Environmental actors are in reflection from Wednesday November 16 to Friday November 18, 2022, in Abidjan, with a view to implementing a roadmap that should lead to the development of a Regional Strategy for the Reduction and Management of Flood and Drought Risks in the Volta Basin.
This workshop is part of the project “Integrating flood and drought management, and early warning for climate change adaptation in the Volta Basin”, (VFDM Project).
The Volta Project is funded by the Adaptation Fund and implemented by a team comprising the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Volta Basin Authority (VBA) and the Global Water Partnership in South Africa. West (GWP-WA) and national stakeholders, with the technical support of the CIMA foundation.
Entitled “National Workshop for the Development of the Regional Strategy for Flood and Drought Risk Management in the Volta Basin”, this meeting will also make it possible to design a quantitative and homogeneous risk assessment methodology, developed at the slope scale.
The elaboration of this strategy will be able to provide “a common tool for a coordinated and shared action between all the riparian countries of the Volta Basin concerning the reduction and management of disaster risks”, said the representative of the CIMA foundation, Mapelli Anna.
For the coordinator of the National FocalSstructure of VBA, Dr.Kouassi Kouamé Auguste, this meeting will help to strengthen resilience and is in line with the issue of climate change, which is currently the subject of COP 27, in Egypt, while welcoming regional cooperation.
The Volta Basin covers an area of approximately 400,000 km2, and is home to a transboundary river that extends over a distance of 1,850 km, shared by six West African countries, mainly Burkina Faso and Ghana, more marginally Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and Togo.
This region faces natural risks related to environmental degradation, climate change and variability, which have repercussions on people’s livelihoods, biodiversity and ecosystems. The main natural hazards affecting this region include droughts, floods and erosion.
This basin knows its climatic pangs in terms of floods and droughts. In fact, in the Volta basin, floods and drought affect nearly 5 million people and nearly 5 million livestock with nearly 35,000 hectares of partially pastured area.
Floods and droughts affect almost 100,000 hectares of agricultural land. The damage caused economic losses of around $42 million. There is need for the development of a regional risk reduction and management strategy, said the Deputy Executive Director of the Volta authority, Dr.Millogo Dibi.
On behalf of the Minister of Water and Forests, Laurent Tchagba, Colonel Bah Bilé encouraged active participation in this important workshop, the results of which are awaited by the countries that abound in the basin.
