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Featured Case: Volta River Basin

Lack of coordinated development of water resources, a rapidly increasing population, unsustainable agricultural practices and competing uses of water have placed enormous pressure on the already scarce water resources, leading to environmental degradation in the Volta River Basin.

The basin is shared by Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali and Togo in the semi-arid region of West Africa. Irrigation and hydropower generation are the major water uses of water in the basin. Water resources are limited and are unevenly distributed both spatially and temporally in the basin. Spatially, rainfall increases from north to south with mean annual values ranging from less than 500 mm in the extreme north to more than 1600 mm in the southeast part of the basin. Temporally, over 70% of the annual total rainfall occurs in July, August and September, with little rainfall in the months from November to March. By examining the water issues, we have identified that water quantity (Q) and governance (G) are the dominant variables in the problem definition for the basin

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