OKACOM executive secretary Eben Chonguiça says joint fact-finding has helped Angola, Botswana and Namibia to build a basis of trust so that balanced choices over development in the Okavango River basin can proceed.

 

 Fransiska Thikerete interviews EBEN CHONGUICA, executive secretary of OKACOM [4:12m]: Play Now | Download (73)

Climate change could drive women’s empowerment, says Stephanie Midgley.

 

 Zeenat Abdul interviews STEPHANIE MIDGLEY [1:50m]: Play Now | Download (76)

Among the more than a hundred people present at the Multi-Stakeholder Water Dialogue, there was a curious absence: ordinary citizens, such as the smallholder farmers whose lives and livelihoods participants heard will be most immediately affected by climate change were nowhere to be seen.

 

 Climate change could drive women's empowerment, says Stephanie Midgley.: Play Now | Download (76)

Floods are usually viewed as a threat, but a cyclical increase in the Okavango’s flooding has increased biodiversity and tourism in the area.

Energy expert Catherine Fedorsky says that since so much energy in the region is generated by a limited resource – water – and it is all the more important that countries find a fair way of sharing it.

Despite early warnings about higher-than-usual flooding of the Okavango Delta in 2010, homes, fields, latrines and boreholes in the delta were flooded.

 

 OKACOM executive secretary Eben Chonguiça assesses progress towards coordinated development in the basin.: Play Now | Download (73)

With 93 percent of Africa’s water in transboundary basins, most parties are coming to appreciate how benefit sharing provides opportunities to for optimal water management, says David Phillips.

To get community buy-in to protect woodlands, conservationists have teamed up with a herbalist, who as a leader in his community, acts as a role model, convincing other residents to change their ways.

The term climate change is on the tip of everyone’s tongue, but while extensive work has been done on the hard science of global warming, there is far less research into a detailed understanding of its impacts on economic and social development.

LIMCOM has found that intensive use of water [mainly by South African industries] might be one of the factors influencing a decline in water levels downstream.