The Stream, November 13, 2024: On Zambia-Zimbabwe Border, World’s Largest Human-Made Lake Nears Dangerous All-Time Water Lows

Kariba Dam, on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. Photo courtesy of Flickr/Creative Commons user Joe McKenna

YOUR GLOBAL RUNDOWN

Climate change, dams, and increased water usage have caused one of Australia’s longest rivers to lose more than half of its median annual flow over the past 30 years.
Wildland workers in Ukraine are navigating unexploded bombs and leftover landmines as they attempt to put out wildfires and assess the health of fields and waters.
In Brazil’s Bailique Archipelago, where the Amazon River meets the Atlantic Ocean, the inland advance of saltwater is forcing communities to relocate.
The Kariba Dam, which supplies both Zambia and Zimbabwe with electricity and fuels their economies, is on the cusp of shutting down for the first time in 65 years.

Drought and historic storms over the past year have made growing crops in Malawi nearly impossible — now, communities are competing with crocodiles to gather mangoes.

“There used to be enough to feed everyone and sell the surplus for income. Now, all our fields are flooded, and the water won’t go down. We can no longer grow anything.” — Joseph Yona, the chief of Kamuga, a village in southern Malawi.

Maize used to be one of the most reliable, tasty, and economically sustainable crops in Kamuga, Malawi. But these days, France24 reports, all there has been to eat for more than a year — for breakfast, lunch, and dinner — is mangoes.

These homogenous kitchen tables tell the story of a larger change, as many communities throughout the country are continuing to reconcile with the fallout of last year’s turbulent weather. In March 2023, Cyclone Freddy dropped six months of rain on Malawi in just six days. Roughly 1,200 people died, and two million farmers lost their crops. Then, in November, El Niño weather patterns ushered in an historic, months-long drought.

For a country “where more than 16 million people rely on rain-fed agriculture,” such erratic precipitation has been more than devastating. As of this spring, 4.4 million people were still facing food insecurity. To make matters worse, the mango trees that have survived in Kamuga are located adjacent to a crocodile-infested river. Several attacks — some deadly — have been reported. Meanwhile, efforts to diversify crops and divert river water to irrigate new fields have launched, to great success for some. But high costs — and continued uncertainty over future weather patterns — are real barriers for others.

— Christian Thorsberg, Interim Stream Editor

Recent WaterNews from Circle of Blue

Amish Farmers’ Partnership With Beef Giant Produces Manure Mess — Water pollution found in three counties in Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan.
2024 Election: State and Local Voters Consider Tax Increases for Water Protection — Funds would provide for land and water conservation.

The Lead

Amidst ongoing drought and rising average temperatures in southern Africa, Lake Kariba, the world’s largest human-made lake, has faltered dangerously near record-low water levels. Straddling the delta shared by the reservoir and the Zambezi River, the Kariba Dam has been subject to rations and restricted flows in an effort to conserve water, the Guardian reports. To the lake’s north, Zambia has endured 21-hour power cuts in recent months. To the south, 17-hour shutoffs have disrupted life in Zimbabwe. An outright shutdown of the dam is not off the table.

The absence of rain has devastated business not only in Zambia and Zimbabwe, but also in nearby Lesotho, Malawi, and Namibia, all of whose leaders have declared national disasters.

In early September, the World Health Organization released a report that estimated African countries are losing an average of two percent to five percent of their annual GDPs to climate change adaptation, losses, and recovery — an economic burden that is disproportionate to the amount of carbon the continent emits on the global scale (less than 10 percent). Among the climate disasters mentioned, drought was the second-greatest “hazard of concern” for African countries, Circle of Blue reported.

This year, Zambia’s economic growth is expected to be cut in half. Zimbabwe’s growth is expected to fall more steeply, from 5.3 percent last year to two percent.

Perhaps most concerning for environmentalists is the alternative energy sources both countries may be forced to explore, albeit begrudgingly, for the sake of security. Jito Kayumba, a special adviser to the country’s president, told the Guardian: “This is not particularly good news for promoters of sustainability and matters of climate, but we are doubling down on coal … because we do have an abundance of coal.”

This Week’s Top Water Stories, Told In Numbers

Percentage of water the Murrumbidgee River, one of Australia’s longest rivers, lost in its most affected section between 1988 and 2018 due to the building of dams, diversions, and the city of Canberra’s increased water usage. The Guardian reports that the Lowbidgee floodplain, “the river’s largest wetland,” has been one of the most negatively impacted ecosystems as a result of this change. The biodiverse freshwater area, a waterbird hotspot, depends on regular river flooding for its long-term health. As flows have decreased, the average time between these flooding occurrences “had more than doubled, from once every two years to once every 4.4 years.” Research suggests that climate change could further reduce annual streamflow by between seven and 10 percent until 2075.

The number of forest workers who have been killed by landmines, shelling, or other traps in Ukraine’s wooded and agricultural areas since the war with Russia began, Reuters reports. Roughly 425,000 hectares of the country’s forests are known to be contaminated with mines or unexploded weapons, with another three million hectares, formerly occupied by Russian forces, still unassessed. These threats have made it nearly impossible for Ukrainian environmental workers to contain or extinguish forest fires, reforest areas, or assess the health of agricultural land and waters. In February, the World Bank estimated “that the damage wrought by the war on forests and other protected natural areas including marshes and wetlands exceeded $30 billion.”

On the Radar

On the eastern coast of Brazil, where the Amazon River “discharges one-fifth of the world’s freshwater” into the Atlantic, the ocean is fighting back. While the push-pull of freshwater outflows and seawater inflows typically changes with the seasons, saltwater “pushed upriver for longer, around five months” last year, wreaking havoc on the communities of the Bailique Archipelago who rely on the Amazon for their freshwater needs. Bank erosion caused power lines and buildings to slump into the river. In the absence of any piped water, community members either left their homes or suffered extended electricity outages and water rations. The Associated Press reports that these changes at the mouth of the Amazon have taken an acute toll on acai, one of the economic pillars of the region.

More Water News

Trump Taps Zeldin for EPA: The U.S. president-elect has chosen former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin to lead the EPA, the New York Times reports. During his tenure as a congressman Zeldin “voted against clean water legislation at least a dozen times” — though he did twice support taking pro-environmental action on PFAS contamination — according to the League of Conservation Voters scorecard, which lists his lifetime environmental score at just 14 percent.

NOAA’s Future: The future operations of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — whose weather and water data is crucial for American growers, ranchers, water managers, drought watchers, wildland firefighters, landslide monitors, and more — is now in question following the election of Donald Trump, Inside Climate News reports.

Christian Thorsberg

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer from Chicago. He is passionate about climate and cultural phenomena that often appear slow or invisible, and he examines these themes in his journalism, poetry, and fiction.