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Africa Summit Panel Calls for Urgent Action to Safeguard Water

Africa Summit delegates tackle water issues

(Center) Earl Trent, Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc., and (center, right) Bright Mawudor, All Africa Conference of Churches, pose issues and recommendations during the Interfaith Summit on Africa Water dialogue. Photo: Rick Reinhard Photography

July 20, 2006

by Thomas Abraham
Church World Service

Washington, DC -- Water issues need to be linked to health, hunger, global warming and other issues that get the attention of people and policymakers, say Africa Summit panelists.

That was the top recommendation resulting from a dialogue on water during the Interfaith Summit on Africa, a gathering of religious leaders from Africa and the United States. The three-day summit in Washington is sponsored by global humanitarian agency Church World Service along with the All Africa Conference of Churches.

The purpose of the Summit is to bring together African faith leaders and their U.S. counterparts to discuss some of the problems that plague Africa, to strengthen interfaith ties, and to provide a forum for the Africans to express their concerns to U.S. policymakers.

Participants in the dialogue on water expressed many perspectives on the water crisis in Africa, including the increasing commercialization of water, trans-boundary conflicts, and the demands of an exploding population and pollution.

Archbishop Antony Obinna, of Oweri, Nigeria, said there must be a connection between the proliferation of household boreholes and the drying up of streams in some areas. He also pointed out that oil spills are killing off fish, the main source of food for many in his region.

Secretary General of the Fellowship of Christian Councils and Churches in West Africa, Baffour Amoa, pointed out that the World Trade Organization was also including water in trade negotiations. He warned that millions of poor people will be "condemned to death" if water becomes commercialized.

"This summit is an example of leveraging influence and funding," said Meg Findley of Washington, DC-based Chemonics, who served as a resource for the dialogue. Chemonics works with USAID in 10 African countries.

Sheikh Abu Bakar-Conteh and Ruth Messinger
Sheikh Abu Bakar-Conteh (l), of the Inter Religious Council of Sierra Leone, and Jewish World Service president Ruth Messinger discuss relationship challenges between Africa's faith organizations and international bodies and funders.
Photo: Rick Reinhard Photography

"What's happening here is people from many backgrounds, with common concerns, are raising issues experienced at a household level to a regional and international level," she said.

Findley said the Bush administration values faith-based organizations and encourages all consulting organizations to work closely with them. But most of the funds the administration has recently earmarked for Africa are for emergencies, she pointed out.

"It's response oriented. I want to see money placed strategically, to prevent crisis situations from happening."

Bright Mawudor of the All Africa Conference of Churches, the other resource person in the group, said African politicians often wanted religious leaders to tell them "how to go to heaven, not how to run the country."

But water links heaven and earth, justice and salvation, he pointed out. "We can tell them that the prophet Amos appealed for justice to roll down like rivers of water (Amos 5:24), and that those who 'went to heaven' gave water to the thirsty and in so doing, quenched Jesus' thirst" (Matt 25:35).

Stressing the need to involve local communities in water projects, Mr. Mawudor recalled digging wells in northern Ghana, with financing from Christian Aid, without adequate community participation. The community women bypassed these wells, continuing to fetch water from a source two miles away. Subsequent queries revealed that the traditional site allowed everybody to catch up on each other's lives.

"If you don't involve the community properly, they see [water projects] as something distant," he concluded. "You need to involve the people, so they know the wells belong to them."

Findley said the church was uniquely equipped to involve the community in accessing and managing water. As a grass roots organization, the church can create awareness at community level and move it upwards nationally. It can foster political will at the national level to ensure water needs are met, especially for the poor. And it can create and strengthen partnerships.

"Partnership is not easy," said Findley, "but the church is good at it."

One participant said planting trees was an important contribution people can make to ensure rainfall, and that religious leaders ought to lead tree planting campaigns.

Professor Maake Jonathan Masango of the United Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa said churches are linking this essential task to a key Christian ritual.

"For every baptism we have been encouraging families to plant a tree, so that it is connected with the birth of a child," Masango said.

Many African Summit participants at the dialogue on water stressed the importance of advocacy.

"I think advocacy greases the wheels of change," said Mrs. Bahhombisile Mkwanazi of Swaziland. "If it increases the exposure of communities at international forums, we're contributing to a change in the mindset. Water is a basic right. International exposure is needed."

Pressing for evidence-based advocacy, Hellen Wangusa of the All Africa Conference of Churches said churches had a role in pointing out how much water is used on golf courses, and in documenting decreases in the mineral content of bottled water.

Other recommendations that won the most approval from the group were:

churches coming together across national lines to advocate with governments towards resolving competing interests, for example, between hydroelectricity and water for agriculture;

advocating tree planting to "seed" rain, stressing the need for variety, not monocultures;

keeping water sources communal and opposing individual household boreholes, and

Urging people to consider the effect on water of population explosion.