A villager prepare to dig a deep well by hand in the drought-stricken village of Tunukkai in Sri Lanka's northern Mullaithivu District. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Sep 29 2014 (IPS)

The last time there was mud on his village roads was about a year ago, says Murugesu Mohanabavan, a farmer from the village of Karachchi, situated about 300 km north of Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo.

“Since last October we have had nothing but sun, all day,” the 40-year-old father of two school-aged children told IPS. If his layman’s assessment of the rain patterns is off, it is by a mere matter of weeks.

At the disaster management unit of the Kilinochchi District Secretariat under which Mohanabavan’s village falls, reports show inadequate rainfall since November 2013 – less than 30 percent of expected precipitation for this time of year.

“We don’t have any savings left; I still need to complete a half-built house and send two children to school. The nightmare continues." -- Murugesu Mohanabavan, a farmer from the village of Karachchi, 300 km north of Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo
Sri Lanka is currently facing a severe drought that has impacted over 1.6 million people and cut its crop yields by 42 percent, according to government analyses. But a closer look at the areas where the drought is at its worst shows that the poorest have been hit hardest.

Of the drought-affected population, over half or roughly 900,000 people, are from the Northern and Eastern Provinces of the country, regions that have been traditionally poor, dependent on agriculture and lacking strong coping mechanisms or infrastructure to withstand the impact of natural disasters.

Take the northern Kilinochchi district, where out of a population of some 120,000, over 74,000 are affected by the drought; or the adjoining district of Mullaithivu where over 56,000 from a population of just above 100,000 are suffering the impacts of inadequate rainfall.

The vast majority of residents in these districts are war returnees, who bore the brunt of Sri Lanka’s protracted civil war that ended in May 2009. Displaced and dodging the crossfire of fierce fighting between government forces and the now-defunct Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the last stages of the conflict, these civilians began trickling back into devastated villages in late 2010.

Despite a massive three-billion-dollar mega infrastructure development plan for the Northern Province, poverty remains rampant in the region. According to poverty data that was released by the government in April, four of the five districts in the north fared poorly.

While the national poverty headcount was 6.7 percent, major districts in the north and east recorded much higher figures: 28.8 percent in Mullaithivu, 12.7 percent in Kilinochchi, 8.3 percent in Jaffnna and 20.1 percent in Mannar.

The figures are worlds apart from the mere 1.4 percent and 2.1 percent recorded in the Colombo and Gampaha Districts in the Western Province.

“The districts in the North were already reeling under very high levels of poverty, which would have certainly accentuated since then due to the prolonged drought to date,” said Muttukrishna Saravananthan, who heads the Point Pedro Institute of Development based in northern Jaffna.

Mohanabavan told IPS that even though he has about two acres of agriculture land that had hitherto provided some 200,000 rupees (1,500 dollars) in income annually, the dry weather has pushed him into debt.

“We don’t have any savings left; I still need to complete a half-built house and send two children to school,” he explained, adding that there is no sign of respite. “The nightmare continues,” he said simply.

Agriculture accounts for 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s national annual gross domestic product (GDP) of some 60 billion rupees (about 460 million dollars). In primarily rural provinces in the north and east, at least 30 percent of the population depends on an agriculture-based income.

Kugadasan Sumanadas, the additional secretary for disaster management at the Kilinochchi District Secretariat, said that limited programmes to assist the drought-impacted population have been launched since the middle of the year.

Around 37,000 persons get daily water transported by tankers and there are a set number of cash-for-work programmes in the district that pay around 800 rupees (about six dollars) per person per day, for projects aimed at renovating water and irrigtation networks.

But to carry out even the limited work underway now, a weekly allocation of over nine million rupees is needed, money that is slow in coming.

“But the bigger problem is if it does not rain soon, then we will have to travel out of the province to get water, more people will need assistance for a longer period, that means more money [will be required],” Sumanadas said.

In April this year, a joint assessment by the World Food Programme and the government warned that half the population in the Mullaithivu district and one in three people in the Kilinochchi district were food insecure.

Sumanadas is certain that in the ensuing four months, the figure has gone up.

Overall, crop production has decreased by 42 percent compared to 2013 levels, while rice yields fell to 17 percent below last year’s output of four million metric tons.

In fact, the government decided to lift import bans on the staple rice stocks in April and is expected to make up for at least five percent of harvest losses through imports.

The main water source in the district, the sprawling Iranamadu Reservoir – 50 square km in size, with the capacity to irrigate 106,000 acres – is a gigantic dust bowl these days, the official said. That scenario, however, is not limited to the north and east.

“All reservoir levels are down to around 30 percent in the island,” Ivan de Silva, the secretary to the minister of irrigation and water management, told IPS.

He attributes the debilitating impact of the drought to two factors working in tandem: the increasing frequency of extreme weather events and the lack of proper water management.

“In the past we excepted a severe drought every 10 to 15 years, now it is happening almost every other year,” de Silva said.

A similar drought in late 2012 also impacted close to two million people on this island of just over 20 million people, and forced agricultural output down to 20 percent of previous yields.

That drought however was broken by the onset of floods brought on by hurricane Nilam in late 2012.

“We should have policies that allow us to manage our water resources better, so that we can better meet these changing weather patterns,” he said.

The country is slowly waking up to the grim reality that a changing climate requires better management. This week the government launched a 100-million-dollar climate resilience programme that will spend the bulk of its funds, around 90 million dollars, on infrastructure upgrades.

Of this, 47 million dollars will go towards improving drainage networks and water systems, while 36 million will go towards fortifying roads and seven million will be poured into projects to improve school safety in disaster-prone areas.

Part of the money will also be allocated to studying the nine main river basins around the country for better flood and drought management policies.

S M Mohammed, the secretary to the ministry of disaster management, admitted that national coping levels were not up to par when she said at the launch of the programme on Sep. 26, “Our country must change from a tradition of responding [to natural disasters] to a culture of resilience.”

Such a policy, if implemented, could bring a world of change to the lives of millions who are slowly cooking in the blistering sun.

Edited by Kanya D’Almieda

Tank trucks being filled with water in front of Osman Bin Affan Mosque in Beirut. Credit: Oriol Andrés Gallart/IPS

By Oriol Andrés Gallart
BEIRUT, Jul 28 2014 (IPS)

In front of Osman Bin Affan Mosque, in a central but narrow street of Beirut, several tank trucks are being filled with large amounts of water. The mosque has its own well, which allows it to pump water directly from the aquifers that cross the Lebanese underground. Once filled, the trucks will start going through the city to supply hundreds of homes and shops.

In a normal year, the water trucks do not appear until September, but this year they have started working even before summer because of the severe drought currently affecting Lebanon.

This comes on top of the increased pressure on the existing water supply due to the presence of more than one million Syrian refugees fleeing the war, exacerbating a situation which may lead to food insecurity and public health problems.“The more we deplete our groundwater reserves, the less we can rely on them in the coming season. If next year we have below average rainfalls, the water conditions will be much worse than today” – Nadim Farajalla of the Issam Fares Institute (IFI)

Rains were scarce last winter. While the annual average in recent decades was above 800 mm, this year it was around 400 mm, making it one of the worst rainfall seasons in the last sixty years.

The paradox is that Lebanon should not suffer from water scarcity. Annual precipitation is about 8,600 million cubic metres while normal water demand ranges between 1,473 and 1,530 million cubic metres per year, according to the Impact of Population Growth and Climate Change on Water Scarcity, Agricultural Output and Food Security report published  in April by the Issam Fares Institute (IFI) at the American University of Beirut.

However, as Nadim Farajalla, Research Director of IFI’s Climate Change and Environment in the Arab World Programme, explains, the country’s inability to store water efficiently, water pollution and its misuse both in agriculture and for domestic purposes, have put great pressure on the resource.

According to Bruno Minjauw, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative ad interim in the country as well as Resilience Officer, Lebanon “has always been a very wet country. Therefore, the production system has never looked so much at the problem of water.”

Referring to the figures for rainfall, Minjauw says that “what we are seeing is definitely an issue of climate change. Over the years, drought or seasons of scarcity have become more frequent”. In his opinion, the current drought must be taken as a warning: “It is time to manage water in a better way.”

However, he continues, “the good news is that this country is not exploiting its full potential in terms of sustainable water consumption, so there’s plenty of room for improvement.”

Meanwhile, water has become an issue, with scarcity hitting particularly hard the agricultural sector, which accounts for 60 percent of the water consumed despite the sector’s limited impact on the Lebanese economy (agriculture contributed to 5.9% of the country’s gross domestic product in 2011).

“Some municipalities are limiting what farmers can plant,” explains Gabriel Bayram, an agricultural advisor with KDS, a local development consultancy.

Minjauw believes that there is a real danger “in terms of food insecurity because we have more people [like refugees] coming while production is diminishing.” Nevertheless, he points out that the current crisis has increased the interest of government and farmers in “increase the quantity of land using improved irrigation systems, such as the drip irrigation system, which consume much less water.” Drip irrigation saves water – and fertiliser – by allowing water to drip slowly through a network of  tubes that deliver water directly to the base of the plant.

FAO is also working to promote the newest technologies in agriculture within the framework of a 4-year plan to improve food security and stabilise rural livelihoods in Lebanon.

Sheik Osama Chehab, in charge of the Osman Bin Affan Mosque, explains that, 20 years ago, water could be found three metres under the ground surface. “Yesterday,” he told IPS, “we dug 120 metres and did not find a drop.”

Digging wells has long been the main alternative to insufficient public water supplies in Lebanon and, according to the National Water Sector Strategy, there are about 42,000 wells throughout the country, half of which are unlicensed.

However, notes Farajalla “this has led to a drop in the water table and along the coast most [aquifers] are experiencing sea water intrusion, thus contaminating these aquifers for generations to come. The more we deplete our groundwater reserves, the less we can rely on them in the coming season. If next year we have below average rainfalls, the water conditions will be much worse than today.”

Besides, he cautions, “most of these wells have not passed quality tests. Therefore there are also risks that water use could trigger diseases among the population.”

The drought is also exacerbating tensions between host communities and Syrian refugees.

The rural municipality of Barouk, for example, whose springs and river supply water to big areas in Lebanon, today can count on only 30 percent of the usual quantity of water available. However, consumption needs have risen by around 25 percent as a result of the presence of 2,000 refugees and Barouk’s deputy mayor Dr. Marwan Mahmoud explains that this has generated complaints against newcomers.

However, Minjauw believes that “within that worrisome context, there is the possibility to mitigate the conflict and turn it into a win-win situation, employing both host and refugee communities in building long-term solutions for water management and conservation as well as forest maintenance and management. This would be beneficial for Lebanese farmers in the long term while enhancing the livelihoods of suffering people.”

For Farajalla, part of the problem related to water is that “there is a general lack of awareness and knowledge among decision-makers” in Lebanon, and he argues that it is up to civil society to lead the process, pressuring the government for “more transparency and better governance and accountability” in water management.

He claims that “the government failed with this drought by not looking at it earlier.” So far, a cabinet in continuous political crisis has promoted few and ineffective measures to alleviate the drought. One of the most recent ideas was to import water from Turkey, with prohibitive costs.

“Soon, you will also hear about projects to desalinate sea water,” says Farajalla. “Both ideas are silly because in Lebanon we can improve a lot of things before resorting to these drastic measures.”

Dr. Paulette Bynoe, a specialist in community-based disaster risk management, climate change adaptation policy and environmental management, says integrated water resource management is critical. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
CASTRIES, St. Lucia, Jul 18 2014 (IPS)

As unpredictable weather patterns impact water availability and quality in St. Lucia, the Caribbean island is moving to build resilience to climate-related stresses in its water sector.

Dr. Paulette Bynoe, a specialist in community-based disaster risk management, climate change adaptation policy and environmental management, says integrated water resource management is critical."All governments must work together within the region and lessons learnt in one country can be translated to other countries." -- Dr. Paulette Bynoe

“We have been making progress…making professionals and other important stakeholders aware of the issue. That is the first step,” she told IPS.

“So in other sectors we can also look at coordination whether we talk about agriculture or tourism. It’s important that we think outside of the box and we stop having turfs and really work together,” she added.

Earlier this month, Bynoe facilitated a three-day workshop on Hydro-Climatic Disasters in Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) in St. Lucia. The workshop was held as part of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States-Reducing the Risks to Human and Natural Assets Resulting from Climate Change (OECS-RRACC) project.

Participants were exposed to the key principles of IWRM and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR); the implications of climate change and variability for water resources management; policy legislation and institutional requirements needed at the community level to facilitate DRR in IWRM; the economics of disasters; and emergency response issues.

Rupert Lay, a water resources specialist with the RRACC Project, said the training is consistent with the overall goals of the climate change demonstration project in GIS technology currently being implemented by the OECS Secretariat.

“What we need to do now in the region and even further afield is to directly correlate the effects, the financial impacts of these adverse weather conditions as it relates to water resources,” he told IPS.

“We need to make that link strongly so that all of us can appreciate the extent to which and the importance of building resilience and adapting to these stresses.”

On Jul. 9, the St. Lucia Water and Sewage Company (WASCO) placed the entire island under a water emergency schedule as the drought worsened. The government has described the current situation as a “water crisis”.

The crisis, initially declared for the north of the island, has expanded to the entire country.

Managing director of WASCO Vincent Hippolyte said that there had not been sufficient rainfall to meet the demands of consumers. At the most recent assessment, the dam’s water level was at 322 feet, while normal overflow levels are 333 feet.

“Despite the rains and the greenery, drought conditions exist because the rivers are not moving. They do not have the volume of water that will enable WASCO to extract sufficient water to meet demand,” he said.

“We are in the early stages in the drought situation. It is not as severe as the later stages, but we are still in drought conditions.”

The government said that experts predicted the drought would persist through the month of August.

Bynoe said what’s happening in St. Lucia and elsewhere in the Caribbean is consistent with the projections of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Climate Modeling Group from the University of the West Indies.

She said both bodies had given possible future scenarios of climate change as it relates to the Small Island Developing States, and how climate change and climate variability could affect water resources.

“I think generally the issue is that in the region there is a high likelihood that we can have a shortage of water so we can experience droughts; and perhaps at the same time when we do have precipitation it can be very intense,” Bynoe, who is also Director of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Guyana, said.

She noted that the models are saying there can either be too little water or too much water, either of which could create serious problems for the Caribbean.

“With too much water now you can have run off, sedimentation, water pollution and water contamination which means in countries where we depend on surface water the treatment of water become critical and this will then bring cost implications because water treatment is very costly,” Bynoe explained.

“But also, if you are going to treat water you have to use a lot of energy and energy is one of the sectors that contribute to greenhouse gasses. So you can see where the impact of climate change is affecting water but with water treatment you can also contribute to climate change.”

For St. Lucia and its neighbours, Bynoe said lack of financial resources tops the list of challenges when it comes to disaster mitigation and adapting new measures in reference to hydro-climatic disasters.

She also pointed to the importance of human capital, citing the need to have persons trained in specific areas as specialists to help with modeling, “because in preparation we first have to know what’s the issue, we have to know what’s the probability of occurrence, we have to know what are the specific paths that we can take which could bring the best benefits to us.”

She used her home country Guyana, which suffers from a high level of migration, as one example of how sustainable development could be negatively affected by capital flight.

“But you also need human capital because first of all governments must work together within the region and lessons learnt in one country can be translated to other countries so that we can replicate the good experiences so that we don’t fall prey to the same sort of issues,” Bynoe said.

“But also social capital within the country in which we try to ensure that all stakeholders are involved, a very democratic process because it’s not only about policymakers; every person, every household must play a role to the whole issue of adaptation, it starts with the man or woman in the mirror,” she added.

In October 2010, Hurricane Tomas passed very near St. Lucia killing 14 people and leaving millions of dollars in monetary losses. The island was one of three Eastern Caribbean countries on which a slow-moving, low-level trough on Dec 24, 2013 dumped hundreds of millimetres of rain, killing 13 people.

The lack of a national water management policy is hampering Sri Lanka's efforts to tackle recurring droughts. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, May 30 2014 (IPS)

Stuck in mid-day rush hour traffic, commuters packed tight into a tin-roofed bus in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, peer expectantly up at the sky that is beating a savage heat down on the city.

No one speaks, but it is clear they are all waiting for the same thing: for the heavens to open up and provide some relief from the scorching weather that is slowly cooking this island nation.

Over 200 km east, in the agricultural district of Ampara, farmers and rural folk wait equally expectantly for the elusive monsoon, already a few weeks late in coming.

Water levels at the Senanayake Samudraya tank, which holds the bulk of the district’s water needs, are dangerously low, having dropped below 30 percent of the reservoir’s capacity at the end of May, according to the department of irrigation.

All over the country, low-level anxiety over the water shortage is slowly giving way to panic. With each day that the rains do not fall, food shortages increase, poverty worsens and the economy lurches in uncertainty.

Strangely, the government is yet to officially declare a drought situation, even though water levels in most major reservoirs – which supply close to 46 percent of the country’s electricity needs – are alarmingly low.

No rain, no rice

“The problem is that this is not a one-off drought, this is the third big drought in three years." -- Rajith Punyawardena, chief climatologist at the department of agriculture
Given that over 75 percent of Sri Lanka’s population lives in rural areas, with a large percentage engaged in rice farming, a drought threatens the country to its very core.

Harvest losses mounted in the first half of this year, leaving farmers and officials fearful that a predicted weaker-than-average southwest monsoon season will exacerbate the situation.

“It is not looking very good,” warned Rajith Punyawardena, chief climatologist at the department of agriculture, pointing out that the main rice harvesting season, which concluded in April, recorded a loss of 17 percent compared to last year.

According to a recent update from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), Sri Lanka only produced 2.4 million metric tons of paddy during the main harvest in 2014, compared to around 2.8 million last year.

The FAO predicted that overall paddy output on the island in 2014 was likely to record a 19 percent loss from the previous year, with an expected production of 3.8 million metric tons – eight percent less than the five-year average yield since 2014.

Weerakkodiarchchilage Premadasa, a farmer from Thanamalvila in Sri Lanka’s southeastern Uva province, told IPS he had already lost half of his two acres of paddy to the drought. “If the rains don’t come, or are too weak, I will have to mortgage the house,” he said.

High demand and predictions of further losses pushed rice prices up by 23 percent this past April.

Meanwhile, a report compiled last month by the World Food Programme (WFP), together with Sri Lanka’s ministries of economic development and disaster management, detailed the country’s precarious situation vis-à-vis erratic weather, including the drought’s potential impact on food security and livelihoods.

In affected regions across the northern, eastern and northwestern provinces, over 768,000 persons out of a total population of 8.3 million have been identified as food insecure, double the 2013 figure. In addition, 18 percent of all households in over 15 districts in those same regions were consuming low-calorie diets.

Over 67 percent of the affected population are farmers who rely heavily on irrigated water for their livelihoods and daily subsistence. An unbroken string of extreme weather events since 2011 has heightened food insecurity and severely impacted rural populations’ resilience to natural disasters like droughts and floods, the report added.

Experts say the northern province, which accounts for 10 percent of the national paddy harvest, is particularly vulnerable. It lost over 60 percent of an estimated 300,000-metric-ton harvest in April, according to Sivapathan Sivakumar, the provincial director for agriculture.

Having borne the brunt of the island’s protracted civil conflict, which finally closed its bloody 30-year chapter in 2009, the people here have shouldered about as much hardship as they can take. A possible debt-trap, caused by repeated losses in harvest, has them on the edge, Sivakumar added.

“We have to come up with a major assistance plan to help them,” the official told IPS.

According to the joint WFP-governmental report, the northern districts of Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi have been hardest hit, with 49 percent and 31 percent of their respective populations identified as food insecure as a result of drought.

Urgent need for national planning

Those who are monitoring the situation say the drought will bring more than just hunger. Already food shortages are taking a disproportionate toll on low-income households, who have no safety net against harvest losses and rising prices.

In the districts surveyed by the WFP, a full 50 percent of households were spending over 65 percent of their monthly income, about 20 dollars, on food.

Poverty levels in these areas are also rising, with families reporting damage to agricultural land, limited employment opportunities as a result of scarce yields and significant reductions to their income.

“The average income in these areas is reported to be 37 percent lower than the national poverty line [of 29 dollars] for the month of March,” the report found.

In some areas, there was a big gap between expected income and actual income. In the northwestern Kurunegala district, a relatively rich region, actual income was 76 dollars, 81 percent below the expected income of 190 dollars.

In the northern Vavuniya district, actual income for the month of April was 67 percent below expected income.

The WFP has recommended the immediate commencements of six months of emergency assistance to the worst affected populations, but officials say this is easier said than done.

“The problem is that this is not a one-off drought, this is the third big drought in three years,” Punyawardena told IPS. “We need a national plan to assess and deal with the impact of extreme weather events.”

A drought between December 2011 and October 2012 affected 1.8 million people in the same regions currently enduring the dry spell, according to assessments by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. During that time, total harvest losses were feared to be between 15 and 20 percent.

So far, the only drought-related move has come from the ministry of agriculture, which has recommended that 35 percent of the 779,000 hectares of land under paddy cultivation be used for crops that require less water.

But Punyawardena believes that paddy farmers steeped in traditional farming practices are unlikely to change their methods or crops quickly. Such a move, he said, “needs time and a bit more work.”

As Premadasa, the farmer from the Uva province, pointed out, “Farmers like me need advice at the start of the planting season so we can plan accordingly. We get some information, but we need more detailed updates.”

Similar long-term planning will also be required to cushion the blow a weak monsoon could deliver to the country’s energy sector.

The Ceylon Electricity Board reported that as of the last week of May, hydro power was only meeting 11.8 percent of the country’s energy needs, compared to 46 percent during previous monsoon seasons.

Water experts told IPS there is an urgent need for an integrated national water management policy that takes note of fluctuating rain patterns.

“It will allow for national-level planning of water resources, identifying and prioritising needs and acting accordingly,” Kusum Atukorale, who chairs the Sri Lanka Water Partnership, told IPS.

Such a policy, she said, would allow for the kind of countrywide planning that is woefully lacking right now.

Until the government puts its best foot forward, the people of Sri Lanka can do little more than look to the skies and pray for the rain to fall.

(END)

Drainage systems in Mozambique’s capital Maputo struggle to cope with rivers flowing into the city and high rainfall that leave streets flooded. Credit:Johannes Myburgh/IPS

By William Mapote
MAPUTO, Mar 1 2013 (IPS)

As Mozambique tries to recover from the worst flooding here since 2000, experts have called for a national discussion on water management and how to maximise its usage in favour of long-term sustainable development.

“Mozambique is a downstream destination for regional rivers, but it still has much to do to maximise those potentials into national development, ” Patrício José, a member of Southern African Development Community’s water division, told IPS.

Some 54 percent of Mozambique’s annual surface flow comes from outside the country and because of its geographical location it has always been vulnerable to natural disaster, particularly flooding, according to the Global Water Partnership Africa.

“In recent years we have seen more of the destruction that water can cause than the benefits it brings. And the country has a challenge to do more to better address the water issue and water-related development,” José said.

Here, in Mozambique, water has been both a blessing and a curse.

In 2000, floods affected 2.5 million people. Over the last few months the Limpopo, Save and Inkomati Rivers flooded, their water levels boosted by the rainfall in neighbouring countries like South Africa and Zimbabwe. With the heavy rains came destruction and since October 2012, about 113 people have been killed and 250,000 affected.

Maria Filda is one of those affected. As the 17-year-old looks down at her newborn baby, she is just glad to be alive. On the day after her baby’s Jan. 13 birth, Filda watched as floods destroyed her house.

“The sound of the rain beating our metal zinc roof was so strong. Suddenly, I saw part of the wall of our house collapsing. I panicked. I carried my daughter in my arms and ran into the sitting room. Before long, my bedroom wall also collapsed,” she told IPS.

Everything she owned, including her baby’s new clothes, was washed away. She now lives in the Força do Povo community school in Hulene suburb, just five kilometers from Mozambique’s capital, Maputo.

Like the rest of the country, Filda is trying to rebuild her life.

The National Institute for Disaster Management evacuated thousands of people from the most-affected provinces of Maputo and Gaza, setting up 16 shelters and providing local communities with food, blankets, water and medicine.

The largest number of people affected by the floods is from Chihaquelane, in Gaza Province. Shelters there are crowded with almost 100,000 people, as authorities struggle to cope with the large numbers.

The destruction wrought by the floods is stark proof of the country’s failing infrastructure and neglected dams, according to José.

“The country has a few dams, but most them are inoperative or work poorly,” José said. “This is one of the problems … because the infrastructure does not work properly to divert the water and manage the overflow from the rivers. We need to improve their functioning and management,” he explained.

The flooding, however, creates a deceptive impression of Mozambique’s water availability. According to the United Nations Environmental Programme, the availability of freshwater in Mozambique is expected to decrease by over half by 2025.

As water stress is expected to become an increasing problem, it has made experts question the feasibility of forestry projects that could affect the country’s water balance.

The government has granted concessions to foreign investors on 250,000 hectares of land in Niassa Province in northern Mozambique, with the intention of developing the country into one of Africa’s biggest suppliers of pine and eucalyptus trees for commercial purposes.

While the land allocation has given rise to allegations of landgrabs and the displacement of local communities, water experts are also concerned that the forestry projects could use up a significant portion of the country’s water supply.

This is because eucalyptus trees, for example, need between 800 and 1,200 millimetres (mm) of water per year to grow.

While there is considerable variation in rainfall across different regions in the country, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the U.N. says that the mean annual rainfall ranges from 800 mm to 1,000 mm along the coast and between 1,000 mm and 2,000 mm in the northern region.

Professor Álvaro Carmo Vaz, a Mozambican water specialist, has no doubt that the water balance in Niassa Province will change as a result.

“If you put that kind of fast-growing species like pine and eucalyptus there, which have a much stronger capacity of absorbing water, it means there will be less water flowing into the river. Because what really happens is that you are using the water before it goes into the river,” he told IPS. He said that the effects of the forestry plantations would have on water supply needed to be carefully analysed in order to find ways to deal with the possible reduced availability.

“Water should be a key issue in the future,” Assistant Professor for Irrigation and Drainage at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Rui Miguel Ribeiro, told IPS. “Looking at the specific case of Niassa Province, obviously it will change the water balance,” he said, adding that assessments needed to be done to confirm this.

Charles Mchomboh, the project manager at Chikweti Forests, a company the government leased 100,000 hectares of land to in Niassa Province, however, told IPS that there was nothing to be concerned about.

With its plans to grow seven million trees per year, Chikweti Forests currently is one of a total of six forestry companies active in Niassa Province.