New Water Policy and Practice Issue 4, Number 1, Fall 2017 | Page 57

Water governance: a motivation
to be overcome to address these questions as part of the water management
mission beyonf the necessary poverty eradication.
My achievement of getting into college was determinant to establish
my first questioning about water. It also contributed to fight poverty in my
family. By the time (2007), the press revealed some complaints about the bad
quality of public water. It’s intriguing how there was never an answer based on
proper lab studies to those complaints. It became clear to me what would be
my research question for my final bachelor’s essay in environmental engineer-
ing, in Cape Verde: “Which factors influence the most the variation of water
quality from the water treatment plant (source of water) to the consumer?
How do they influence? Which populations were most affected?” Using the
city capital of Cape Verde, Praia, as a case study, the investigation interest-
ed the technical community, and I felt deeply touched by the way the pres-
ident of the Consumers Association (Associação de Defesa do Consumidor)
approached me during a congress: “We need to talk more about this issue!”
As I won a scholarship for my masters in the Agronomy Institute (In-
stituto Superiror de Agronomia) in Portugal, I was very keen to study all that
Amílcar Cabral—the people’s hero—did, to visit the Águas Livres aqueduct
in Lisbon, my biggest symbol of effort in water and to meet with teachers
who inspire me for my knowledge production.
It was the first time I addressed the drought problem, in a context I
saw as very positive. I was determined to evaluate the potential of reutilizing
the residual waters in the Island of Santiago, oriented for its safe reuse in
agriculture, and the development of systems of treatment adequate to the
economic and social context of the country and its future challenges, mainly
the climate change threat.
While I could feel satisfied on an academic level, the establishment of
the study orientations seemed far away, even though the responsibility for its
implementation still haunts me.
I assumed the responsibility for the promotion of favourable condi-
tions to contemplate all the potential recipients of initiatives of residual wa-
ters reutilization in Cape Verde. It is commonly accepted that wastewater use
in agriculture provides economic benefits to farmers who use this resource
against drought. Wastewater use for irrigation of common green areas will
beneficiate the population that enjoy green landscapes and a milder climate.
Wastewater, if safely used, is a great source of water that must be reclaimed,
especially in a country that holds one of the highest water tariffs in the world.
Wastewater use alleviates the pressure over the groundwater subject to high-
risk salinization due to over exploitation, and protects the aquatic ecosys-
tems against contamination by non-treated waters.
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