The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Land Reform (MAFWLR) has embarked on reviving dormant basin management committees to enhance sustainable water resources management through community participation. 

This week it held the Orange-Fish Basin Management Stakeholder Forum in Keetmanshoop to regain stakeholders' recommitment to Basin Management Committee (BMC) activities. 

The meeting attended by stakeholders from both the Hardap and ||Kharas regions mapped the way forward for the election of BMC institutions and executive committee members. 

Additionally, it explained the BMC role and mandate in implementing integrated water resource management using a basin management approach. 

The meeting also shared information relating to applications of licences and environmental water quality in the area.

Olivier Numwa is a chief hydrologist at MAFWLR.

"This Basin Management Committee was formed in 2010; however, with the new act that came in 2013, the basin management committee needs to be gazetted, and there are some processes that need to be followed in terms of the basin management to be gazetted, and this is the start of re-energising or reviving this basin management. Committee."

The hydrologist highlighted some of the stakeholders' suggestions.

"They want the basin to be subdivided because the use within the basin differs from different areas within the basin. But we have urged them by saying, 'Let us start with this bigger umbrella, so it gives us a platform where we would be able to leverage resources that you can use to conduct studies to be able to subdivide our basin.' In doing so, we would be able to implement these suggestions easily if we start on a broader level."

This is what one of the participants, Gabriel Freyer, had to say. 

"We sit with different needs and expectations, traditional authorities with their expectations, and business people with their expectations. But we can, as Namibians, merge these expectations and come up with a plan where all of us can develop and advance and live in a good and better Namibia, where the future is secure and water is secured and where we can benefit from the resources that we have in such ample quantities in the ||Kharas Region and Hardap Region."