Scoping Advice for the Dutch IWRM Support Programme Rwanda

very low. In this light the master plan, soon being the only document at hand suggesting concretemeasures at catchment level, may become the reference point for all IWRM work for the next 5years, while these measures are being identified from a weak information basis.5. The NCEA concludes that the reliability of the information base for the IWRM master planwill be limited. While this seems sufficient for general planning at national level, decisionmakingshould take into account that for catchment level planning, more detailedinformation will be needed through an up-to-date monitoring system.6. Furthermore, the NCEA concludes that further detailed catchment assessments are anabsolute necessity before any final planning decision can be taken at catchment level.2.3.2 Master Plan MethodologyThe Master Plan development process has a strong hydrological focus and reasons from theperspective of water as a harvestable resource. It identifies water users, roughly divided intoconsumptive users (taking water) and in-stream users (example: fisheries & navigation).Environment is in this view considered as a water user requiring a minimal flow.The inception report 16 does mention groundwater dependent ecosystems – mainly wetlands butalso some water bodies in valley floors – that may lose their biodiversity and ecological function ifgroundwater flow is not maintained. Furthermore, the report indicates that “non respect ofenvironmental demand and quality parameters may further have major social and economicconsequences”. However, this issue is not further elaborated and not reflected in themethodology.Therefore, the approach runs the risk of overlooking important water relatedenvironmental/ecosystem 17 services on which people depend. Especially regulatory services suchas flood buffering, surface water storage, sediment removal, and water purification service will belargely missed. Also local water related production services providing livelihoods to the rural poormay not be taken into account.Irrigation development is considered in terms of amount of water needed. Irrigation developmentas planned by the agriculture department would also involve large scale wetland conversion. Thisconversion may significantly influence the hydrology of a river system as it affects the waterstorage, release and infiltration capacity of a river basin, leading to more extreme peak flows (and16Consultancy services for development of Rwanda national water resources master plan, tender number 021/rnra/2011-2012,inception report, SHER Ingénieurs-Conseils s.a., October 201217 Worldwide, different terminology is used for slightly different but highly similar concepts. The millennium assessment uses theterminology ‘ecosystem services’, while in the water sector, ‘environmental services’ is more commonly used. In this report,the NCEA will means the same thing with both terms.10