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Erratic rainfall, shifting rainfall patterns, more frequent droughts and more frequent floods from cyclones are now part of our “normal” weather as global warming drives climate change and Zimbabwe needs to adapt.
The Government sees irrigated agriculture as the main way, and the best way, for Zimbabwe to continue producing its own food and grow crops for export.
We can fulfil our own commitments to the global response, but there is no way a little country can clean up the global mess of the industrial giants and so the practical course for us is to live with what has already happened while we press others not to let it get worse.
So the Second Republic is building dams, with 11 large dams under construction and the 12th in the present programme just commissioned. This is probably the largest single dam construction programme in our history, and it is continuous with new dams being planned as soon as the present batch are completed.
We generally get enough water, just in the wrong place, at the wrong time and in the wrong amounts. Our last season is a good example. The season started late, and these late starts now seem to be the new normal. Then after reasonable to over-heavy rains to establish crops there was a long dry spell, followed by an unusually late finish to the season.
Much of the country had the normal to above normal rains forecast, at least when we look at seasonal totals, and still a lot of farmers suffered and harvest were reduced because of the shifting rainfall patterns.
But for farmers on irrigation, there were few problems. The rains filled the dams so the water was there, impounded and stored, and all that was required was to get it to the fields. This is why we are likely to grow enough wheat this year for the first time to manage without imports, a major achievement.
That large wheat crops is easy to predict without anyone needing to do complex weather forecasting. It is very largely just taking the number of hectares planted and multiplying by the known average yield.
Yes there will be odd problems here and there, but there is almost no need to estimate. Simple arithmetic gives the answer because so many variables vanish when a pure irrigated crop is grown.
As we continue to build up our irrigation capacity this desirable state of affairs will become more common for other crops. For many summer crops, as opposed to winter wheat, we are not looking at 100 percent irrigation. What is often needed is supplementary irrigation.
The irrigation infrastructure must be in place and there must be some water in the dams, but when we work out how many hectares can be irrigated by what is in a dam we can do some multiplying, since at least half the water a summer crop needs will fall naturally from the sky, so the stored water can be spread significantly.
This dramatic expansion over the next few years, and unfortunately building a major dam has to be spread over a few years since it is not instant, will mean a lot more opportunities for fisheries and for recreation and tourism.
And that, plus the need for farmers to have safe water to irrigate their fields, means we must upgrade our waste disposal and other environmental processes.
Allowing filth and toxic waste to exit into our rivers will just convert some of these lovely new lakes we are impounding into cesspits.
Anyone ready to shrug at the dangers needs to take a trip to Lake Chivero where far too much semi-treated Harare sewage ends up to see what can happen.
Kunzvi Dam, finally now under construction after a few decades of talk and talk as the Second Republic measures achievement by action, not by discussion, is really needed in the higher northern and eastern sections of Harare province, which include the newer towns of Ruwa and Chitungwiza, but we will not win much if the final result is even more filth and toxic waste flowing downstream into the older major dams.
We have the law in place, and we have the technology to treat our waste in such a way that the exit pipes from a sewage treatment works release clean uncontaminated water back into the river to be used again and again and, in the downstream lakes, to ensure that the fish are healthy and in the downstream irrigation schemes that the crops have no toxic chemicals making them inedible.
The bit that is missing is the determination by urban councils, especially those in Harare province, as usual, and in other major concentrations of industry and people to install and maintain the required treatment works. Harare in the 1980s under an incredibly innovative council installed these, and even won engineering prizes.
But subsequent councils mistakenly acted as if they were self maintaining and preferred to overload and damage waterworks with the job of removing filth instead of making sure that there was no filth to start with.
As we build up our industrial base, as we convert some dubious urban areas into pleasant suburbs, as our farmers switch to ever more irrigation, and as we make fresh-water fish a major item in our diets, we need to make sure all this extra water we are busy impounding is really high quality. We can do this, and thus ensure the huge investments we are now making in dams and irrigation does what it is supposed to do.
We do not have to follow the example of, say, large parts of Europe and North America and turn our rivers into fire traps as floating rubbish catches fire, or our lakes into putrid dead zones.
We can do better. This will require the environmental arms of Government to link up with the water arms of Government and make sure that all this extra water we will be impounding is clean and useful.
Online Reporter