Mainstreaming wastewater through water accounting: The example of Botswana

Botswana is moving towards integrated water resource management, but wastewater is still not treated as an economic good. This is surprising as water scarcity is growing, the costs of conventional supply sources are rising and wastewater becomes more abundant due to improved sewerage and sanitation systems. Mainstreaming wastewater makes economic, social and environmental sense. Botswana first developed water accounts (WA) in 2000 as a resource planning tool. However, wastewater was excluded from the WA.This paper demonstrates how wastewater can be incorporated into the WA and what the results are for the period 1992–2003. The paper further explores the possible benefits of several re-use and recycling options. While re-use for irrigation may be the safest short term destination for re-use, it does not yield the highest economic returns, and therefore additional re-use and recycling options need to be explored. The paper argues that re-use of wastewater is likely to reduce future water tariff increases, increasing international competitiveness. Finally, the paper shows that WA can be used to identify essential data gaps and focus future data collection on key Integrated water resource management issues.