Chris Dickens

• BSc, BSc (honours), HDE, Dip.Project.Man, PhD
• Principal Investigator at International Water Management Institute

Reliable reservoir volume estimates are crucial for water resource management, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. The present study investigates applying three machine learning regression techniques - Gradient Boosting, Random Forest, and ElasticNet to predict key dam performance characteristics of the Loskop Dam in South Africa. The models...

The Limpopo River Basin (LRB), a transboundary river basin extending over Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, is highly vulnerable to drought. This manuscript analyzes drought conditions in the LRB using Earth Observation (EO) datasets and key drought indices such as the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Vegetation Condition...

This brief focuses on drought forecasting in the Limpopo River Basin (LRB), a transboundary river basin in southern Africa that spans South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. The study addresses the significant impacts of droughts on agriculture, water resources, and livelihoods in the region, exacerbated by climate variability and change....

This report provides an in-depth analysis of drought conditions in the Limpopo River Basin (LRB), with a focus on drought frequency, meteorological patterns, and agricultural impacts. Historical drought data and earth observation (EO) datasets are used to monitor and forecast drought severity. Key indices such as the Standardized Precipitation Inde...

This study evaluates the performance of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) seasonal rainfall forecasts provided by Limpopo River Basin's (LRB) Digital Twin using Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station (CHIRPS) dataset as a reference for the period of 2017 to 2024. The primary aim is to assess forecast...

Development of digital solutions for capture of field environmental data by citizen scientists.

A Digital Twin is a virtual representation of an object or system that spans its lifecycle, is updated from real-time data, and uses simulation, machine learning and reasoning to help decision making. The use of Digital Twins to aid decision-makers to make realtime decisions in complex systems is a growing field, with large potential for water syst...

Water quality deterioration is a growing concern for Africa’s water resources. Monitoring and management of water quality are essential to identify the causes of poor water quality and inform the design of corrective measures to restore it. The current state of water quality monitoring coverage and effectiveness is inconsistent across the 50 p...

As water quality challenges continue to escalate in Africa, a collective response is needed to stem the tide and improve the quality of water for millions of people and the environment that depend on it. Rampant population growth in Africa together with progressive industrialization, and agricultural expansion and intensification are driving...

Responding to water pollution challenges on the African continent requires concerted efforts across various sectors and actors. The African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) envisages an African Water Quality Program (AWaQ) to accelerate the continent’s water security agenda. The design of this program, supported by the International Water...

As water quality challenges continue to escalate in Africa, a collective response is needed to stem the tide and improve the quality of water for millions of people and the environment that depend on it. Rampant population growth in Africa together with progressive industrialization, and agricultural expansion and intensification are driving...

Environmental flows (e-flows) are a central element of sustainable water resource management to mitigate the detrimental impacts of hydrological alteration on freshwater ecosystems and their benefits to people. Many nations strive to protect e-flows through policy, and thousands of local-scale e-flows assessments have been conducted globally, lever...

Freshwater systems are disproportionately adversely affected by the ongoing, global environmental crisis. The effective and efficient water resource conservation and management necessary to mitigate the crisis requires monitoring data, especially on water quality. This is recognized by Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, particularly indicator 6....

The Enviro-Champs initiative was developed as a community driven, citizen science initiative in Mpophomeni township in Kwa-Zulu Natal (KZN), South Africa. Over time, the scope of work done and data collected by the Enviro-Champs has expanded. There is now recognition both locally and globally that the Enviro-Champs initiative shows great promise fo...

This report provides an overview of the mini Stream Assessment Scoring System (miniSASS) and South African Scoring System Version 5 (SASS5) as biomonitoring techniques for assessing the ecological condition of streams and rivers based on the identification of aquatic macroinvertebrates. While miniSASS relies on minimally trained citizen scientists...

The mini stream assessment scoring system (miniSASS) was developed as a citizen science biomonitoring tool for assessing the water quality and health of stream and river systems. A miniSASS survey involves sampling the aquatic macroinvertebrate community in a stream or river reach and using the known sensitivities and tolerances of the taxa present...

Monitoring the health of aquatic ecosystems has a long history, and the practice has become entrenched in many countries around the world. River ecosystems are a key component of aquatic ecosystems that include lakes, pans, wetlands, groundwater, estuaries, bogs and swamps, floodplains and even, in some definitions, the marine inshore area. Most of...

A Digital Twin (DT) is a digital representation of reality. This report explores the implementation of DT in the context of basin scale water management, with a particular focus on developing countries. The review begins with an examination of the background of DT and then delves into successful applications of DT particularly in developing nations...

River health assessments have been conducted around the world using differing principles and methods. This paper seeks to bring these efforts together to craft a way forward for indicators that would be suitable beyond the local to the global scale.

Rivers are the arteries of human civilisation and culture, providing essential goods and services that underpin water and food security, socio-economic development and climate resilience. They also support an extraordinary diversity of biological life. Human appropriation of land and water together with changes in climate have jointly driven rapid...

Urban water security management white paper for the U20 countries

Many small scale farmers on the Letaba River in South Africa are dependent on river flows for their livelihoods. There is existing conflict between upstream abstractions, as well as provision for environmental flows, that renders their position insecure. The research demonstrated that sustained environmental flow provision by upstream water managem...

Environmental flows (e-flows) aim to mitigate the threat of altered hydrological regimes in river systems and connected waterbodies and are an important component of integrated strategies to address multiple threats to freshwater biodiversity. Expanding and accelerating implementation of e-flows can support river conservation and help to restore th...

Freshwater biodiversity, from fish to frogs and microbes to macrophytes, provides a vast array of services to people. Mounting concerns focus on the accelerating pace of biodiversity loss and declining ecological function within freshwater ecosystems that continue to threaten these natural benefits. Here, we catalog nine fundamental ecosystem servi...

Freshwater biodiversity, from fish to frogs and microbes to macrophytes, provides a vast array of services to people. Mounting concerns focus on the accelerating pace of biodiversity loss and declining ecological function within freshwater ecosystems that continue to threaten these natural benefits. Here, we catalog nine fundamental ecosystem servi...

Agriculture is the largest single source of environmental degradation, responsible for over 30% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, 70% of freshwater use and 80% of land conversion: it is the single largest driver of biodiversity loss (Foley JA, Science 309:570–574, 2005, Nature 478:337–342, 2011; IPBES. Global assessment report on biodiversi...

A review of river health monitoring with the emphasis on methods and frameworks that are applicable at regional to global scale. The objective is to advance towards a global river health framework.

A review of river health monitoring approaches with an emphasis on those that are suitable for regional or global reporting. The purpose of the document was to advance towards a global river health monitoring framework.

Over the next three decades–the typical planning period for large infrastructure–the world will have changed into a place that is predominantly water-scarce, yet also subject to more extreme flooding. The water world's disjointed project-based approach to knowledge and capacity building needs to be replaced with a programmatic and professionalised...

Despite the abundant evidence of benefits for conservation, climate mitigation, and human livelihoods, wetlands globally remain under pressure of loss and degradation. Such pressures are particularly prevalent in the tropics, where institutional capacity for management and protection can be limited. This chapter outlines some key features of tropic...

E-flows for the Limpopo River in southern Africa. This is the basin report that presents all of the water resources and ecosystem background to the study. Mostly gleaned from existing reports.

E-flows for the Limpopo River in southern Africa, this report describes the ecological response both actual and predicted, that happens due to altered flows.

E-flows for the Limpopo River in southern Africa making use of the Probflo framework. This is the report that presents the actual e-flow results and data.

E-flows for the Limpopo river in southern Africa. This reports describes the risks of altered flows to the basin ecosystem and users.

Popular article written to review a paper previously published on the SDG indicators that serve to document natural resources. This highlights that the weakness of the SDG indicators is greatest in relation to biodiversity and the health of ecosystems, two vitally important aspects of sustainable development.

The crucial roles of biodiversity in agriculture - a necessary understanding if agirculture is to become more sustainable.

The linkages between agriculture and biodiversity - an imperative for understanding sustainable food production

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) describe a course of action to address poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all (https://sdgs.un.org/goals). More specifically, SDG 6 clarifies how water quality, quantity and access are crucial to human well-being, and yet human activities are compromising water resources thr...

The role of hydropower in the renewable energy mix for Africa's green development is widely recognised and underpinned by respective government and development partner funded initiatives. However, the growing demand for energy must be balanced with considerations for resource protection and benefit sharing of water resource developments with vulner...

Stakeholders of the small-scale (<50 MW generation capacity) hydropower sector in Uganda recognise the importance of sustainable development of the resources that have social and ecological importance. Uganda is experiencing a boom in hydropower projects resulting in over generation of electricity and its exportation to neighbouring nations. Limite...

Valuation of hydraulic infrastructure

e-flows for the Limpopo River in southern Africa. This report contains the specialist literature review as well as detailed data on the drivers and response indicators for the river ecosystem

Floodplains are particularly important in the semi-arid region of the Sub-Sahelian Africa. In this region, water governance is still being developed, often without adequate information and technical capacity for good, sustainable water resource management. However, water resources are being allocated for use with minimal sustainability consideratio...

An estimated two billion hectares – 23% of landscapes under human use – are degraded, negatively impacting ecological integrity, biodiversity, ecosystem services, and agricultural productivity (Laestadius et al. 2011). Deforestation, loss of vegetation, depletion of soil nutrients, soil erosion, and contamination (including salinization) compromise...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) purport to report holistically on progress towards sustainability and do so using more than 231 discrete indicators with a primary objective to achieve a balance between the environment, social and economic aspects of development. The research question underpinning the analyses presented in this paper is: ar...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) purport to report holistically on progress towards sustainability and do so using more than 231 discrete indicators, with a primary objective to achieve a balance between the environment, social and economic aspects of development. The research question underpinning the analyses presented in this paper is: a...

The missing link between cross-sectoral resource management and full-scale adoption of the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus has been the lack of analytical tools that provide evidence for policy and decision-making. This study defined WEF nexus sustainability indicators, from where an analytical model was developed to manage WEF resources in an integr...

Monitoring the qualitative status of freshwaters is an important goal of the international community, as stated in the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) indicator 6.3.2 on good ambient water quality. Monitoring data are, however, lacking in many countries, allegedly because of capacity challenges of less-developed countries. So far, however, the...

Citation: Dickens, C.; Mukuyu, P.; Ndlovu, B.; O'Brien, G.; Stassen, R.; Magombeyi, M. 2020. E-flows for the Limpopo River in southern Africa - this report describes the vision that exists in policy for these e-flows.

Application of the Probflo e-flows framework to the Limpopo River in southern Africa. This is the Inception Report and provides the plan for project implementation.

Report citation: Dickens, C.; O'Brien, G.; Magombeyi, M.; Mukuyu, P.; Ndlovu, B.; Eriyagama, N.; Kleynhans, N. 2020. E-flows for the Limpopo River Basin: basin report.

River flows connect people, places, and other forms of life, inspiring and sustaining diverse cultural beliefs, values, and ways of life. The concept of environmental flows provides a framework for improving understanding of relationships between river flows and people, and for supporting those that are mutually beneficial. Nevertheless, most appro...

A book to inspire and help developing countries to tackle implementation of the SDGs. Low tech and simply laid out.

IWMI/WLE has a long history of involvement in e-flows (environmental flows) including e-flow assessments, but more importantly in development of an online e-flows calculator that is now being use by the FAO as part of the indicator tool for SDG Indicator 6.4.2. This article is a short WLE publication that summarises IWMI's involvement.

The FAO are custodians of the SDG 6.4.2 indicator on Water Stress. A new component of this indicator subsequent to the MDGs, is the inclusion of environmental flows. Because these need to be reported at a global level, this guideline document provides direction on using the IWMI GEFIS model to estimate e-flows per country, or per basin. The approac...

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), are high on the agenda for most countries of the world. In its publication of the SDGs, the UN has provided the goals and target descriptions that, if implemented at a country level, would lead towards a sustainable future. The IAEG (InterAgency Expert Group of t...

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the SDGs, are high on the agenda for most countries of the world. In its publication of the SDGs, the UN has provided the goals and target descriptions that, if implemented at a country level, would lead towards a sustainable future. The IAEG (InterAgency Expert Group of the SDGs) was tasked with dissemi...

Scenario planning is a key approach for exploring the longer term consequences of nature-society interactions, and are used to inform policy making about the potential risks, opportunities and tradeoffs of different possible future pathways of change. Scenarios do not aim to forecast or predict the future, but rather to highlight how different pote...

Biomonitoring of rivers is assessed for the greater Mekong system. Many of the rivers are dominated by sediment which makes monitoring of invertebrates difficult and less reliable.

You can download the full report from here https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000261424

Environmental flow (E-flow) frameworks advocate holistic, regional-scale, probabilistic E-flow assessments that consider flow and non-flow drivers of change in a socio-ecological context as best practice. Regional-scale ecological risk assessments of multiple stressors to social and ecological endpoints, which address ecosystem dynamism, have been...

The Agenda 2030 on Sustainable Development Goals has produced a step-by-step method for Indicator 6.6.1 on water-related ecosystems. This guideline gives support to that method by providing greater context and detali.

Wetlands can only be well managed if their spatial location and extent are accurately documented, which presents a problem as wetland type and morphology are highly variable. Current efforts to delineate wetland extent are varied, resulting in a host of inconsistent and incomparable inventories. This study, done in the Witbank Dam Catchment in Mpum...

This chapter introduces the concept of stakeholder engagement within water resource management with a focus on environmental water programs. It explains why stakeholder engagement is critical, and the theoretical basis for effective stakeholder engagement. Moving from theory into practice it advocates for principle-based engagement through 10 key p...

Recent developments in Environmental Flow (E-flow) frameworks advocate holistic, regional scale, probabilistic E-flow assessments that consider flow and non-flow drivers of change in socio-ecological context as best practice. Regional Scale ecological risk assessments of multiple sources, stressors and diverse ecosystems that address multiple socia...

Environmental flows (EF) are an important component of Goal 6 (the ‘water goal’) of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet, many countries still do not have well-defined criteria on how to define EF. In this study, we bring together the International Water Management Institute’s (IWMI’s) expertise and previous research in this area to develo...

Scenarios have become a key tool for supporting sustainability research on regional and global change. In this study we evaluate four regional scenario assessments: first, to explore a number of research challenges related to sustainability science and, second, to contribute to sustainability research in the specific case studies. The four case stu...

Wetlands can only be well managed if their spatial location and extent are accurately documented, which presents a problem as wetland type and morphology are highly variable. Current efforts to delineate wetland extent are varied resulting in a host of inconsistent and incomparable inventories. This study, done in the Witbank Dam Catchment in Mpuma...

This report documents water related vulnerabilities in the Upper Kinyeti Catchment in the Imatong Mountains of South Sudan. It describes the present state in terms of topography, climate, land use and land cover. It investigates current water supply and demand and looks at drivers of change in water security in the catchment.

The Pongola River Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (PRESPA) project quantified the economic benefits accuring to different livelihood sectors from the water resources of the Pongola floodplain, South Africa. The floodplain carries a diverse economy and ecology which is supported by flood events that once occured naturally but are now regu...

A review of environmental flow assessments mostly in Tanzania.

This article provides an evidence-based and policy-relevant contribution to understanding the phenomenon of policy learning and its structural constraints in the field of river basin management, in particular related to coping with current and future climatic hazards such as floods and droughts. This has been done by a formal comparative analysis o...

The chief pursuit of all aquatic science is to come to know the rules that govern aquatic systems. In this pursuit many scientists move in the direction of greater diversity, where the laws that govern ecosystem relationships become increasingly confined to specific circumstances. Uncovering these types of laws can provide useful information for sp...

In response to the growing awareness of the role played by phosphate contained in powdered laundry detergents in the eutrophication of water resources, and the apparent failure of the legislated 1 mg/ℓ effluent phosphate concentration standard to control this problem, the WRC identified the need to investigate the positive and negative consequences...

A cross-comparison of climate change adaptation strategies across regions was performed, considering six large river basins as case study areas. Three of the basins, namely the Elbe, Guadiana, and Rhine, are located in Europe, the Nile Equatorial Lakes region and the Orange basin are in Africa, and the Amudarya basin is in Central Asia. The evaluat...

Can a payment for flows of ecosystem goods and services system, following appropriate management and restoration of natural capital produced in rural areas of a developing country, be developed in a way that benefits communities, the commercial sector and the environment? This fundamental question acts as rationale for conducting an in-depth assess...