6th April 2023: Members of the Technical Advisory Committee for the Embedding Integrated Water Resources Management Programme (EWRM) - Sebeya Project met in Rubavu District from the 5^th to the 6th of April 2023 for a two-day meeting to evaluate the project's progress.

 "This meeting provides an excellent opportunity for the partners to jointly look into the project's impacts in various ways, particularly on the long-term development of its beneficiaries."

 "The overall goal of this project is to improve catchment management, contributing to increased resilience of communities and landscapes to the impacts of climate change and other drivers," explained Bernard Segatagara Musana, Head of Knowledge and Forecasting Hub at the Rwanda Water Resources Board (RWB).

On the other hand, the TAC members also made a field visit to witness some of the implemented activities such as ongoing works to construct the Sebeya retention dam in Kanama Sector, Rubavu District and radical terraces in Bigogwe Sector in Nyabihu District.

The Embedding Integrated Water Resource Management in Rwanda (EWMR) project is a 24 million Euro four-year project, from May 2019 to June 2023, that is funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands in Rwanda.

It focuses on the Sebeya catchment which is located in the Western Province of Rwanda and implemented by the Rwanda Water Resources Board (RWB) with technical assistance from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and its consortium partners, the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV), and Rwanda Rural Rehabilitation Initiative (RWARRI).

The Sebeya River originates in the mountains of the Rutsiro District along the Congo Nile. It flows for over 110 km and has a catchment area of 286 km², spanning the districts of Rutsiro, Ngororero, Nyabihu, and Rubavu.

This river is very critical to Western Rwanda for smallholder farmers use the river for irrigation, as a source of water for domestic use by households, and to generate hydroelectric power.

For the past twenty years, hundreds of people from the Sebeya catchment, have been displaced and communities have been negatively impacted by Sebeya River floods as a result of poor agriculture practices, deforestation, and unsustainable mining practices.

The EWMR project is built around four work packages as viable solutions to address the climate change issues identified in the catchment.

They are targeted to reduce land and soil degradation, river sedimentation, and flooding; improve incomes and resilience based on the sustainable use of landscape resources; empower landscape governance and management institutions as well as provide evidence-based guidelines for the landscape approach.