In the news this week.

On a slightly different topic today when researching current conflicts over water today I found the story of a farmer which i thought provided a rather interesting real life small scale look at hydro-politics, as often we see the topic from a much larger, governance persepective. Conflict in Kiboya in Kenya has been in the news this week as farmers and herders compete for limited supplies of groundwater that is vital for the sustenance of their livelihoods. In the lowland basin of the Laikipia county farmers and herders can find themselves walking over 7 miles to find water in an ever increasing shortage of water sources. Climate Change, which Kenya is very vulnerable to, has made drought and uncertain rains common place.  Herders are finding they have to move upstream and away from their normal grazing lands in search of water, often encroaching on other farmers and herders lands making conflict inevitable. 

Laws and Land rights agreements in the area are important in managing and mitigating conflicts. Up until 2012 pastoralists, communally,  owned the majority of the land however then is was sold of to larger scale ranchers so that now only 50% belonged to smaller scale farmers. Herders and farmers are now all losing out to the larger scale ranches and have a more labour intensive and less profitable occupation since the changes in land rights. 

Solutions to the Problems? 

The Water Resource Management Authority, a government authority, plan to fence and restore dams across the Laikipia county, to reduce pressure on water supplies and make water in the area more sustainable and a year round resource.Simon Mwangi, chair of the Water Resource Users Association said  "The plan will help in conservation of water catchment and regulate water usage." 

Holding meetings where the farmers and pastoralists can meet in a forum where they can speak about the issues they are facing and try to come to a resolution. Conservation agriculture has provided a sustainable solution to the water shortages and hopefully this can be rolled out on a wider scale. Farmers practicing this style of farming were relatively unaffected by droughts and so no longer need to fight over water. 

This is an example of an every day conflict people around the world are facing as demand rises and supply falls for water supplies. Almost every day there is a similar story in the news and this just illustrates how topical and important the discussion about conflicts over water supplies is at the moment. 

Zambezi River Basin - Case Study

In this blog post i will focus solely on the river basin of the Zambezi which supports over 40 million people in many different forms including for tourism, industry, for energy and for drinking water along with many more. The management and protection of this precious source of life is of the upmost importance, It is bought into difficulties however as the river basin is shared between eight countries including Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. these countries do not always share the same views on the best allocation and use of the water source and often find that they have competing interests. 

From Table 1 shown highlighted in red on the table, the countries Malawi and Zimbabwe suffer from increased water stress, defined as per capita water resources being below 1,700m3 per capita. (Falkenmark, 1989) Water stress in Southern Africa is likely to be made worse by climate change in the coming years, as droughts and severe weather makes available water resources ever more unpredictable. These countries have to be increasingly careful with how they manage their supplies and the lack of institutional structures in place for the basin as a whole has hampered these efforts. 

[Table 1. Water resources in the Zambezi Basin. SCHOLES AND BIGGS 2004] 

In 2011 the Zambezi finally gained a governing body called the Zambezi Watercourse Commission (ZamCom). The hope that this would make the management of the river easier has been hampered by the fact that Zambia, which experiences around half of the rivers flow, has yet to join.  There has been growing unease about this as if Zambia start allocating or withdrawing water in greater volumes, there could be severe consequence for those downstream who rely on the Zambezi for their livelihoods.  

The main worry for the downstream countries is that Zambia will start to make large water transfers, as demand for water rises due to increased water stress in Southern Africa, reducing the flow of the Zambezi downstream. There is an increasing likelihood that Zimbabwe and Mozambique could challenge the “hydrological hegemony” of Zambia that it exerts using its position of an upstream nation to “expand its consumptive water use” often to the detriment of the downstream nations.  (CGIAR, 2015)