Graham Hopwood in Windhoek
NAMIBIA has defended plans to pump 20- million cubic metres of water each year from the Okavango River, despite protests from environmentalists and tourism operators in Botswana’s Okavango swamps, which are annually filled by the river.
Richard Fry, Namibia’s deputy permanent secretary of water affairs, said this week that the severity of Namibia’s water crisis left it with “little option” but to investigate drawing water from the Okavango.
The dams supplying Windhoek and the central areas of Namibia are now only 9% full, an all-time low, and are expected to be completely dry by next April if there are no substantial rains.
Forecasters at the University of Cape Town have added to the general gloom about the water situation, predicting that Namibia’s rainfall will be 37% below normal this season.
The current desperation has raised fears that Namibia will rush through its feasibility study on the Okavango pipeline without taking into account the full impact of the scheme on Botswana’s unique Okavango Delta.
The Namibian and Botswana governments recently agreed that the environmental impact study should be extended to cover concerns about the delta.
Fry maintained that while the technical part of the feasibility study will be completed in January 1997, the environmental study will continue until March, giving enough time to study the river in dry and wet conditions.
The results of the feasibility study are then expected to be put to Botswana for approval.
Fry was reluctant to say what might happen if the Botswana government rejected the outcome of the study, but added that no international donor would fund the project if Botswana was adamantly opposed to it.
The pipeline, expected to cost in the region of R1-billion, is believed to have caught the interest of a number of international donors, including the German and Japanese governments and the European Investment Bank.
Fry argues that his department is doing everything in its power to look at schemes that would make the Okavango plan unnecessary, but stressed: “We have very few alternatives.”
Namibia is about to start pumping water from a disused mine near the northern town of Grootfontein, which is expected to see Windhoek through for a further 12 months, even if there is no rain and the dams run dry.
After that the scenario becomes less clear. Using water from disused mines is seen as only fending off the inevitable, and increasingly Namibia’s water planners are seeing the Okavango as the only option.
Windhoek’s residents have been cutting back water use, recently achieving a 30% saving. The city’s annual consumption of 17-million cubic metres has not increased significantly since independence six years ago, despite the population growth from 130 000 to 220 000 in that time.
Namibia’s argument that the use of Okavango water will be negligible is not widely accepted in Botswana where recent newspaper headlines have proclaimed “Hands off the delta” and “Green activists might take up arms”. But prophecies of a “water war” between the two countries are being seen here as hyperbole.
Fry believes Botswana will see Namibia’s water crisis in the light of “humanitarian need” and will ultimately respond to the pipeline project sympathetically.
He also dismissed last week’s Mail & Guardian report that Namibia was already negotiating with United States company, Owens Corning, to construct the 250km-long pipe, saying that the technical specifications would not be known until next year and that the project’s donors would insist on an international tender.
If it does rain significantly next year, Fry said the pipeline would still be investigated through the Okavango River Basin Commission but without the same sense of urgency.