River Keepers Handbook: A Guide to Protecting Rivers and Catchments in Africa

Date: 
Saturday, May 1, 1999

This 52-page report takes a step toward creating a broad movement of people devoted to protecting their watersheds (or "catchments") in Southern Africa. The handbook is full of information that will help activists, communities, educators and individuals become informed river advocates, able to ask the right questions about river-development schemes and press for better alternatives.

From the handbook:

Southern Africa is, by and large, a dry place. Water is one of the region's most precious resources, and yet the region's life-giving sources of water – the catchments that funnel water to rivers, wetlands and lakes – are increasingly under threat.

To avoid irreparable harm to these essential natural systems will require a regional 'catchment protectors' movement, a critical mass of people who make the protection of water resources their top priority. Such a movement will require citizens who understand the complex workings of their catchments, and their own place within these systems.

Download the full report.