Country: Uganda
Closing date: 29 Aug 2018
1. Background
Since its launch in 1999, the Nile Basin Initiative has had a co-ordination role addressing, predominately, surface waters. The current Nile -Sec Five-year Strategic Plan (2012-2017) includes the issues of understanding, protecting and identifying sustainable socio-economic exploitation opportunities for groundwater. The NBI has prepared a 10-year Strategy 2017-2027 that identifies 6 strategic objectives which cover areas of sustainable use, monitoring and protection of groundwater resources. One of the key strategic directions proposed is enhancing conjunctive use of groundwater and surface water, among others. In this regard, the proposed project is aligned and expected to support the operationalization of the 10-year strategy and the 5-year strategic plan of NBI.
In the countries that will be covered by the project, each of the countries regard groundwater as an insufficiently understood asset that can contribute to climate resilience to droughts as a supplement to surface waters. The importance is reflected in the significant populations that are dependent on groundwater in many parts of the basin (for example, 80% of the rural population in Ethiopia and 36 million inhabitants in Uganda; 86% of safe drinking water supply for rural areas of Rwanda).
The regional and national importance of groundwater is further emphasized by the lack of knowledge, at all levels of society, about the extent, problems and solutions facing groundwater resources. There is a clear perception that groundwater are under threat from unsustainable exploitation, potential climate change (affecting aquifer levels, recharge and changes in groundwater regimes); pollution (urban pollution and issues associated with high fluorides or salinization from); impacts of change of quantity and quality on dependent ecosystems; impact of groundwater on surface water; buffering of floods and droughts; etc.
The root causes (other than those related to natural/climate change causes) are linked to lack of knowledge/understanding on aquifers and their extent (including the availability and inter-connection between groundwater bodies or between groundwater and surface waters); poor or non-existing policies relating to groundwater (and the differences/incompatibility of policies between countries); poor management practices that allow pollution (domestic, agriculture and industrial) or over exploitation to occur with inadequate enforcement controls to prevent, and; inadequate or insufficient monitoring systems, in some cases. These causes are made worse by an overall lack of infrastructure that would reduce the impact of wastewaters. Addressing these root causes will improve resilience to hydrological variability by improving (ideally, optimizing) the balance between surface and groundwater use. Further, lack of a governance regime for groundwater resources is a further impediment to a sustainable and cooperative management and utilization of transboundary aquifers. The Nile Basin Initiative, the only regional platform that brings together the Nile riparian states, is in its initial stage of integrating groundwater issues into its largely surface water focussed programs. As the first project focusing on groundwater, the focus of the project is on selected aquifers and sub-basins. The methodology and successful pilots will inform NBI’s work program for scaling up the measures to wider scale in selected sub-basins.
Apart from the inadequacy of financial resources available to address the root causes, significant barriers include: policy differences between countries or different administrative jurisdictions in the same aquifer system; lack of appropriate policies, legislation and management institutions; lack of capacity; low public awareness; overall lack of knowledge on aquifer systems and their interaction including with surface waters. Thus, the main drivers for such water management reform at both the national and sub-basin levels include (i) the need to meet supply/demand imbalances for the future; (ii) water quality deterioration and associated health and environmental risks; and (iii) weak service delivery, reliability, and transparency and associated quantity and quality measurements along with financial sustainability and cost recovery issues.
All Nile Basin countries do not share one aquifer rather different aquifers underlying watersheds in the Nile Basin are shared by a constellation of 2 to three countries. Therefore, as a first step, the project shall focus on selected transboundary aquifers underlying watersheds in the Nile Basin. The transboundary aquifers included in the project were selected in consultation with the Nile Technical Advisory Committee (Nile-TAC).
The proposed project is designed to reduce or minimize many of these barriers, addressing the root causes of the overall environmental problems, by increasing knowledge, awareness and management capacity of groundwaters (and the conjunctive management of surface and groundwaters).
For enhancing the project impact on the ground, the project interventions will focus on selected shared aquifers in the Nile Basin rather than stretch over the entire Nile Basin. Based on the results of the project, future/follow up projects will be designed with basin-wide coverage. Further, to enhance effectiveness of project impact, it is critical that groundwater issues are not dealt with in isolation from surface water management issues in the sub-basins covered by the project. Therefore, the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) will be the main execution agency for the project to enable mainstreaming groundwater issues into the deliberations on surface water. However, given the complexity of addressing transboundary water resources issues in the Nile Basin, as a first step, the project shall focus on studies and pilot schemes that are of Technical Assistance nature in selected aquifers.
The project is the first of its kind in dealing with specific shared groundwater aquifer issues in the Nile Basin. Therefore, given the complex surface water management issues in the Nile Basin, it was found more appropriate to start with a limited set of selected transboundary aquifers rather than cover the entire Nile Basin. It must be noted that all the Nile Basin countries don’t share one continuous aquifer. Rather, a constellation of two or three countries share different aquifers. While general policy related matters on sustainable management of shared aquifers might apply to most of the aquifers, the specific situation of each aquifer dictates the scope and approach of the project towards addressing the issues in the aquifer. Therefore, it was found necessary at this stage to focus on few selected transboundary aquifers rather than distribute project financial resource thinly over the entire river basin. As a result, not all Nile Basin riparian countries will be involved in the project.
The selected aquifers and countries that will be covered by the project are given below:
1) Eastern Nile sub-basins: Gedaref – Blue Nile aquifers (shared by Ethiopia and Sudan).
2) Nile Equatorial Lakes sub-basins:
a) Priority 1: Mount Elgon aquifer (shared by Kenya and Uganda)
b) Priority 2: Kagera aquifer (shared by Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda). This catchment is part of the Kagera sub-basin.
Final selection of the aquifers will be made during this Proposal Preparation phase.
2. Project objectives
Overall Objective: to enhance knowledge and capacity for sustainable use and management of transboundary aquifers and aquifers of regional significance in the Nile Basin
Specific Objectives: Building on previous GEF-financed actions:
a) to further improve knowledge and understanding of groundwater resources in the Nile Basin;
b) to strengthen the overall water resources management nationally and basin-wide;
c) to respond to climate change impacts through effective risk-reduction adaptation measures, including conjunctive use and management of surface water and groundwater; and,
d) to ensure a healthy ecosystem and strengthened livelihoods
3. Consultancy objective
The International Consultant will be the GEF PPG Team Leader and will be responsible for quality assurance and timely preparation of all reports and documentation, including the finalized UNDP Project Document (ProDoc) and CEO Endorsement Request, International Waters Tracking Tool and all the mandatory and project specific Annexes and supporting documentation. S/he will be responsible for managing all consultants on the GEF PPG Team, and coordinating the Team’s work. The International consultant will be also responsible for liaising with the key project international stakeholders, namely NBI Secretariat, UNESCO, UNDP COs and UNDP Istanbul Regional Hub to clearly define and describe their role in the project implementation process.
How to apply:
Interested qualified individual Consultants are advised to download the full Terms of Reference for this assignment from the NBI website at http://nilebasin.org/index.php/consultancies and to submit the their application including their most recent CV to the Executive Director at email: groundwater@nilebasin.org with a copy to embonye@nilebasin.org not later than 29th August 2018 at 1700 EAT clearly indicating the title of this assignment in the subject of the mail.