Water Governance – Influencing Policy in Angola – IDRC Significant policy Pape

May 4, 2014

Angola experienced a massive shift of populations from the war-torn interior to the coastal settlements during the conflict years. Displaced families built their housing in unoccupied unserviced peripheral land around the existing towns. Low cost land was typically in the most environmentally vulnerable locations adjacent to coastal marshes or in river basins that have in recent years become increasingly susceptible to flooding. Most population shifts occurred in the civil-war years from 1974 through to the ceasefire in 2002 —years that coincide with increasing concern about global climate change. It
was also in 1974 that the colonial power abandoned Angola and closed down over 500 meteorological
and hydrological tracking stations leaving the country without means to track its
increasing vulnerability.