Water sector needs new technologies

Scarcity of water in Kenyan households and the rest of Africa has nothing to do with lack of water but rather lack of huge investment in appropriate technologies and changing how we view the water sector.

Giving water an economic view is an efficient strategy against the economics of climate change.

The availability of water is aggravated by projection that demand will intensify in the near future due to climate change.

Our current understanding needs the ability to predict future change, which is limited in part because of the non-integrative nature of prior research.

Man and aquatic systems are in constant interplay.

The inter-disciplinary nature and complexity of water economic problems require the use of a modelling approach that can incorporate knowledge from a broad range of specific disciplines.

It is fundamental to reorder our priorities and integrate the sectoral focus on policy analysis and development towards the integrated hydro-economic models.

The rapid injection of the integrated hydro economic model will upset the delicate balance of “programmed” and “non-programmed” decisions in the sector organizations and our private lives.

The puzzle is what stands in the way with regard to all institutions established by the Water Act 2002 to meeting their respective mandate?

The integrated hydro-economic modelling is the abstraction of reality linking two realms of a system: Water and Economics.

The key elements are various functions performed by aquatic ecosystems.

Integrated hydro-economic models aim to capture the complexity of interaction between water and the economy.

Three main approaches are distinguished: Modular, holistic and computable general equilibrium models.

Key issues

The latter top down model counterbalances the traditional emphasis on bottom up water engineering approaches.