The green light for the vast project was given by members of the Niger Basin Authority (ABN), an intergovernmental group comprising the nine countries irrigated by Africa's third longest river and its tributaries.

The programme will consist of reafforesting, rehabilitating plains and removing silt from the 4,200 kilometre (2,600 mile) long Niger snaking through Guinea, Mali, Niger and Nigeria.

More than 80 percent of the funds allocated for the vast project were earmarked for developing social and economic infrastructures. A far smaller chunk was to be spent on protecting natural resources and ecosystems.

The plan, approved in Niger's capital Niamey, will be implemented in four five-year phases and will not reach fruition until 2027.

The ABN will hold a donor meeting on June 23 in Niamey when it will seek to raise the 1.4 billion euros needed to finance the first 2008-2012 phase, however it is currently drastically short of funding.

So far only 19 percent of the funds required have been found. The Bank of African Development has become a main partner of ABN, providing 37 million euros to help finance the programme to stop silting.

The Niamey summit also adopted a Warter Charter to ensure that ABN members share the river's resources fairly and responsibly.

When this is implemented, countries will only be allowed to use water to satisfy people's most basic needs. Any nation found to be consuming excessive amounts of water or polluting the river will be fined or taxed accordingly.

The Charter also called for lucrative construction projects to be checked for any damage they could cause countries downstream. It also aims to resolve conflicts of interest between ABN member states.

The ABN plans to build two dams -- one in Niger and the other in Mali -- with funds approved by the Islamic Development Bank in 2007. These will aim to protect the basin's ecosystem and increase the fertility of drought-prone areas.

At the start of the summit, Niger's President Mamadou Tandja expressed his concern over the drastic fall of up to 55 percent in the river's flow over the past 20 years, mainly due to climate change and growing populations.

He warned that "the challenges and stakes" of improving the Niger river basin were now larger than ever and carried a heavy potential price for the future security of both food and water resources.

The existence of Africa's third largest river after the Nile and Congo is seriously threatened by drought and silting up drastically reducing its flow.

ABN has been concerned for three decades about the slow death of the river whose basin covers an area of 2.1 million square kilometres (800,000 square miles), a third of the area of all west Africa.

A drop in rainfall, silting, pressures of population growth, industrial waste and unsuitable production techniques have all contributed to threatening the river's existence, says ABN.

Navigation and the fish population have suffered because of the sluggish flow and the presence of destructive aquatic vegetation.

More than 110 million people, most of whom are very poor, live in the river's basin area. This figure will have doubled by 2025 due to an annual population growth rate of three percent, ABN said.

It fears this will force governments to shoulder the influx of "environmental refugees" and lead to further exploitation and destruction of natural resources.

Burkina Faso, Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger and Nigeria attended the Niamey summit.

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