World water day
Water security is becoming a more and more important topic. Long droughts are a big risk for agriculture and the availability of drinking water. However, as sediment accumulates in a drinking water reservoir, a dam gradually loses its ability to store water, impacting the purpose for which it was built. This leads to:
clogging a disruption of the sediment balance
loss of capacity and eventually to the reservoir falling into inactivity.
For hydro power plants, the flow towards the turbines can become increasingly polluted and disrupted, resulting in increased maintenance and decreased hydroelectricity production by the hydro power generators. Despite decades of research, sedimentation is still probably the most serious technical problem faced by the dam industry, (Royal IHC;2020).
Rapid population growth, high urbanization rates, deep poverty in rural areas and inequality remain persistent
challenges. Tanzania’s population of nearly 54 million is growing rapidly at about 3 percent per year and is
expected to reach 100 million by 2040. About a third of the population lives in urban areas and at current rates it
is estimated that half of the population will be living in urban areas by 2050, driven primarily by population growth
and rural-to-urban migration. Urbanization is having, and will continue to have, an impact on urban development
and heightens the need to ensure sustainable living conditions, including service provision, housing, sanitation
and waste disposal. While the last decade saw a reduction in overall inequality and an increase in the growth rate
of consumption of the bottom 40 percent, large income and welfare differences exist between urban and rural
citizens and men and women. Over 80 percent of poor and extremely poor Tanzanians live in rural areas and
depend on natural resources-based livelihoods and subsistence farming,(PID;2019 ).
