Fikremariam Tesfaye
24 December 2007
Addis Abeba — A multi stakeholder workshop organized by the Forum for Environment (FfE), a local advocacy group, explored ways on the full exploitation of the country's water resources for achieving sustainable development.
The workshop under the theme "harnessing the water Resources of Ethiopia for Sustainable Dev't: Lessons from the past for the upcoming Millennium," brought together representatives and experts from government and non government organization, stake holders, national universities and interested members of the public.
Researches conducted on the area were presented and discussed up on during the workshop.
Speaking at the opening of the workshop, Alemu Getnet, Chairman of the Natural Resources and Environmental protection and Standing Committee of the House of people's Representative said the government had formulated water resource management policy, strategy and fifteen years development program based on the principles for Integrated water Resources Management (IWRM).
He said since the formulation of the policy various, efforts have been exerted to translate the policy in to action using the strategy instrument.
Alemu highlighted on the importance of integrated approaches for better results.
"There are many challenges that could be encountered in implementing the policy and strategy and ensuring the sustainability of people's access to water for various purposes due to non-integrated approaches of development and due to many pressures on the limited resources," he said.
He said that, to effectively tackle the forthcoming challenges, a well coordinated and concerted effort of all relevant stakeholders towards development and management of available water resources was important The forum organizes a series of public meetings and dialogue forums on Biodiversity, Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Dev't, Land Tenure system and Environmental Degradation, Forest, Energy, Non Timber Forest products.
All aim at influencing government policies and shape and gear public thinking.
FfE is an indigenous association of concerned individuals that has been engaged in organizing public meetings and dialogue forums on various issues aiming toward environmental literacy, consciousness and accountability in Ethiopia.
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