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- Permanent Link:
- http://dpanther.fiu.edu/dpService/dpPurlService/purl/FIGW000020/00001
Notes
- Abstract:
- The Ruvu River sub-Basin is one of the most important river systems in Tanzania, overlapping with areas of critical ecological significance (high level of biodiversity) and economic activities with national importance. The largest city of Tanzania, Dar-es-Salaam (DSM, with a population more than 3 million) and a number of smaller towns (Morogoro, Kibaha and Bagamoyo) rely on the Ruvu River system for water to meet domestic, industrial, and irrigation needs. The population (both rural and urban) within the Ruvu sub-Basin is projected to rise significantly in the next 2 to 3 decades and the demands for water will greatly increase to accommodate for this growth.
While there are substantial variations of available water resources and societal needs for water in each Sub-Catchment within this basin, a common concern about meeting the future demand for water and maintaining the water quality rises with the projected economic growth in the Basin. On the other hand, it is increasingly recognized through institutional changes, that allocating enough water to meet the environmental needs is critical for the provision of a wide range of ecosystem services (e.g. hydrological services, carbon‐related services, timber and non-timber forest products, nature‐based tourism services, fisheries, wildlife habitat and biodiversity). Valuation studies focusing on these ecosystem services can quantify their contributions to human wellbeing in order to take actions to sustain them (e.g. designing suitable payment for ecosystem services program).
Based on the preliminary achievements of the Equitable Payments for Watershed Services (EPWS) program, it is feasible that similar programs can be extended to other sub-catchments in the Ruvu Basin. Incentives for other potential ecosystem services that have increasing demands can be combined into the existing framework to develop a more stable institutional framework for ensuring continuation of these types of programs. Integrating multiple ecosystem services into a synergistic framework can potentially increase ecological connectivity among different watersheds and ecological boundaries to reduce soil erosion and increase net primary production (e.g. by reducing water deficiency and improve water quality for human, animal and plant consumption).
Given the competing demands for water in the Ruvu basin, which comprises a wide variety of human and environmental needs (e.g. domestic use, agriculture, industry, livestock, mining, water quality, flood control etc.), developing an Integrated Hydro-Economic Model for the basin will be quite useful. The objective of the Integrated Hydro-Economic Model is to capture and quantify the interactions between water and the economy to ensure optimal management of water resources. Diverse social and environmental needs for water use can be incorporated into this type of modeling framework to evaluate and compare diverse strategies for water resource management in the Basin. Output from these types of integrated hydro-economic models can also provide key information and basis to effectively engage stakeholders.
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