Concerns that some African countries are responding inadequately to climate change forecasts are highlighted in a new report that warns that governments have failed to appreciate the effects of poor rainfall and of potentially devastating floods – both linked to climate change - on long-term dam projects.
The report by International Rivers, a non-profit organisation involved in the protection of rivers and the rights of communities that depend on them, says that the Zambezi Basin is liable to suffer most from climate change among 11 major sub-Saharan African river basins and will experience the greatest reduction in rainfall and runoff in the coming years.
According to the report, increasing extreme rainfall patterns could result in “uneconomic dams that under-perform in the face of more extreme drought, and more dangerous dams that have not been designed to handle increasingly damaging floods.”
The 3,540 km (2,200 mile) Zambezi, Africa’s fourth longest river, runs through nine southern African countries and an increasing number of them are exploring dam building on it, especially since the ratification of the Zambezi Watercourse Commission paved the way for member states to harness the transboundary river....
The Zambesi River basin, created by Worldtraveller, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
No comments:
Post a Comment