DOM VO

The Okavango Delta is a miracle of nature…

…a vast, shimmering oasis bringing life to the desert sands of the Kalahari.

UP MUSIC

DOM VO

This is southern Africa’s last great wilderness…a refuge not only for every kind of beast and bird…

…but for the thousands of tourists each year who come to soak up its splendour

DOM Vo

The Delta owes its existence to the Okavango River, which rises in the highlands of Angola.

DOM VO

This web of waterways covers 17-thousand sq. kilometers

There’s more than enough water here to satisfy all of southern Africa…yet nearly every drop will evaporate within the next few months.

SUPER –Moremi Sekwale

Botswanan Water Affairs

SEKWALE INTERVIEW

We are talking here about large quantities. On average 10 billion cubic metres a year. 97% of which goes into the air, evaporates and three percent when we’re lucky trickles out at the end of the Delta. Most people would regard that as wastage, but we don’t.

FAD UNDER VO

NEW DOM VO

Moremi Sekwale works with Botswana’s Department of Water Affairs,

NEW DOM VO

He says the Delta is fast becoming his country’s most valuable resource… potentially more precious even than diamonds.

SEKWALE INTERVIEW

We’ve been very dependent on minerals for a very long time, the minerals have now plateaued. We can’t depend on them forever, so we’re looing at other economic engines of growth and tourism is one promising one.

But the delta ismore important to Botswana as a unique heritage.

We realize it no longer belongs to us, we are now just the custodians. It belongs to everybody.

DOM VO

And everybody, it seems, wants a piece of Okavango, especially Namibia, Botswana’s Western neighbout.

DOM VO

Namibia is the driest country in the sub-Sahara.

There are no perennial rivers within its borders, and this is its only inland sea… the Sea of Dunes.

RICHARD – CHOPPER

(18:0047) Where we are at the moment is in central west Namibia we’re flying along an ephemeral river – this is fairly typical of 60 percent of the country this river will flow maybe one, two days of the year, maybe only hours, small communities rely entirely on sources from the sand beds of these rivers.

DOM VO

Take a tour of Namibia with Richard Fry, the undersecretary of Water Affairs, and you’re left in no doubt that this is country with a water problem…

…a problem which a few months ago, almost saw the capital Windhoek and its surrounds run dry.

FRY INTERVIEW

Well it became absolutely frightening, I mean as a water manager responsible at a national level…

SUPER:

RICHARD FRY

NAMIBIAN WATER AFFAIRS

FRY INTERVIEW

What we refer to as the central area of Namibia in fact three towns a couple of mining organizations and indeed a lot of small users we had one and a half months of water and I think that could be characterized as an impending humanitarian crisis and indeed that’s how we views it.

DOM REVERSE

So if Namibia does take water from the Okavango river is that one more added pressure for the delta?

SHELLER INTERVIEW

Of course it’s another pressure on the delta. We don’t know what the long term impact of that will be. The Namibians are saying they’re taking off one percent of that water.

But when we’re looking at all those combines pressures that are now affecting the delta, we don’t know if that’s one more straw that may possibly break the camel’s back.

PAUL

Ok, so let’s start loading stuff onto the truck.

NEW DOM VO

As well as his consultancy, Paul Sheller, runs a campsite and tourist outfit in maun – the jumping off point for trips into the delta.

He’s not unsympathetic to Namibia’s plight. Beyond the Delta, Botswana is boen dry.

Paul knows what it’s like to tell a tired, hot and dusty camper there’s no water for a wash.

FRY INTERVIEW

One doesn’t want to overstress it but were on the bones of our backside so to say.

DOM

So there’s no doubt in your mind that the only real solution was to draw water from the Okavango River?

FRY

Absolutely yes, yes. There’s no doubt in my mind whatsoever.

DOM VO

But downstream in Botswana, there’re not so sure.

PAUL SHELLER

Well Dominique, what we have here is a digital map of the delta.

DOM VO

Environmental consultant Paul Sheller has been monitoring the growing pressures on the delta for the past 15 years. And he doesn’t like what he sees.

DOM VO

Fr and his colleagues flew into action.

Their proposal stop-gap was to pump water to the capital from a disused mine.

DOM VO

True salvation, however was to come from a source much more pristine…The Okavango River.

NEW DOM VO

Namibia has long intended to draw water from the Okavango. But not for another ten years. The recent crisis gave it a reason to fast-track.

DOM VO

The plan was to build an emergency pipeline to tap the water of the Okavango and feed it – through a series of exiting canals and pipes to the capital, 900 kilometres to the south.

NEW DOM VO

The offtake was to be minimal about half of one percent of the river’s flow.

SHELLER INTERVIEW

They get a bit irate when they come in after a long dusty drive from the bush and they now want a hot shower and they turn on the tap water and it dribbles out or there’s no water at all and they come and say, how can you run a camp with no water, what sort of management is this? And I always say to them, please go down and look at our river and they say what river and I say exactly!

NEW DOM VO

Maun sits at the tail end of the delta.

It’s a rapidly expanding town, with rapidly shrinking water reserves.

It relies almost entirely on bore water, supplemented in a good year, b the annual flow of the Thamalakane River.

…these days, more of grassy paddock

VO

It’s hard to imagine this place under water, but I’m assured it does happen.

Any day now the water from the Anoglan Highlands should be making its way under the old bridge here in Maun. The arrival of the annual flood as it’s known by locals is a huge event. Plenty of money is won or lost on bets trying to pinpoint the exact time and date the water will arrive, though it’s been pretty disappointing though over the past four years and last year for the first time in living memory, the water never even made it into town.

PAUL SHELLER

We don’t have any water. Our water table is ddropping more and more each year. The pressure for water is greater each year and we’re sort of stuck.

We’re sitting on the edge of one of Botswana’s largest water resources, yet we have no water. So it’s an ironic sort of situation but it’s getting to be a desperate situation for us now.

DOM VO

If the situation is desperate in town, it’s ever more so out here, on the fringes of the delta…home of the ba-yei, the delta’s traditional inhabitants.

DOM VO

Lefty is a poler.

He makes a living taking tourists out on the waterways in amokoro, a dug out canoe.

If the delta disappears, so does his job, talk of Namibia’s proposed pipeline makes him decidedly nervous.

LEFTY INTERVIEW

Ya, I’m worried.

I might not have a job, because my job is only a Makoro.

I don’t want the people of Namibia to take the water.

DOM VO

For the Bayei, the delta is much more than just a job…it’s a way of life.

They make their homes, baskets, and mats from the delta’s reeds and rushes…

They eat fish caught from its waters, and harvest fruit from the trees along its edges.

DOM VO

These people have been following the shifting tentacles of the delta for as long as anyne can remember.

And of late, says Lefty’s grandmother, they’ve been moving an awful lot.

GRANDMA INTERVIEW

We just move from place to place and the water all the time is getting lower and lower. We moved from Samparo to Zorocha and then we came here.

DOM VO

Does it concern you that Namibia may take water from the Okavango river?

GRANDMA

We cannot say anything because we are poor and the rich people are taking our country away from us. They’re taking it our of our hands. We can’t say anything because we don’t have power. Namibia’s blocking the water. Now the water is drying up. They said it’s their water. They took a stone and blocked the water, where the water used to flow.

DOM VO

Namibia, of course, has done nothing of the sort – yet.

But such is the emotional nature of the debate over the Okavango, that misinformation is rife, and the avenue for conflict, wide open.

SUPER

MOREMI SEKWALE

BOTSWANAN WATER AFFAIRS

SEKWALE INTERVIEW

…this is why I’ve been saying to the countries of southern Africa we need ot begin to put into motion arrangements that remove conflict or else there will be conflict.

NEW DOM VO

In southern Africa, water is something worth fighting for.

Namibia and Botwana know it. So does Angola. Together they’ve formed a tripartite commission – Okacom – to ensure their joint resources, the Okavango, is shared equitably, and peaceably.

Across Africa, other nations are doing the same.

SEKWALE INTERVIEW

DOM VO

Where would southern Africa be in twenty years time if the water commissions didn’t exist?

SEKWALE

It would be at war. Without the commissions it would be at war.

Look at the Zmbezi – eight countries having to share that – it could be the biggest conflict of our life.

NEW DOM VO

In the deserts of Namibia, as across the continent, the race is on to find new sources of water.

With the region’s population set to double within the next 25 years, all the predictions are that southern Africa is headed for a chronic water shortage.

NEW DOM VO

As far as Alois! Narib is concerned, the crisis is already here.

DOM VO

He’s working with the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia on one of their newest projects – fog harvesting.

Every morning after a good mist, he come to record the amount of condensation whch has been caught on a simple plastic-meshed screen, and funneled into a bucket.

ALOIS INTERVIEW

It is a good thing because it will provide us with an alternative source of water as long as there is a proper dam in which we can store this water.

NEW DOM VO

A good night will yield 6 litres.

Promising …but not promising enough for Namibia to scrap its planned pipeline for the Okavango.

Recent drought-breaking rains have provided only a breathing space.

FRY INTERVIEW

We can relax for a year, do some more environmental work and we can see what happens in the next rainy season but we’re not out of the wood, that’s all.

DOM VO

So what happens if within that one year you don’t get the go-ahead from Angola and Botswana, what happens then?

FRY INTERVIEW

Well, I’m an official, under-secretary for water. We negotiate I think very well at out level between the three states. If however, the answer at that level were to be no, then I’m very sure it would be elevated ot a political level you know presidents would start talking to one another.

VO

It’s that important?

FRY

It’s that important yes of course.

VO

For now the ebb and flow of the Okavango Delta can continue unimpeded by Namibia.

Yet the pressures on this unique wetland are mounting.

It’s only a matter of time before not only Namibia, but Angola and even Botswana do more than just eye these waters for their thirsty populations.

The challenge will be for these countries to work together peaceably, and in a way which preserves this great heritage for the generations to come.