Water crisis in Botswana -blame the weather or your neighbour

| Monday May 20, 2013 00:00

Just to epitomise the subject - Are you wrong to be mad at me if after all your efforts of providing me with clean treated water - you see me throw it away on the ground only to ask for more. If you asked me, I would say it's disrespectful and moreover criminal.

Of course the example is just a fraction of the subject matter i.e. water shortage faced by this country, Botswana. The first time we experienced a water crisis in Botswana we blamed the weather and as we waited for it to clear we turned around to draw water from the North.

This time there are chances we shall be going further to the North-West and probably across borders etc. and only then shall we know we have a big problem in our hands - water deficit.

As part of the above we constructed many dams and boreholes all this in the spirit of supplementing water for Batswana.

The bottom-line is that the problem is not with the weather but a simple water deficit issue i.e. the amount of water available to us from rains is less than the amount we require.

In fact this matter is not new to us since several reports have, for long, pointed out that Botswana shall be facing this shortage and further showing a nose dive pattern over time.

The table below shows that almost all countries in the SADC are predicted to have very serious water shortage by 2025.

Extracted from Hirji R. at el, Defining and mainstreaming environmental sustainability in water resources management in Southern Africa, SADC

To explain this further it is important to appreciate where we get water from and similarly the way we Batswana perceive and indeed relate to water.

Botswana receives water through rainfall and recently the weather patterns have become very unpredictable culminating in dwindled precipitations.

To exemplify this, if the amount of water we receive is 20 units of water and 10 is lost through all sorts of ways including infiltration, flows away across borders by rivers, evaporation etc. then only 10 units remain available to us and is accessed through reservoirs or dams and wells or boreholes. On the other hand, water is consumed through domestic use, commercial i.e. construction, irrigation, and life-stock.

Water demand or level of usage increases with time and as the population explodes paralleled by growing economic performance of the country, water demand exceeds supply, as shown in the graph above and as is the case with our neighbouring countries. This means we need more water than what is available to us.

The traditional approach is to get additional water from elsewhere, as we currently get from the north. The same way, as demand increases further, this additional amount is eventually exceeded. It's fair to say water deficit did not happen overnight and rather entitlement mindset is the problem.

As shown in the above graph, the situation of water shortage stands to get worse unless we do something about it now. As highlighted getting water from Lesotho, Okavango or elsewhere does not become a solution to the problem at hand but a temporary relief measure that postpones or delays the terminal point.

As indicted, instead of facing the problem head-on, by tradition, we normally resort to self-deceit - 'go oketsa marago ka matlapa' while the situation degenerates. Simply put, sinking more dams and boreholes beyond the amount of water available to us through rainfall does not help in any way.

Where do we go from here? - bury our heads in the sand?Well, we can derive comfort from the fact that water shortage is not peculiar to Boswana but a worldwide  phenomena. In fact water shortage is worse in countries with heavier population levels and a lot of them have since been forced to take a step and their experience is vital to us.

Very characteristic of us, we shall remain hopeful that more rains will come to our rescue - a stance tantamount to burying our heads in the sand.

History shows that we only learn at a point when things have come to a dead stop as was the case with electricity where we are now tail-chasing.

Today it is water just after power and immediately next is land and so on. Typically, when we experienced serious water shortage a few years back - it was a time when traffic circles were grassed green, a situation that caused collision between cattle and traffic.

Water shortage forced us to appreciate that none-water based decorations were good enough and in the process cattle fighting with vehicles for supremacy became a thing of the past. Thanks for the crisis.

One can only hope that, water shortage as we currently experience it, stands to awaken us forever as we move forward.

For us to hope that the skies will come to our rescue is only but a recipe for a disaster sure to happen.

Do all with what we haveIf we were ever to appreciate that the rain water we receive is a given i.e. it is limited and importantly it's one thing we have no control over whereas on the other hand population and other sources that consume water continues to increase, it would become easier for us to respond appropriately to the call and among the list would be our relationship with water, response to conservational calls etc.

Another contribution from greengardens.5vh@gmail.com, promoters of water conservation systems i.e. harvesting, recycling etc. is our passion.