Nepal seeks Indias help in water challenges
Several South Asian and African countries came together to discuss and share their experience in mainstreaming sustainable water management and possible solutions to treat waste water.
“Today’s session is whole challenge in managing water in South Asia and Africa and outcome of the water which is waste water. The aim of the session is to bring together the countries of Africa, South Asia and India to understand what is happening on the ground their experiences and build an agenda what needs to be done because all our countries are facing common future,” said Sunita Narain, Director General, Centre for Science and Technology
Nepal has abundant water resources; however, due to poor water management skills the country is unable to harness the potential.
During the session the Nepal participant was optimistic to learn from India’s experience in dealing the water management especially the waste water management.
Prakash Amatya, Technical Adviser of the Guthi NGO from Nepal, feels the effort is to build common South Asian agenda to find possible solutions in dealing water management issues in the country.
“It is an opportunity to come here to participate in India and Africa sharing and learning workshop and it is an opportunity to share and bring some of my experiences and knowledge to share with our African collogues so it is more like South-South cooperation but at the same time we have learnt a lot how the sanitation and the water management issues has been dealt with in developing countries with different context,” said Amatya.
“Nepal being rich in terms of water resources the management and the distribution issues are very challenging to cope with so though we have abundant water resources there are lack of skills lack of management expertise to distribute and supply to water and again to treat the polluted water to conserve the nature,” he added.
Although Nepal is rich in water resources but the urban poor does not have access to safe drinking water and one of the possible reason could be the domestic sewage which flows in the river untreated.
The seminar was organized by Centre for Science and Environment, a Delhi based non-profit organization and research based policy group. The session was attended by 17 countries including Nepal.
