While considering all of the rain we have been experiencing recently on campus, I thought about how rain (or lack thereof) affects those in Namibia. We know the country experiences a relatively low amount of rain yearly, given the numerous amount of deserts present in the country and its famously arid environment, but Namibia can and does experience severe drought. On an average year, Namibia will receive 290 centimeters of rain.
For the last decade, Namibia’s capital in Windhoek has struggled to provide enough water for its citizens. Persistent drought has led to significant structural issues in Namibia, including strains on the economy, population, and work productivity. As of 2013, Al Jazeera reported that a third of the nation (780,000 people) was classified as food insecure; their harvest would produce 42% less than the year before; 41% of schools are without water and 29% of affected children suffer from stunted growth as a result of malnutrition. This issue persisted into 2015, with UNICEF reporting similarly high numbers of food and water insecurity across the regions of the country.
Sources report that the drought had been happening since 2012 and has yet to relent. The population in the Omusati region is reported to be one of the harder hit areas, with people within having to trek dozens of miles in order to reach the nearest water resource. This has raised many questions not only on environmental sustainability measures, but also on how there can be a more efficient and effective use of water infrastructures for bringing water from rivers to more parts of Namibia. There have long been questions about whether using the Okavango River would be useful in aiding this drought problem; Namibia has considered installing a dam in the Okavango (much to environmentalist’s protestations— it would have a significant impact on the ecosystem there), but they have been repeatedly stopped by competition and question over river ownership with Namibia’s neighboring countries.
That isn’t to say Namibia has not done anything structurally to alleviate the pressures of drought. By 1996, Namibia had installed a series of water-waste reusing plants, measures to reduce water on municipal gardens, and enforcing water regulations on private properties. The city of Windhoek is actually seen as a model for how other southern African cities, like Cape Town, can deal with drought; they raised such public awareness for drought through campaigning that there were significant enough individual efforts to reduce the strain on water supplies in the early 2000s. And though drought persists, Windhoek continues implementing water reduction campaigns to help their population survive.
Though Windhoek is more capable of handling their watering problem, questions have arisen pertaining to the more rural areas that have a more difficult time gaining access to water. The country needs to come up with the same type of infrastructure reforms that helped Windhoek cope with water reduction and implement them in the more rural areas where people are suffering from inaccessibility to natural resources. There seems to be a stark contrast between rural and urban resources that needs to be remedied.
~ Elizabeth
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