You would think that the booming car wash industry in Gaborone and the water-hungry palm trees in demand for landscaping around town, places Botswana among the world’s tropical countries.
Yet,whileanyone paying attention knows that Botswana is a drought-proneland and almost absent of rivers, water is consumed all over the county with abandon, with wastage seemingly of no particular public concern. People aspire to own cattle, the thirstiest of all domestic animals. A single beastcan drink 50 litres or more per day or 30,000 litres until slaughter,which translates into 80 litres for a single kg of beef bought at the local supermarket. People in other nations with low rainfall depend on sheep and goats, but in Botswana there are more cattle than people.
If you attended last Wednesday’s Public Forum on Water (theme: “What Does the Future Hold for Botswana’s Water Supply?), hosted by The Botswana Society and Livingstone Kolobeng College, you would have come away full aware that, when it comes to water resources v. consumption rates, Botswana is living on borrowed time.
Presenter Rre Gaselemogwe Senai, Infrastructure Director at Water Utilities, candidly surveyed the nation’s existing water resources insofar as rainfall patterns, water capture systems, and ground water are concerned and described the long-term plans in place to attempt to secure Botswana’s future water supply. The talk revealed that (1) water is in critical short supply where the demand is greatestÔÇöesp. Greater Gaborone, and (2) long-term remedies being put into place are likely to cope with the situation for another decade or, at best, two.
The most troubling fact staring Botswana in the face is the pattern of intensifying drought. Of the last 33 years (i.e., since 1980), more than half (18) have been drought years, and on three occasions (1981-84, 91-92/93-94, and 2002-2006) drought has been ‘episodic’, i.e., extended over four or five successive years of varying intensity. This means that subsequent rainy years are unlikely to recharge the water supply. For example the most recent episodic drought dropped the capacity of Gaborone dam to 16%. We are now into another episodic stretch, which began in 2011 and for which no clear end is in sight. The Gaborone dam is now at 11% capacity, or effectively dry. And where rainfall is scarce, as in the Kanye area, boreholes are being tapped at varying levels (some well above) that required for sustainability. In the past, extended droughts were followed by uninterrupted years of good rain. Not anymore.
And rainfall, when it comes, is another problem that offers no simple solutions. Rainfall patterns vary widely in the country, with most rainfall (as much as 650 mm) falling on average in the north, and as little as 150 mm in the south. Even in areas of higher average rainfall, it cannot be counted on to occur at particular times or even regularly in given areas. As high as 90% of an area’s rainfall has been known to fall in a single month, and of course almost all rain, wherever the location, comes during the hottest months of the year, when evaporation rates are the highest.
In other words, Botswana’s conditions favour neither fresh water predictability nor availability. The country’s more-or-less flat terrain also does not lend itself to capturing water in significant amounts. Planning to capture, store and deliver water therefore faces serious challenges.
Rre Senaisummarisedthe 30-year National Water Management Plan (NWMP), commenced in 1990, and notedits 10-year review process beginning 2006 (with the next review two years hence). He illustrated in detail Government and Water Utilities’ ambitious infrastructure project, which briefly and in lay terms, seeks to capture and store water in the north and northeast, where it is most abundant and capable of being dammed, and to build a reliable pipeline system to deliver to the South where demand far exceeds local supply (Dams in or close to the Greater Gaborone area are not being replenished, are small, and have exhausted the damming options available. The large Ramotswa wellfield is contaminated and requires a treatment facility before it can be connected to the main water supply).
The troubled NorthSouthCarrier (NCS1) is being repaired, and water from the new dams atLosane (2014), Dikgatlhong (2015), and Thune (2015) together with lines sourcing Chobe/Zambezi and the Lesotho Highlands(Molatedi Dam) are expected to be linked to the new North-South Carrier (NSC2) pipeline. Wellfields along the way, such as Phala Road, Masama, and Molotwane, will feed the same supply line. Hopefully, by 2015the Greater Gaborone and other southeast areas will receive amounts far exceeding demand and, all things being equal, can expect an adequate supply for the next 10-15 years. Thereafter new sources will likely have to be drawnfrom to cope, along with new technologies of storage, recharge, and capturing rainfall, including urban run-off.
While water arrives, methods will have to be found to reduce waste and consumption. Leakage, a problem exacerbated by old and poorly-maintained pipelines, will require significant overhaul, if the current 29% loss of water through leakage nation-wide is to be brought down to the international standard of 15% (though in Gaborone at 18% the problem is less severe).
Public consumption, or rather over consumption, continues in spite of Level 1 restrictions on use of potable water for gardening, washing cars with hosepipes, replenishing swimming pools, and the like. Compliance and more water conscious behaviour, though improved during this past drought year as one might expect, is still high at 85% of normal consumption, well above and not trending toward the WUC target of 70%.
While Rre Senai dwelt on potable water resources as related to domestic consumption, he noted other major areas that challenge the water policy and its integration into the national framework, particularly agriculture (irrigation, farm lands, and livestock), mining and industry (where some impressive water management strategies are operating), and energy.
Rre Gabaake Gabaake, Africa Regional Manager for Tlou Energy and Past Director of Water Affairs, noted in response that the NWMP, while a very good plan, might be too short term and too costly to take into account the certain decline in government revenues as diamonds play out, and the need to address unresolved water losses from urban stormwater run-off in particular (to see water in the streets, “not as a nuisance, but a resource,” he remarked.)Rre Gabaake argued that, in the larger, long-term scheme of things, Botswana should consider “taking demand to where the water is”, rather than the reverse, as is the present case with the NWMP. The construction of BIUST, which is sure to stimulate growth in the Phalapye area, is a good sign that sustaining national development might be more easily accomplished by trending economic and population growth north away from the overburdened south/southeast.
In the discussion that followed, a number of additional points were made that spoke to the water crisis, which all admitted Botswana has to confront. Concerns were expressed that Botswana was not active enough in requiring the installation of water-efficient ablutions technologies, for example, enforcing existing Level 1 regulations, and being tougher on wastage.
The low if not free cost of water, which Rre Senai admitted was far below regional and global standards, is likely an incentive for wastage and that correcting the problem will mean not only higher rates to control consumption but mechanisms put into place to collect them. Such rates, to cover the cost of delivery and maintenance, are likely to drive costs at unaffordable levels for the average consumer. And, as one observer noted, though the NWMP is commendable in many respects, the problems of implementation in major projects, which has bedevilled Botswana, has already afflicted water infrastructure projects, such as the NSC1 pipeline. The Dikgatlhong dam, designed by engineers to take several years to fill up, overflowed in its first year of operation.
Infrastructural issues, which is the topic of the next water forum in this Quarterly 2014 series, will certainly receive greater attention. The presenter at the second May 28 forum will be Water Utilities CEO, Rre Godfrey Mudanga. These forums are free and open to the public.
Fred Morton, Honorary Secretary, The Botswana Society. [email protected]
