Regional water resource assessments in the SADC region

Abstract

The paper outlines a proposed study to assess the available water resources of the South African Development Community (SADC) region in a unified way. This is considered essential given the increasing need for integrated (across national boundaries and economic sectors) management of the regions water resources. The proposed assessment is based on the regionalization of rainfall-runoff model parameters (over about 10 000 sub-basins at scales of 100-2500 km2) and modern database storage and retrieval methods and is expected to have a large capacity building component. While the project is ambitious, given the existing capacity within the region, the long-term benefits are considered to be more than worthwhile the effort.