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In the Volta Basin, infrastructure watershed development with respect to the impact of climate conditions is hotly debated due to the lack of adequate tools to model the consequences of such development. There is an ongoing debate on the impact of further development of small and medium scale reservoirs on the water level of Lake Volta, which is essential for hydropower generation at the Akosombo power plant. The GLOWA Volta Project (GVP) has developed a Volta Basin Water Allocation System (VB-WAS), a decision support tool that allows assessing the impact of infrastructure development in the basin on the availability of current and future water resources, given the current or future climate conditions. The simulated historic and future discharge time series of the joint climate-hydrological modeling approach (MM5/WaSiM-ETH) serve as input data for a river basin management model (MIKE BASIN). MIKE BASIN uses a network approach, and allows fast simulations of water allocation and of the consequences of different development scenarios on the available water resources. The impact of the expansion of small and medium scale reservoirs on the stored volume of Lake Volta has been quantified and assessed in comparison with the impact of climate variability on the water resources of the basin.

This paper investigates issue linkage of water and energy in transboundary water sharing agreements and evaluates how such issue linkages can enhance the scope of cooperation between upstream and downstream countries. In a case study on transboundary water sharing between Burkina Faso and Ghana, the main upstream and downstream riparians in the Volta Basin, the paper evaluates both the scope and sustainability of such cooperation based on issue linkage. In the framework of a static Stackelberg game with numerical analysis, it is found that the interdependency of countries can lead to efficient and effective solutions regarding water sharing. In the cooperation phase, Ghana has the opportunity to increase its water consumption for agriculture, which is currently restricted, while Burkina Faso benefits from discounted hydropower as a compensation for restricting its water consumption. In such a case, the cooperation is mutually beneficial and stable. However, such interdependency may not be sustaina...

As multiple countries share a river, the like- lihood of conflicts over distributing water resources increases, particularly under the effects of climate change. In this paper, we demonstrate how countries can cooperate in sustainable transboundary water sharing under such conditions. We ex- amine the case of water distribution in the Volta Basin of West Africa between the upstream country, Burkina Faso, and the downstream country, Ghana. The latter faces an additional tradeoff between the production of hydropower in the south, close to the outlet of the basin, and agricultural water use

Water management issues critical to the Volta Basin are discussed in this paper. An introduction to the Volta Basin and its hydrological characteristics provides the necessary background. Hydropower production for urban areas and irrigation development in rural areas compete for water resources. The paper introduces the GLOWA Volta project and presents details highlighting the project’s integrative approach. In order to address water-policy issues, the GLOWA Volta Project seeks to develop a scientifically sound Decision Support System. The main premise of the GLOWA Volta investigation is that changes in landuse may have important, yet unknown, effects on the hydrological cycle of the basin. To predict future water availability, landuse change, driven by physical and social factors, needs to be predicted as well. In order to illustrate the different ways in which landuse affects the movement of water over the surface and through the atmosphere, three examples are given. The first example treats the indirect and direct effects of changes in soil moisture on the atmospheric circulation. In the second example, the high sensitivity of surface water availability with respect to rainfall is determined. The final example shows the increase in dam building activity in the basin which has a direct but rather limited impact on availability of water resources downstream.