CURRENT TRENDS
While the status of human welfare is generally known as a result of systematic
data collection and analysis, comprehensive data on the overall status of the basin's
ecosystems is lacking. This reflects a general weakness in data collection due to various
factors as well as science's limited understanding of the complex interactions of nature.
Perhaps the greatest challenges facing the SADC sector coordination units are human
capacity and adequate financial resources to discharge their duties. Many of the sectors
have limited human resources and they are unable to cope with an ever-expanding regional
mandate and demands. It may be necessary for national governments to ensure that sector
contact departments are strengthened to help the coordination units. Themes such as
climate variability, population, gender, poverty and inequality, urbanisation and
industrialisation, research, monitoring and capacity building, and policy and strategy,
have been identified as crosscutting.
Climate
The Zambezi Basin falls within three climate zones: semi-arid, dry sub-humid and moist
sub-humid. Climate in the Zambezi Basin is variable and so is rainfall, making planning a
challenge. Drought is an overriding factor in the degradation of cultivated lands and
rangelands in many parts of the basin, impacting on plant cover. Drought increases soil
degradation problems, while soil degradation magnifies the effects of drought.
As a result of drought during the 1994-95 season, cereal harvests in southern Africa
declined by 35 percent compared to harvests of 1993-94, with maize harvests alone falling
by 42 percent.
With about 80 percent of the people in the Zambezi Basin dependent on agriculture and
the region's food security worsening, the basin states are always facing a serious
challenge to achieve food self-sufficiency. Since some parts of the basin are arid or
semi-arid, drought will continue to be a factor, limiting economic performance and
exerting pressure on the environment.
Population
Trends show that the population in the basin states will continue to grow, with the
majority continuing to reside in rural areas. However, many of the basin states will see
urbanisation grow. In Malawi, for example, the population is getting more urbanised with
projections showing that by 2012, 3.8 million Malawians will be living in urban areas, a
400-percent jump from less than one million in 1988.
There is generally more consumption of resources in urban areas, placing heavy demands
on the environment. Large concentrations of people also generate huge volumes of waste,
resulting in pollution. For example in Harare, one of the basin's large cities with a
population of more than 1.4 million people, urbanisation has been associated with waste,
increasing pressure on natural resources such as increased demand for water, land
clearance for settlement and pollution.
Air and water pollution, solid waste and siltation due to urban agriculture have become
major environmental issues in the cities of Harare, Lusaka and other smaller urban areas.
Industrial and consumer waste is also increasing at alarming rates in the basin,
particularly due to rapid economic and population growth in these areas. For example, the
Zambian capital, Lusaka which has a population of 1.32 million inhabitants, produces 1,400
tonnes of solid waste daily of which only 10 percent is collected by the city council.
Ninety percent of the solid waste is not collected due to a number of factors, including
lack of human, financial and material resources. Poor collection of waste is also evident
in Harare, with some areas going without waste collection for weeks.
Cholera and other waterborne diseases are often found in water contaminated with
untreated human waste and sewage. For example in 1994, a total of 61,960 cases of cholera
were reported in five SADC countries C Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi,
Mozambique, and Tanzania, resulting in 4,389 deaths. More than 171,000 cases of dysentery
were reported for Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, with at least 600 lives lost.
HIV/AIDS
With an average population growth rate of about 2.9 percent, which adds more than
960,000 people to the basin population annually, life expectancy in the basin states will
decline due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Between 1990-95, life expectancy decreased by 12
years in Zambia, eight years in Botswana and seven years in Malawi due to the AIDS
pandemic. Trends show that life expectancy will continue to decline, dropping from a
projected average of 58 years between 1995-2000 to 48 years in the same period. Botswana,
Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe would be the most affected. HIV/AIDS is now the
leading cause of death in Africa. In 2015, Zimbabwe's population is expected to be 19
percent lower than it would have been without the impact of AIDS.
Another trend is that the economically productive age group of 18-45 years in basin
populations has been the most affected by HIV/AIDS. While the economic impact has not been
fully analysed, this situation has had a strong negative impact on agriculture, poverty
and general economic development.
Poverty
Millions of people, both in urban and rural areas of the Zambezi Basin are living in
poverty with no hope of their situation getting better. Poverty has been described as one
of the root causes of environmental degradation in the region. Poverty and environmental
degradation are linked in a vicious circle. A degraded environment produces less, so
people who directly depend on it become more vulnerable to disasters. The less it
produces, the more it is exploited C for survival. Little regard is paid about the future,
let alone about sustainable development. The majority of the people in the basin states
have no access to safe water, sanitation and health services.
Another trend in the basin states shows worsening poverty with millions of rural people
in the basin eking a living from subsistence agriculture, which is dependent on rainfall,
a resource that is variable and unreliable in the basin. Reduced agricultural production
due to drought, particularly since the 1990s, has seen more and more people overexploiting
their natural resources for survival. At one point, more than 200,000 people invaded about
4,600 sq km of some of Zimbabwe's major rivers, including the tributaries of Zambezi
River, to pan for gold. Environmental damage was massive in these areas.
Debt
Linked to poverty and environmental degradation is the issue of debt servicing for many
of the countries in the Zambezi Basin. Foreign debt continues to rise, at least doubling
in most countries in SADC between 1980-1993. Some countries in the basin have severe
external indebtedness and extreme aid dependence. Poor external debt management and
inadequate debt relief means that for some of the countries, indebtedness will continue to
be a problem for macroeconomic stability.
Demand for water
Demand for water in the basin is sectoral: urban, rural, agriculture, mining, energy,
transport, recreation, and environment. The sectors' demand for water will grow and exert
pressure on water and other ecological resources. The increase in water demand is due to
general population and industrial growth. Such demand is coupled with the reduction of
water quality due to waste disposal, siltation, agrochemicals/fertilisers, gold panning,
mining effluent and industrial waste. While water pollution in the basin is monitored,
there is need to strengthen such measures, covering many locations of the basin to get a
clear picture of its extent and magnitude.
Wetlands
The Zambezi Basin wetlands are under threat from both natural and human factors such as
drought, pollution, agriculture and grazing. This is likely to continue in future as human
populations increase and their associated activities expand. Already some wetlands are
under pressure from droughts, livestock and habitat conversion. Satellite imagery
indicates increasing incidences of fire threats to wetlands in the Zambezi Floodplains of
Zambia.
Land degradation
Land degradation in the Zambezi Basin is increasing due to poor land husbandry and
overexploitation of natural resources. Reports from different countries show that there is
widespread deforestation due to agricultural expansion and fuelwood collection. In
Zimbabwe, for example, 80 percent of the basin area is under commercial and communal
farming, each taking 40 percent of the land. In Malawi, land under agriculture increased
from 21,000 sq km in 1965 to more than 45,400 sq km by the beginning of the 1990s. With
growing population and expansion of settlements, ecologically fragile land is being opened
up for agriculture and livestock production, often with disastrous impacts on the
environment.
Soil erosion is probably the most important factor in the decline in agricultural
productivity, degrading about 15 percent of the SADC region's lands. About two percent of
southern Africa's soils are damaged by physical degradation, which includes changes in
sealing and crusting of topsoil, loss of water-holding capacity, compaction of topsoil,
waterlogging and acidification.
Some of the main causes of land degradation and soil erosion include poverty, skewed
land tenure systems, population pressure, and increasing resource demand. Land degradation
is also a factor in accelerating habitat loss in the basin.
Air pollution and waste management
Economic growth in the basin states has resulted in problems of waste production and
management, air and water pollution, among others. It has also led to heavy energy demands
to satisfy both a growing population and industry. With limited natural locations to
generate electricity, some of the countries have turned to thermal power generation,
resulting in serious air pollution. Growing industrialisation, transportation and an
increase in the vehicle population in the basin states are also contributing to pollution.
Fuel consumption has increased virtually in all states over the past decade. For example,
fuel consumption in Zambia increased from 84 percent of total consumption in 1980 to 91
percent in 1995.
While virtually all countries in the basin have laws to control air pollution, the
state of air pollution in the basin is not well known. However in some countries, air
pollution control is treated as a health rather than an environmental issue such that
monitoring and enforcement are a problem due to different priorities, capacity and
resources between health and environment departments. Fuzzy responsibilities, where
different government departments lack clarity on which of them has the line function, for
example, air pollution control or environmental education, can weaken implementation,
monitoring and enforcement.
Biodiversity
With the emergence of cash economies, the opening up of land for agriculture, mining
and settlements not only contributed to the overexploitation of land, animal and plant
species but also increased biodiversity loss. The need to arrest the loss of biodiversity
is especially important in the basin where people depend on biological resources to a
greater extent than elsewhere.
Biodiversity loss in southern Africa has been a consequence of human development, as
species-rich woodlands and forests have been converted to relatively species-poor
farmlands and plantations. However, the number of threatened species could be higher as
the full extent of the region's species diversity is unknown. There is a serious lack of
species inventories and other baseline data that are fundamental for monitoring
biodiversity trends.
Technology and economic development
Trends in the basin show that technology and human capacity to deal with various
environmental problems are limited. Virtually all the countries have not had significant
investment in their economies in the past two decades. According to the SADC Regional
Human Development Report 1998, countries are experiencing a "foreign exchange
crisis", forcing them to rely on official development assistance (ODA). In Mozambique
and Zambia, for example, net ODA between 1980-95 rose from US$169 million to US$1,103
million, and from US$318 million to US$2,035 million respectively. This represents a jump
from US$14 ODA per capita in 1980 to US$66 in 1995 for Mozambique and from US$55 to US$221
in Zambia.
Limited foreign currency reserves impact on the basin states' ability to introduce
cleaner production by investing in much needed capital equipment to upgrade outdated
technology. Human resource capacity to develop appropriate technologies in the basin
states is also limited.
Ideally, countries in the basin should be investing in research and development, but
limited funding by both government and private sector in this area also limits significant
changes to the current situation. Trends show that the basin countries will continue to be
producers of raw materials, limiting not only the diversification of their economies but
also their ability to expand their foreign currency earnings' base. Virtually all
countries in the Zambezi Basin depend on agriculture, mining and tourism for the bulk of
their foreign currency earnings.
Policy and strategy
At the beginning of the 1990s, the basin states, under the auspices of SADC, admitted
that they have inadequate environmental monitoring, research and planning capabilities.
They also have inadequate institutional arrangements, legal framework and enforcement
measures for environmental protection and improvement.
The trend in SADC has been the drafting and ratification of sectoral protocols dealing
with diverse issues such as trade, mining, shared watercourse systems and transport,
meteorology and communications. While the various sector coordination units have
mechanisms for collaboration, linkages remain weak and there is no other cross-sectoral
policy or document other than the 1992 SADC Treaty. Another weakness is that
SADC-developed policies are not being quickly translated into national policies, leaving a
gap, which results in fragmented approaches in different member states.
At the national level, governments have also been reviewing policies and strategies
aimed at enhancing natural resource and environmental management programmes. The trend is
the strengthening of such activities, but the challenge is ensuring that these are
effectively applied on the ground. Obstacles include lack of human resources and financial
capacity. Many of the natural resource and environmental programmes are donor funded, with
many countries in the region now depending on overseas development assistance.
Ideally, countries in the basin should be investing in research and development, but
limited funding by both government and private sector in this area also limits significant
changes to the current situation.
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