As negotiations at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku on how to support climate action remain closed, South Africans are learning that some “renewable energy” will not be renewable after all in an era of climate change.
This year, Zambia and Zimbabwe faced a severe drought that devastated both countries. It destroyed crops and caused the Zambezi River to flow at a very low level.
For decades, the Kariba Dam in Mfuleni has provided much of the electricity used in Zambia and Zimbabwe. However, in September, Zambian officials noted that, due to very low water levels, only one of the six engines on their side of the lake could continue to operate.
Entire towns have been without power, sometimes for days on end. Intermittent power outages have become the norm since, in 2022, record low rainfall led to a huge imbalance between the level of water taken from Lake Kariba – the world’s largest lake – and water use by Zimbabweans and Zambians. This has hit homes hard in the cities, 75 percent of which have access to electricity.
Rural areas, too, are experiencing a significant decrease in rainfall. Zambia is experiencing the driest agricultural season in more than four decades. The worst-hit provinces produce half of the annual maize crop and are home to more than three-quarters of Zambia’s livestock, which is struggling due to burnt pastures and lack of water.
Crop failures and livestock losses fuel food inflation. UNICEF has reported that more than 50,000 Zambian children under the age of five are at risk of severe wasting, the deadliest form of malnutrition. Zambia has also been struggling with diarrhea as more than 20,000 cases have been reported, as the availability of water is becoming increasingly scarce. This is a water, power and food emergency all at once.
Although many blame climate change for these disasters, its effect on the climate has exacerbated an already existing situation. This difficult situation is the result of two related policy options that present major challenges not only to Zambia, but to the entire African continent.
The first is the prioritization of urban rather than rural areas for development. Zambia’s Gini coefficient – a measure of income inequality – is among the highest in the world. While urban workers are more likely to earn regular wages, the poorest sections of the population depend on agricultural self-employment and climate change.
The huge gap between the rich and the poor does not happen by accident; it’s by design. For example, tax reforms in recent decades have benefited wealthy urbanites and large rural landowners, small farmers and the remaining agricultural laborers.
The result is that children in Zambia’s cities enjoy access to enough food, clean water, electricity and toilets than their rural peers. If 15,000 Zambian children die every year in rural areas from a preventable disease like diarrhea and Zambia has for decades had the highest rate of malnutrition and malnutrition in Africa, the urban-based bias in policies and budgets is a major reason.
That bias is also evident in the reporting of the current crisis, which focuses more on the urban population being cut off by the Kariba blackout rather than the nine-tenths of Zambia’s rural population who have never received electricity.
The second is the permanent choice of many African governments regarding hydropower. In much of the continent, the preference for hydroelectric plants is a colonial legacy that continued eagerly after independence; Zambia and its Kariba Dam are cases in point.
Dams can provide flood control, enable year-round irrigation and hydroelectric power and, in years of global warming, their dams can control extreme weather conditions while their energy is renewable and clean — or so their proponents intend.
Over the past two decades, billions of dollars have been spent on developing or building dams in Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and other places. Despite the crisis in Kariba, where the reservoir has not been fully filled since 2011, and in the Kafue Gorge, Lower Kafue Gorge, and Itezhi-Tezhi Power Company hydroelectricity, Zambia, too, wants to increase its power through the Batoka Gorge Hydro Project which is $5bn. This seems absurd when the global trend is that climate change is reducing electricity generation and irrigation capacity.
In addition, it is important to emphasize that the results of distribution of dams are not biased. They are built in rural areas, but their main beneficiaries often live elsewhere. While dams provide, or have provided, reliable and affordable electricity to urban areas and important mining interests to governments, people and the environment around the work often suffer.
Kariba was built between 1955 and 1959 by the British colonists without environmental impact assessment and caused the displacement of tens of thousands of Tonga Goba people who have suffered from a long history of broken promises regarding compensation and resettlement.
They, like the 90 percent of other rural Zambians without electricity, have historically been unhappy with the destruction of the dam while successive Zambian governments have celebrated Kariba as a symbol of Zambian brotherhood and South African brotherhood.
Climate change, like large dams, does not affect everyone equally. The simultaneous water, energy and food crises emphasize that in Zambia, and in many other African countries, important decisions must be made urgently.
Rural residents should no longer be asked to bear the brunt of debt repayments and associated cuts. They cannot be forced to come to terms with the climate crisis and the wider economic downturn on their own.
Zambia and other African countries need to ensure that rural areas and their needs for reliable and affordable access to water, energy and food are prioritized. The necessary political will and the budget for that must be made available.
Power outages and crop failures caused by recent droughts, too, point to the injustices and risks associated with the bias of cities and large dams. Global warming will only enhance these pathologies – unless completely different measures are taken.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
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