• water managment
• Lesotho
• gestione dei report
• distretti

The thesis aims to identify Lesotho’s water resources and availability and to verify sustainability both in current and future situation considering possible impact of climate change and increase of water demand. Lesotho, or Kingdom of Lesotho, is a little and very poor enclave of South Africa crossed by three main rivers. Water and, to a lesser extent, diamonds are the unique Lesotho's significant natural resources. In fact in 1986 the most important project for development of Lesotho, the multibillion-dollar Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), under the authority of the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority, started. The LHWP is designed to capture, store, and transfer water from the Orange River system to South Africa's Free State and greater Johannesburg area, which features a large concentration of South African industry, population, and agriculture. Completion of the first phase of the project has made Lesotho almost completely self-sufficient in the production of electricity and generated earnings from the sale of electricity and water to South Africa. Actually LHWP is proceeding in following phases and other complementary water projects are born to increase development and economy of Lesotho.
Specifically the thesis is divided into two parts: the first refers to current situation, the second refers to future scenarios.
In the first part main hydraulic works and current water demand are identified and analyzed and a hydrological model is build starting from the elaboration of observation data.
In the second part future scenarios until the year 2050 are considered, in particular the construction of new hydraulic works, the increasing water demand caused by Lesotho’s economic development, the improvement of current infrastructure and the impact of climate change.
At the end of each part water resources sustainability is verified and an eventual surplus is estimated to improve water management or to continue water resources exploitation for following water project in order to achieve a good economic development.