d play a song that would never, ever end
How I’d love, love, love to dance with my father again
Ooh, ooh
When I and my mother would disagree
To get my way I would run from her to him
He’d make me laugh just to comfort me, yeah, yeah
Then finally make me do just what my mama said
Later that night when I was asleep
He left a dollar under my sheet
Never dreamed that he
Would be gone from me
If I could steal one final glance
One final step, one final dance with him
I’d play a song that would never, ever end
‘Cause I’d love, love, love to dance with my father
again
Sometimes I’d listen outside her door
And I’d hear her, mama cryin’ for him
I pray for her even more than me
I pray for her even more than me
I know I’m prayin’ for much too much
But could You send back the only man she loved
I know You don’t do it usually
But Lord, she’s dyin’ to dance with my father again
Every night I fall asleep
And this is all I ever dream