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dam-l Dam releases worsen floods/LS
The floods in Mozambique are being worsened by two dams upstream in
Zimbabwe, Cahora Bassa and Kariba.
Wednesday, 1 March, 2000, 15:32 GMT
Mozambique: Nature takes its toll
A cow swims for its life across the Limpopo
By Environment Correspondent Alex Kirby
Agriculture employs 83% of Mozambique's labour force, and
they live in the
most fertile areas - along the country's main rivers.
Two of these, the Save and the Limpopo, today spell death
and destruction to
people for whom they normally mean life.
Planning to move communities away from the river valleys, to
prevent future
disasters, would not work. In countries as poor as this,
people have no choice
but to live where they can make a living.
The poorest people usually live on the most marginalised and
vulnerable land,
because they have no choice. And this is a trend that is
likely to intensify.
The United Nations estimates that by 2025 half the world's
people will be
living in areas at risk from storms and other extreme weather.
One of world's poorest countries
The floods are the first instalment of Mozambique's agony.
For many of the
survivors, the real reckoning is yet to come.
Mozambique, which joined the
Commonwealth in 1995, is one of the
world's poorest countries.
Of its population of about 16 million
people, 90% live on less than US $1 a
day, and life expectancy, at the best of
times, is somewhere between 45 and
50 years.
It is believed to have the highest child
mortality rate in the world, with 27%
of its children dying before they reach
their fifth birthday.
Yet it had begun to pull itself out of
its abject poverty, and 1999 saw a
distinct turn for the better.
Cathy Mahoney of the British Red Cross told BBC News Online:
"Last year,
for the first time since the end of the civil war in 1992,
Mozambique did not
have to ask for food aid from abroad."
"But that's now totally reversed. It will probably need aid
for at least a year."
Signs of hope
However, there are signs of hope. Mozambique's Prime
Minister, Pascoal
Mocumbi, said this year's harvest was far from lost, with
the country's most
fertile areas, in the north, spared by the floods.
And he said recovery was still possible
in the south, if there was immediate
replanting after the floods subsided.
That would mean providing farmers
with seeds, and also with tools, which
are traditionally left in the fields
overnight and will have been washed
away.
But there is concern over the
infrastructure that will emerge when
the floods have gone. Aid experts
expect most roads and bridges in the
affected areas to be damaged or
destroyed.
The government has already appealed
for $30.5m to repair them, for a further
$5.9m to get the railways back into
shape, and for $4.5m for the electricity grid.
Another threat is the floodwaters' effect in dislodging
landmines left over from
the civil war, from known minefields and others yet to be
discovered.
Cross-boundary effects
The world is waking up to the scale of the Mozambican
horror. But perhaps it
has still not fully grasped that this is a disaster for
countries beyond
Mozambique as well.
South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, even Swaziland, are all
affected in some
degree. And their attempts to cope with disaster sometimes
inevitably affect
their neighbours.
Zimbabwe, for example, has been releasing water from its
Kariba dam at
3,000 cubic metres a second, and this flows straight down to
Mozambique's
largest dam at Cabora Bassa.
Nature is no respecter of the old colonial boundaries. What
happens to
anyone's environment can also affect our own.
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Lori Pottinger, Director, Southern Africa Program,
and Editor, World Rivers Review
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California 94703, USA
Tel. (510) 848 1155 Fax (510) 848 1008
http://www.irn.org
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