Busani Bafana

God is not making any new water. Credit: Zahira Kharsany/IPS

MAPUTO (IPS) – God is not making any new water. It will not rain anymore in the Limpopo Basin.
Experts say that because of this, water will have to be used more efficiently so that people will have enough to survive.

While the lack of water has often been easily blamed as the major cause of poverty and malnutrition within the Limpopo River Basin, it is not. Researchers argue that lack of access to water, and low water productivity (the benefits obtained in the depletion of one unit of water) as more widespread problems in Southern Africa.

The Limpopo River Basin spans across Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe where almost 14 million people live – more than half in rural areas. Though the basin has on average good rainfall (of 530mm/year), it is not consistent. Water levels vary throughout the year moving between extremes, making agriculture very risky. This shows in the high levels of poverty and malnutrition in all four countries.

“What (water) we have, we have but we need to be able to use it more efficiently and increase our productivity with what is available,” Dr. Amy Sullivan, told IPS. Sullivan, a researcher, works with the Food Agriculture Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) and was speaking on the sidelines of the network’s policy Dialogue in Mozambique.

“Everyone will probably benefit from more water at particular times but generally speaking there are ways to improve how we use available water,” said Sullivan.

She added: “We can increase availability, through storage for example, planting improved variety of crops that use water more efficiently and through technologies that allow small holder growers to increase productivity.”

Sullivan cited inadequate market linkages as some of the causes of poor water productivity by farmers in the Limpopo Basin.

“I have heard farmers say: ‘I can grow anything I just need a place to sell it’ and I think that is true of most of this basin. Farmers can grow anything but without the proper incentives and linkages to do so they are automatically decreasing productivity, “Sullivan said.

She said if rainfall across the basin doubled, that alone would not reduce poverty. “But it will make more mud.”

She said that part of the solution to improving water efficiency was to create incentives for farmers such as making education available for their children, providing good health care systems and also providing farmers with the title deeds to farming land. She also added that it was important farmers had the right to use water.

Simon Cook, a researcher with the Challenges Programme for Water and Food based in Sri Lanka, said in addition to water scarcity, unequal sharing of water and exposure to water hazards such as floods were an obstacle to be overcome.

“Lack of access to water and land is a major constraint but merely providing these resources does not necessarily solve the problem,” Cook told IPS. “We need to look at how the system is functioning as whole.”

Cook said the Limpopo Basin; one of four basins in Africa had the potential for greater productivity through rain-fed agriculture; and the improvement of irrigation and agricultural methods. This is a complex process that often causes tension in the community and with government officials over the uses of water.

“In some ways the tension caused by the demand (of water) is not the problem,” said Cook.
He said the problem lay with what some people call deliberate water politics. The solution to this, he said, is having a transparent process that educates people about the how water will be used and also involves them in the process.

For South African crop and livestock farmer, Otto Mbangula, the right to water is the right to life. He says farmers like him are at the mercy of modern water ’sharks’.

He told IPS that water rights were critical for South African farmers who had bought farms but had no water rights.

“Water is being sold in South Africa by MECs, (provincial ministers) and that water is more expensive than land,” said Mbangula a member of the National African Farmers Union of South Africa.

“If there is one expensive commodity… – it is water.”

He added that when one bought a farm, the person would be told that the right to water for the farm belonged to someone else.

Limpopo River Basin Credit: WikiCommons