Background:
Water resources play a unique role in promoting socio-economic development and maintaining the ecological system of any country. However, it remains a fixed and therefore scarce resource.

Water resources in the Mpanga Catchment are utilized for several purposes.
The high rate of population growth and urbanization in the Rwenzori region has
given rise to stiff competition between water users for the currently available water resources

Rationale:

With the high rate of urbanization, population growth (3.1%), and unplanned
water use, the water resource in the Catchment is faced with gradual deterioration (both quality and quantity).
It is essential to comprehensively understand water usage patterns in this
catchment, to ensure its sustainable use and management for future generations.

Assessment of current, planned, and future water demand was the basis for the water demand allocation (modeling), to efficiently allocate available
water across different service levels.

Objectives:
General objective:
To obtain the total current and projected water demand in the Mpanga catchment, considering 40 years.

Specific objectives:
• To compute the domestic, livestock, fisheries, hydropower, irrigation,
• industrial and E-flow demand
• To compute the aggregated water demand for the current year (2023)
• To compute the projected water demand for the future year (2063)

Methodology:


Findings
• The water demand is projected to grow across all the consumer levels
• between 2023 and 2063. The ripple effect of a high population growth
rate (3.1%) is translated to all sectors.

• The total water demand in the catchment is projected to grow rapidly
over the 40 years from 2023 to 2063.

• The Fisheries sector is projected to grow fastest during the considered
analysis period. Small-scale fisheries (fish ponds) are owned at household
and communal levels and can be linked with the high rate of wetland
reclamation in the catchment.

Recommendations

• Advocate for increased funding to the regional entity, to accelerate the
mapping and profiling of all the water users in the catchment.
• Continued development and centralization of a robust water-use database (WIS) to aid water resources planning.
• Reinforcement of environmental laws at the regional level, to curb the
widespread reclamation of wetlands. (Reclamation into farmland and S.S
fisheries)
• Promotion of stakeholder forums. This will further the discussions on
catchment preservation through initiatives like the implementation of
Source Protection plans.
• Innovative approaches and use of alternative water sources.
Rainwater harvesting, reuse of wastewater.
• Scaling up catchment restoration measures in the catchment to improve water security to meet future demand