Nexus between shared resources and a community-focused water management system

Interview conducted By Baboloki Semele

Although a great deal of attention and focus in Africa is actually more on economic failure and political instability, there is quite a lot happening on the ground, showing Africa thriving.

This publication caught up with Dr. Karen Villholth, principal researcher and groundwater focal point for International Water Management Institute.

The centre of discussion was striving for groundwater: a secure future in Limpopo. How shared resources and a community-focused water management system could be the solution to a land ravaged by the climate crisis.

The Limpopo river basin is the driest and has been for 35 years now. It winds its way through four Countries – Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. We are yet to find out in this exclusive interview with Dr. Villholth how better management of the groundwater supplies could transform residents’ lives. Here is how the zoom interview went:

Spiked Online Media (SM): We appreciate your talking to us this afternoon.

Dr. Villholth: Great, it is nice to hear from you, addressing the positive side, because most of the time the news is about bad news. I appreciate your view and really looking for solutions, bringing in stakeholders, yeah, that’s really great.

SM: I think Dr. Villholth, in breaking the ice, maybe you can take us through the mandate of the International Water Management Institute.

DV: Thank you, Dr. Semele, the International Water Management Institute is a non-profit international water management research organisation with headquarters in Sri Lanka, and our regional office in South Africa in Pretoria. We also have other offices in different parts of Africa and also in Asia. We pride ourselves on being locally anchored, with our regional offices, because we work closely with stakeholders on the ground in relation to issues surrounding underground water and it is a general issue across both Africa and Asia. There is a huge demand for the type of work IWMI is doing: to manage its resources better, to ensure that all people have access to the water, and is clean and available at any time and for various purposes, in an equitable and sustainable manner. So that’s basically our mandate as IWMI.

SM: Okay, great work you are doing right there, and now this brings us to the main topic of why we are talking today: striving for a groundwater secure future in Limpopo. The question would be now, how can shared resources and a community-focused water management system be the solution, especially to a land that is already ravaged by the climate crisis, can it happen, are there working models?

DV: You are right in being questioning how we can address the issues, because as you said there are lots of increasing challenges relating to climate change, and with climate change, we also see a lot of issues related to water resources.

I think it is very sort of evident or obvious that when it gets drier we have less water available and farmers struggle because there is no rainfall, and even if they have irrigation, sometimes they don’t have enough irrigation water. So climate and water are interlinked and need to be managed jointly, and we do that at IWMI as well.

So we are not only a water institute, but we also do a lot on climate, trying to understand what’s happening, how it affects both surface and groundwater, and how we can put in place various measures, various management structures, and data tools if you like so that we can both predict, but also put measures in place that farmers to apply over those dry periods and severe cases happening due to climate change. We have seen quite a lot over the last, almost 5 years of dry droughts in the region. That’s a key point here, I think the water link to the climate.

SM: I have been following what you have been saying right now, and I cannot help but remember that since 2013, I would say 2012, to date, I have been travelling the length and breadth of the globe, attending conferences where people, are talking, and talking and talking, so at this point Dr. Villholth, I want to put it across to you, what instruments should we have in place, do we have enough instruments? I know we have been talking, do we have enough instruments that should be pushing the agenda, and what would you say is what should be done to ensure that we talk less and are more on the implanting side? Especially the legal instruments, not theoretical, because I think we have most theoretical instruments, and we need active instruments in place to ensure we are headed in the right direction, as far as your mandate is concerned.

DV: Thank you for that concern and question. I think my drive for making a change stems from the fact that we need to put in place integrated solutions. Things that pull different things together so that people are supported from different sides, so it is not enough to just put an irrigation system.

If you don’t have any monitoring of the resource, if you don’t know anything about the climate, if you don’t have the technologies that are needed that can sort of survive in the harsh climate, and so on. For instance, you can talk about groundwater, you need to know where the groundwater is, you need to have wells that are secure, even in drought, which means they have to be functioning, they have to be deep enough and the water has to be clean and so on.

All of these things must be known ahead of time and be in place to secure the situation. It is also important to note that it is not just only the technology in question. We also need to bring in the stakeholders and have them be part of the solutions.

And oftentimes they are the ones that have to live with the situation on the ground. And they are very resilient. We always think about people being vulnerable. I always turn it around and say the people that are living under these harsh conditions, are resilient, but of course, they need to have support, we need to do as much as we can to bring water to these people and support them, in their agriculture and other types of livelihood that depend on water resources.

You also talked about legal instruments, which is quite important when you talk about these transboundary water resources. In that regard, the two countries that are dealing on a shared resource could be more than two, they have to come together to understand the resource and figure out what are issues critical.

This is because there might not be any issues, because there is plenty of water, it is fresh, it is good and there is no issue, but as you know with climate change, with more and more population growth and so on, the resources are becoming more and more stressed and populations are getting under pressure as well and that’s when the cooperation around that shared water resources is very critical. And it might come to a point where we are not only sitting around the table, but we have to put some regulations and some sharing agreements in place, that will help set up the rules like, on how to share the water resources.

SM: Alright, awesome, you know this reminds me of my background, I remember talking to Zwane earlier on (for clarity Thuletho Zwane is the IWMI South Africa communication officer), I grew up here in Botswana, there is a village called Mogonye, and yeah you should visit sometime. So in Mogonye, you know we never took water for granted, because to date, most of the time we depended on the gorges in the mountains to give water, and you can imagine a population of 500+ people, competing for water with livestock and wild animals, but having all this scenario, we never had conflicts or disagreements arising because of water, so I wanted to put it across to you and ask, based on this story Dr. Villholth, could you say that water can be extinguisher of the fires of conflicts and war?

DV: Sure, definitely, and the evidence shows often time, water becomes more of a cooperating factor between countries, it is a fruitful platform to build relationships around. And even though that can be strenuous, the collaboration can be strenuous, I think more often than otherwise, you could see collaborations turning out to be positive. There will be some long-term benefits for both sides if you go into fruitful collaborations around water resources.

SM: Alright, now let us go to the Limpopo river basin. I am told it has been dry now for 35 years. Is there an alternative to the basin? What is the solution to arrest the situation?

DV: I think we have to recognize that Limpopo naturally is a dry area, and that’s just a matter of fact. There has been a lot of settlement in the basin because of various economic activities that draw people to the region like mining and so on, and basically, for that reason, the community strived and there was population growth and there was migration to the area and that’s when you feel the area is dry because that is when you start needing more water right?

And so the basin has been experiencing issues with water scarcity over the years but so far there have been some solutions that tied things together. For example, the Lesotho Highlands project, which takes water from a basin outside of the Limpopo basic actually and transfers it basically to Johannesburg and the larger suburban area of Johannesburg.

And that has been possible for some time and been enough to cover the thirst of this big area and the towns. I think there is still a lot to be done, and this system must be kept in place and marinated to keep providing enough water with good quality and all of that and to tie up those long periods with drought and so on so there are some issues.

Again with more population, for example, Johannesburg and surrounding areas are still growing. That keeps pressure on the resources. Another resource that has helped is groundwater which is developed also quite heavily in the basin.

It is not a huge groundwater resource naturally, but is critically important, especially during the droughts where you see little surface water in the streams and so on, so farmers mostly are reliant on groundwater. And there is a limit to that as well, and some farmers are also hitting the bottom sometimes or close to.

And that is where we also get to work, very closely with the farmers and the communities on these aspects, so not only the transboundary aspect that I mentioned earlier on but also within smaller communities and catchments, where groundwater is the lifeline of many people, so we support them on understanding better the resource, understanding the changes and the impacts of climate change on groundwater.

You might think groundwater is resilient and shielded from climate change because often, you don’t see it, it is underground, but it’s very much impacted by climate change and that’s basically because the water that is replenishing comes from rainfall, right? Of course, you have less rainfall, you have less replenishment, and also during less rainfall, they pump more groundwater and there is like double demand or double factor that comes in during droughts on groundwater, and understanding those impacts is very critical.

SM: Ok, I think you have been in the game of water research and water management for quite some time now, and looking at your projects, what can you share with us? Is there progress or we are digressing, especially in the area of political buy-in, and just the general population, because I heard you talking about farmers, and at times I know in most cases, when we talk about the fight against climate change and issues of management, we tend to amplify political voices and leave behind voices of traditional leadership, your dikgosi and just herdsmen in our tribes and rural areas, so looking at the projects that you have so far dealt with, would you say you have both political will and the voice of the general population, including traditional leaders?

DV: Mhhh, that is a very eh, important question, I think what you touched on is making the linkage between the local communities all the way to the government and having the agenda sort of driving in the same direction, which is water security for all basically.

In principle, the policies and so on are in place, it is more of a matter of having the policies being implemented on ground so that everybody has access to water. But there are also some attempts, some good lessons that we are learning from and this is what I mentioned earlier to work with various levels at the same time so that these things come together.

For instance, in our transboundary, we also work with the local communities in terms of supporting irrigated agriculture and optimizing it, so that they use fewer water resources and so on. And that was quite successful and this can be and is something being upscaled now so that the water resources available can stretch for more food supply and so on.

We are also working with the local communities in terms of supporting them to monitor that groundwater resources and also their surface water resources, but the new thing is to also have them look out for groundwater because what happens is that people have a faint idea of what’s happening below the ground with their water resources, and we are helping equip them with the material and equipment that need to be used; monitoring equipment and so on and so on, so that they can gauge how much groundwater there is, and monitor change over time, and it helps to increase awareness and helps them to understand how these things change.

For instance, over the seasons and also if they are running into problems. And it also helps them to collaborate at various levels and for instance, upstream, downstream communities start to understand the interlinks of problems if you like, and so those are some of the problems we are addressing at the moment.

SM: Thank you, I don’t know if we are maybe leaving something behind, that you thought of maybe sharing before we thank you so much for the time you have spent with us, that you feel is very, very critical?

DV: Well thank you, Dr. Semele, for the interview, I think it was very interesting to be part of, and I think we are experiencing issues in the Limpopo basin. I think it is quite clear from what I put forward.

I also would stress that there are good initiatives going on. There are new ways of approaching some of these things, especially at the transboundary level. I think that there is a lot of breakdown of just looking at the water up to your border and not going further and just thinking it stops here. Now people are thinking, oh, what’s happening on the other side, maybe we need to understand, maybe we need to talk to people on the other side. I think that’s where there is some breakthrough and that will help as we go forward.

SM: Okay Dr. Villholth, thank you so very much for taking your time to talk to us, and we wish you all the best, in the work you are doing, especially in water management

DV: Thank you very much.