Therefore, this argument was not valid anymore at the time the article was written. Replying to Fred's last comment, I would add that the Zambezi River Commission might play a valuable role to coordinate the water and data sharing, and to initiate treaties, if all the countries are sitting at the table.
From the view point of the African Dams Project, we wanted to highlight that the citation “Population and economic growth, as well as expansion of irrigated agriculture and water transfers are likely to have very important transboundary impacts on water availability,” is not entirely accurate. The project's hydro-economic modeling efforts were focused on an economical analysis of water allocation strategies: “Population and expansion of irrigated agriculture are likely to reduce total net benefits in the Kafue River Basin, and a similar conclusion can be drawn for the Zambezi basin overall. Our Project analysed the tradeoffs between various water users on the Zambezi (e.g. Agriculture, hydropower, environment, domestic supply) and concluded that the gains from cooperation in the management of water resources are paramount. The “risk of serious disputes” is down to own interpretation, but in the discussion of our session we could clearly see that government stakeholders also from downstream countries see the opportunities as well as the challenges, and feel that dialogue is in a positive way increasing between riparian states, so this would contradict this comment.
Yes, the cabinet and the president of Zambia actually approved to join ZAMCOM in May this year:
https://www.postzambia.com/post-print_article.php?articleId=32519
https://lusakavoice.com/2013/05/30/sadc-zamcom-for-water-formed/
Therefore, this argument was not valid anymore at the time the article was written. Replying to Fred's last comment, I would add that the Zambezi River Commission might play a valuable role to coordinate the water and data sharing, and to initiate treaties, if all the countries are sitting at the table.
From the view point of the African Dams Project, we wanted to highlight that the citation “Population and economic growth, as well as expansion of irrigated agriculture and water transfers are likely to have very important transboundary impacts on water availability,” is not entirely accurate. The project's hydro-economic modeling efforts were focused on an economical analysis of water allocation strategies: “Population and expansion of irrigated agriculture are likely to reduce total net benefits in the Kafue River Basin, and a similar conclusion can be drawn for the Zambezi basin overall. Our Project analysed the tradeoffs between various water users on the Zambezi (e.g. Agriculture, hydropower, environment, domestic supply) and concluded that the gains from cooperation in the management of water resources are paramount. The “risk of serious disputes” is down to own interpretation, but in the discussion of our session we could clearly see that government stakeholders also from downstream countries see the opportunities as well as the challenges, and feel that dialogue is in a positive way increasing between riparian states, so this would contradict this comment.