Caitlin Davies
SWEET-TOOTHED elephants are going to have a field day if a sugar plantation gets under way in northern Botswana, in what conservationists call one of the most environmentally unfriendly schemes imaginable.
The sugar plantation is reportedly to be built on the sand bridge behind the Chobe River and inside the Kasane Forest Reserve which is full of protected indigenous trees.
“When I first heard about this on the grapevine I dismissed it as rambling,” says Jonathan Gibson of Chobe Game Lodge. “Personally I can’t believe it’s viable. Think of the energy needed … the idea is preposterous.”
Dennis van Eysen, a mobile safari operator in Kasane, says he drove a group of men, including an engineer and a representative of Hulletts sugar in South Africa, to the sand ridge on July 23 last year.
“I took them round the area proposed for the plantation and they took soil samples and talked about sugar cane,” said Van Eysen. I overheard one saying, `Don’t worry about the greenies, we’ll buy them off.’ At the time I thought it was just a thumb suck, now it seems to have gathered momentum.”
Critics believe the project was initially turned down by the departments of forestry and agricultural but has now been verbally approved by the office of the president.
The man behind the plan, businessman Dave Griffiths, says: “At this stage it’s very speculative. We’re talking four or five years away. We’re doing a feasibility study and if that looks okay them we’ll do it.”
He says the plantation and mill will employ 4 000 people, and would be built on both the Namibian and Botswana side ot the river. “It will be the single largest investment in the country, bigger even than the diamond mine at Orapa,” says Griffiths. “We’re going to build a whole new town.”
As for the impact on the environment, he says that’s the biggest part of the feasibility study and will include the views of all relevant non governmental organisations.
According to Griffiths, the World Bank is interested in the scheme and Angola and Zambia may be involved as well.
However, he insist it is premature to discuss anything in detail at the moment. Griffiths claims the department of agriculture has given him full blessing and will take a decision on the project next year. But government sources in Kasane say the proposal was rejected. They also say the site for the sugar plantation is earmarked for further village deveopment.
Meanwhile Griffiths says the feasibility study will be done by September, and he’s due to fly to Namibia later this month to meet American consultants.
But the Chobe Wildlife Trust says the whole idea is outrageous. Trust president Pat Carr-Hartley says the plantation would have to be fenced,which would restrict wildlife getting to the river, and “elephants would be there like green lighning”.
He says a fence would mainly affect elephant and buffalo which would be restricted to foraging in the nearby Chobe National Park. This in turn would put more pressure on the park, at a time when the trust wants the animals more widely distributed.
“It’s a completely harebrained idea,” says Carr-Hartley. “Botswana has few forest areas and we must keep what we have, these are indigenous trees.”
He says the plantation would have a disastrous impact on the environment, and fears that sweet-toothed elephants who venture in would be shot. – Okavango Observer
Carr-Hartley adds that taking water from the Chobe would have the same impact as Namibia’s plan to draw water from the Okavango, and everyone downriver will complain.
Richard Kashweeka, co-ordinator of the Forum on Sustainable Agriculture (Fonsac) is also concerned. “I overheard people talking about the possibility of a sugar plantation right next to my home in Kasane,” he says. “I phoned a few people to check and no one seems to know how far the proposal has gone.”
“I’m telling you, that’s near my place and that’s the corridor the animals use to go to the stream, or if the stream is low then they use it to get to the Chobe.”
He says any such project should learn from the disastrous experience of the Pandamatenga farms. Set up about six years ago, the idea was to increase food production in the area. But the scheme was a failure, environmental problems weren’t considered, and “now there are large scars on the land.”
In addition, Kashweeka says sugar cane needs a lot of fertilizers. The site is near to a stream which feeds into the Zambezi, and chemicals could be washed into the soil and then into the river.
“Where’s the water source going to be?” asks Kashweeka. “Every day you see the level of the Chobe River going down.”