Herding in the communal areas of northern Namibia.
Botswana
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Unmapped
treasure
Just about
every country in the world, except for island states, probably shares an aquifer
with a neighbour. Yet these hidden sources of blue gold rarely appear on a map because
so little is known about them. Unesco is trying to promote a better understanding
of these aquifers from a scientific, legal and management perspective. A new project
will not only highlight important case studies like the Karoo, but develop maps and
a database on how best to manage and monitor transboundary aquifers. The project
has several partners, notably the IAH, the Food and Agriculture Organization and
the UN Economic Commission for Europe.
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“Drop
by drop, water sculpts the rock.”
Theocrites,
Greek poet
(315-250 B.C.)
|
This
is a land
of ephemeral rivers,
which arrive with
near violence
and disappear
without warning. |
Namibia
almost came to blows with Botswana over plans to divert a river, but the answer may
lie just beneath the surface of the driest country south of the Sahara
Just nod with a smile
and maybe your companion from the Water Affairs Department won’t notice the confusion.
Driving north into the vast spaces of Namibia, you keep missing the rivers he spots.
“And this is the Okahanja River,” he says. Another blank nod. “And here we have the
famous Omatako. It may look small but this river can be very powerful.” Look small?
Look where? The patient Greg Christelis is gushing with tales of flash floods, yet
all you see is a cracked and sandy track in the bush, when suddenly, what used to
be dry facts and figures about erratic rainfall and aridity come rushing back–Namibia
doesn’t have any regular or perennial rivers to call its own.*
This is a land of ephemeral rivers, which arrive with near violence and disappear
without warning, flowing for a few hours, days or even weeks after a good hard rain
before fading into the red desert sand or the tall grass of the savannah. But when
they do run, they represent events in people’s lives. Men will still swap stories
about a river that hasn’t flowed for 30 years. The old-school Afrikaner farmer will
religiously plot rainfall levels on a graph, while in black communal areas, the same
information is embedded in lessons that a father recounts to his children.
A
dehydrated capital
In
Namibia–the driest country south of the Sahara–water scarcity and unpredictability
form a constant constraint on national development. Average annual rainfall is 250
mm compared to 1,400 mm in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example. A corner
of the country can receive double the average rainfall one season and nothing for
years after. And the little that does fall doesn’t stay for long: 83 percent is lost
to evaporation, plants soak up and then sweat another 14 percent back into the atmosphere,
leaving just two percent to run off those mysteriously ephemeral rivers and one percent
to infiltrate rock underground.
That single digit, however, may transform the Namibian landscape. Groundwater is
already providing for about half of the country’s needs and its role will increase
as the population grows and droughts hit harder and more frequently with predicted
climate change. Yet this invisible resource is just breaking the surface of the country’s
national and regional priorities.
“For the past ten years, we’ve focused on negotiating protocols [agreements] for
international rivers like the Zambezi, which involved eight states. But we ignored
groundwater, even through we have aquifers running across national boundaries,” says
Dr. Serge Puyoo, a French geohydrologist working with the Southern African Development
Community (SADC). Think of aquifers as a lattice of rock, whose cracks, crooks and
crannies are filled with water. Sometimes the water is from recent rain which seeped
down through the soil. Other aquifers only contain fossil water, rain of bygone geological
eras. Depending upon various factors–from the type of rock to the pull of gravity–the
water can slowly flow within the aquifer and beyond. Like rivers, aquifers pay no
heed to national borders.
As Puyoo explains, “not only has there been a general lack of knowledge in monitoring
and mapping these aquifers, but a cultural and historical blockage to recognizing
them. Many countries relegate groundwater to the geology departments of government
or universities. So politicians and water managers are unaware of the potential and
limits of the resource, until they are faced with a crisis.”
That is exactly what happened in 1996-97, when severe drought brought Namibia’s capital,
Windhoek, to its knees and the country close to the brink of war with neighbouring
Botswana, according to sensational media reports. Simmering tensions over disputed
borders added fuel to the fire surrounding Namibia’s plan to divert part of the Okavango
River, which originates in Angola before carving the border with Namibia and then
snaking into Botswana to feed the “jewel of the Kalahari.” In this vast wetland,
traditional communities weave around a wealth of biodiversity and wildlife that tourist
operators milk for foreign currency, amounting to ten percent of the country’s gross
domestic product.
For ecologists in Botswana, the river was sacred. But in Namibia, those shining waters
appeared as a saviour, prompting civil engineers like Piet Heyns to update an old
scheme to pipe about one or two percent of the average flow to dehydrated Windhoek.
The capital was in crisis–ordinarily three dams would store enough water to keep
the city running for a few years. Two were almost empty and the third was collecting
dust. Officials were digging holes in a desperate search for more groundwater, while
municipal authorities set up an electric sign to count down the days remaining of
supply in the dams. By the time it hit 30, the government prepared to divert the
Okavango. Then, without warning, it rained…
Rolling
back apartheid’s legacy
Today, the plans for the pipeline still sit within reach of Piet Heyns, who is now
director of Water Affairs and Namibia’s representative to the Permanent Okavango
River Basin Water Commission, which is supposed to resolve the dispute over the river.
Heyns and his counterpart in Botswana, Balisi Khupe, speak of glowing plans for joint
studies and monitoring. Yet according to some experts involved, the commission is
mired in bureaucratic gridlock. The delay may prove beneficial, however, as Namibia
moves with the international current running against building new dams and their
hefty price-tags.
Instead of grabbing for rivers, the government is looking underground to economize
its reserves, notably by building the largest water bank on the continent. The aim
is to plug the holes in the three dams, partly connected by an open canal running
more than 250 kilometres in the bushy savannah, where substantial amounts literally
vanish as vapour. In 1997, for example, the three dams supplied Windhoek with about
15.7 million cubic metres (Mm3) of water. Yet the system lost 33.5 Mm3 to evaporation.
Instead of letting that precious river and rain water bake in the sun, plans are
underway to inject it into an aquifer under the city. The next phase will lie in
opening two “branches” of the bank at nearby dams.
Through investment schemes like the bank, Namibia is removing the vestiges of apartheid’s
control over its natural resources 11 years after independence from South Africa.
“There was so much money flowing in from South Africa that we did major infrastructure
projects without proper study,” says Greg Christelis, chief geohydrologist at Water
Affairs. The problem may not have been the quantity of money flowing in, but the
direction it took: straight to wealthy white folk in Windhoek and the surrounding
cattle country, where the average livestock farm, fattened by subsidies, covers at
least 5,000 hectares.
Namibia is not alone in trying to roll back the hydrological legacy of apartheid.
South Africa is in the lead, passing the world’s most progressive water law to ensure
fair and sustainable use of the resource at home and abroad. With 80 percent of its
river (surface) water originating in Lesotho, the government is keenly aware of the
need for hydro-diplomacy among its neighbours, notably Namibia and Botswana. “We’re
trying to move from the Okavango to something more positive,” says Christine Colvin
of the International Association of Hydrogeologists in South Africa. Through SADC,
representatives from the three countries (and others) have crafted a set of soon-to-be
legally binding rules on jointly monitoring and managing groundwater, especially
transboundary aquifers. Bear in mind that this is probably the one natural resource
that has managed to avoid international regulation. Countries spent decades hammering
out a UN convention on international rivers, yet they barely discussed deep aquifers.
Instead of trying to forge formal agreements, international organizations like Unesco
are promoting data exchange and joint monitoring between countries (see box). Namibia,
Botswana and South Africa are now mapping an enormous sequence of aquifers, known
as the Karoo, which spreads across the Kalahari into all three countries. The initial
hope was that the investigations would uncover phenomenal supplies of water in Namibia
that could serve as an alternative to the controversial Okavango scheme. On the contrary,
the Namibian side appears to be on the decline, according to Jurgen Kirchner, who
is helping to coordinate a major study financed and led by the Japan International
Cooperation Agency that focused on the country’s most important swathe of Karoo,
known as Stampriet and covering an area of 65,000 kilometres2. The two ephemeral
rivers which most experts used to believe fed the aquifer seem to dead-end in sand
dunes. The only apparent source of recharge is rainfall collecting in sinkholes,
or indents in the topography, according to recent satellite images.
Trouble
in cattle country
The
bad news is more destabilizing within the country than across the borders. In South
Africa, the aquifer sits beneath a national park, which requires little water. Demand
is also low in Botswana, where few people are willing to brave the remote Kalahari,
although this may eventually change as traffic increases along a new highway crossing
the desert.
The real conflict is brewing in Stampriet, which, says Kirchner, must reduce its
water use by 30 percent. This prognosis will ricochet like a bullet in this rolling
land, with crests of red sand. This isn’t just any stretch of cattle country, but
a bastion of wealthy white farmers who believe that they are the backbone of a land
they love but a country they seem to fear and even hate.
Stampriet is the home of a “tough breed,” says Willie Prinsloo, a legendary driller
who dug for water and minerals across southern Africa before retiring to his farm,
Donnersberg or Thunder Mountain, where he raises livestock and wildlife for trophy
hunting on 7,500 hectares. The one-eyed Willie runs the farm like a ship, overseeing
every watering hole for cattle and vegetable planted in the plot he shares with his
four labourers, who live in tidy cottages behind his own home. Banish the thought
that he and his brethren are depleting the aquifer, says Prinsloo. Fault lies with
the government–for it refuses to replace the farmers’ boreholes, the old rusty metal
pipes installed decades ago to bring up the groundwater. To reach the Karoo, the
boreholes must first pass through another aquifer which tends to have very salty
water. Holes in the pipes enable this saline stuff to sink down and pollute the clean
Karoo.
Communal
wisdom
The
government, however, has a new policy in which people pay for the water services
and infrastructure. In the north, nomadic herding communities are helping to install
new pumps and should one day pay for the water they use. Might the same apply to
Stampriet?
The question provokes a torrent of what many would consider racism, as Prinsloo expounds
on the benefits of colonialism. Beneath the old hatred lies a new fear: government
plans to spread the wealth by land taxes and water metres. Here in the Kalahari,
you can still feel the heat from Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, so few dare to place the
word “land” before “redistribution.” But the government is slowly buying commercial
(generally white) farms from willing sellers to ease pressure in the northern communal
areas, which are in many ways like a separate country, divided by a three-metre-high
fence from the commercial cattle farms of men like Prinsloo.
According to the Japanese study, about five percent of Stampriet’s 1,500 farms are
now government-owned. So not only must the Afrikaner brethren cut down on their water
consumption, but they can also prepare for more and new neighbours. Yet Stampriet’s
farmers are probably the only ones in the country to use half their expensive groundwater
to grow commercial crops. For economists, this is like throwing gold away–every cubic
metre of water invested in irrigation brought in just half a Namibian dollar (U.S.
$0.06). For the sake of the Karoo, Stampriet’s newcomers hopefully won’t follow the
“commercial” ways of the “tough breed” next door.
* Four perennial
rivers form part of Namibia’s national borders.
For more information, http://www.unesco.org/water |
