Okavango

The Okavango Delta is under threat once more. The Botswana government, under pressure from powerful cattle interests, is about to embark on a controversial tsetse-fly eradication programme, using aircraft to spray huge tracts of the country's wilderness.
Tsetse flies, which cause a fatal sleeping sickness in cattle, are the main reason that ranching has not spread into all Botswana's wilderness areas. Now the plan to spray highly toxic endosulphin has resulted in an outcry from environmentalists who fear the chemicals will threaten fish and insects in the Delta and destroy its ecosystem.
The Gaborone-based Kalahari Conservation Society (KCS), which says the programme will cause catastrophic environmental impact, is in favour of a tsetse fly control programme which would not eradicate the tsetse fly but control it as part of the ecosystem.
Sadly, the tsetse fly controversy is one of many potential disasters that the Okavango Delta and the people who live in it have faced in recent decades. Surrounded as it is by the harsh Kalahari Desert, its life-giving waters are also a curse in a region desperate for water, not just for mining and industry but for human survival.
Rene Gordon, writing in Africa - A Continent Revealed says: "These swamps mean many things to many people in this thirsty land and there are dreams and plans aplenty - pipelines taking water to distant coal and diamond mines; irrigation canals to make the
Kalahari bloom; schemes to create new pastures once the water has drained away."

The blue gleam

The Okavango Basin is the fourth largest international river basin in southern Africa, spreading over between 320 000 to nearly 700 000 square kilometres, depending on which source you believe. The catchment is named after the Kavango River which flows south-east out of southern Angola into the Caprivi Strip in northern Namibia and then south into Botswana, where it supplies the Okavango Delta.
The Okavango River flows during the summer months. Late summer rains in Angola boost the river's levels, creating the annual flood which resupplies the tributaries, channels and floodplains of the Okavango Delta.
Water flowing into the Delta ranges from seven million to 15 million cubic meters a year but averages ten million cubic meters a year. About 97% of the inflow is lost to evapotranspiration.
The annual flood is the main event in the cycle of the Delta. It determines the year ahead for the countless people who live in the Panhandle - the region where the river spreads out into the Delta itself. Two seasons ago, the floods failed to make it to Maun, the frontier town on the Delta's southern tip, causing a small panic among fishermen and tourism operators alike.

Water wars

It is not only Botswana who wants and needs the water. Namibia wants to build a 250 kilometre-long pipeline from the Kavango River to supply water to Windhoek, its capital city, and Angola, from whose southern highlands the Cuito and Kavango Rivers flow, has a territorial claim on the water.
In September 1994, the three countries signed Okavango River Basin Commission which agreed to the fair use of their shared water system. But when drought hit Namibia in 1996, the government wanted to fastrack its water plan. Namibia's water demand is expected to grow to 600 million cubic metres a year by 2020, well up from its 250-million cubic metre consumption in 1990.
The communities who live in the Delta and rely on it for water and food have the most to lose. Villagers need water drinking and washing, for fish and water lily roots and for reeds to build houses. Tourism, arguably the only truly sustainable industry in Botswana's future, also depends heavily on the survival of the Delta. Without the annual flood from the north, the swamps will shrink as the water bleeds away into the Kalahari and the destruction of wildlife and habitat will be cataclysmic.

The future

The Okavango Delta is the largest wetland in the international Ramsar Convention - of which Botswana is a recent signatory - which protects wetlands throughout the world. As such, its protection and survival should be guaranteed. However, when it comes down to water and human survival, protective legislation could easily be forgotten or ignored.
The Delta's survival depends right now on politicians keeping their heads. While the possibility of a water war with Namibia has faded for the time being, another bad drought in the latter country is likely to result in heavy pressure on the government to dust off plans for the pipeline. Meanwhile, in Botswana, the tsetse fly spraying programme will not help tourism, especially in the longer term.
Tourism is one of Africa's most sustainable industries. Properly managed - which means making sure that local people derive direct benefit and revenues from it - tourism is how many African countries hope to shrug off the woes of past decades.
It is here that companies like CCAfrica come into their own. Based on a model sustainable development - which means the communities benefit directly from tourism - the company's luxury camps at Sandibe and Nxabega have managed to create an
astounding out-of-Africa kind of experience for foreign tourists while preserving a piece of Africa's greenest heart and having the benefits flow back into the community.
That's the kind of message that governments need to be reminded of. People aren't going to fly thousand of miles to see the desiccated remains of a former oasis. But they will if the water is flowing and there are hippo snorting in the channels and fish eagles swooping down from palm trees to fish.

credited to wildwatch and flickr:jonrawlinson,Juan Bach,dominik.kreutz