Studying and understanding the ways that we manage common assets – rivers, the sea, the air around us – has been a large part of the life work of Elinor Ostrom who has just been awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics.

There are also a wide range of demands that are put on rivers.  These are common assets, but if everyone uses this asset for their own needs without concern for other users, then the wider community that depends on the river can suffer.  This is the famous Tragedy of the Commons first described by Garrett Hardin back in 1968.

Rivers also – especially as far as Advance Aid’s work is concerned, the Zambezi in Southern Africa – have a tendency to flood and this can lead to massive displacement of people and large-scale homelessness.

Today the problems facing the Zambezi and the people who live along it has been described in this interesting article.  All of this may seem a long way from our usual topics of Emergency Relief materials and non-food items, but river basin management is a crucial part of development in many countries and, when it is done well, it can also play a large part in ensuring that avoidable emergencies are indeed avoided.

Elinor Ostrom’s work has played a major part in our understanding of these issues and she deserves the thanks and applause of the development community today.

But at this time of year the flooding problem is in West Africa.  Just a couple of days ago the BBC was reporting that 350,000 people had been affected in Ghana, Burkina Faso, Benin, Guinea, Niger and Senegal.

Now CNN is quoting the UN as saying that the number affected has risen to 600,000.  Its report says, “The World Food Programme (WFP) has set a goal of feeding 177,500 people, mainly in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, where 150,000 people have been affected and key infrastructure — including a central hospital, schools, bridges and roads — has been damaged.  The flooding in Burkina Faso is the worst in 90 years.”

And this is a recurring problem.  In 2007 300 people died and 800,000 were affected by the storms and flooding that result from the West African rainy season that runs from June through to September.

But the sad thing is that even flooding and displacement on this scale does not make the television news or hit the front pages even though the UN is reporting that, “Roads and buildings have been ruined from Mauritania to Niger”, which covers a huge area .  And if a disaster is not on TV in the West, it’s almost as if it hasn’t happened as far as donations and public offers of help are concerned.