As discussions at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku on how to finance climate action remain stagnant, southern Africans are learning that some “renewable energy” may not be renewable at all in the climate age.
This year, Zambia and Zimbabwe experienced a major drought that devastated both countries. It destroyed crops and reduced Zambezi River water flows to a historic low.
For decades, the Kariba Dam on the river provided the bulk of the electricity consumed in Zambia and Zimbabwe. But in September, Zambian officials indicated that due to very low water levels, only one out of six turbines on this side of the lake was able to continue operating.
Entire cities were deprived of electricity, sometimes for several days at a time. Intermittent access to energy has become the norm since record low rainfall in 2022 created a stark imbalance between the level of water consumption in Lake Kariba – the world’s largest dam reservoir – and water consumption by Zimbabweans and Zambians. This has severely affected urban households, 75 percent of which normally have access to electricity.
Rural areas also suffer from a significant decrease in rainfall rates. Zambia is experiencing the driest agricultural season in more than four decades. The worst-affected counties usually produce half their annual maize production and are home to more than three-quarters of Zambia’s livestock, which suffer from burned pastures and water scarcity.
Crop failures and livestock losses increase food price inflation. More than 50,000 Zambian children under the age of five are at risk of severe wasting, the most serious form of malnutrition, UNICEF reports. Zambia is also battling a cholera outbreak with more than 20,000 cases reported, as access to water becomes increasingly scarce. It is a water, energy and food emergency all in one.
While many blame climate change for these disasters, its impact on the weather has only exacerbated the already existing crisis. This dangerous situation is the result of two interconnected political choices that pose enormous challenges not only in Zambia, but throughout much of Africa.
The first is to give priority to urban areas over rural areas in development. Zambia’s Gini coefficient – a measure of income inequality – is among the highest in the world. While urban workers are most likely to earn regular wages, the poorest strata of the population depend on agricultural self-labor and climate fluctuations.
The huge gap between rich and poor is not accidental; It’s by design. For example, tax reforms in recent decades have benefited wealthy urban elites and large rural landowners, while leaving subsistence farmers and agricultural workers behind.
The result is that children in Zambia’s cities have more reliable access to an adequate diet, clean water, electricity and toilets than their peers in rural areas. If 15,000 Zambian children die annually in rural areas from preventable diseases such as diarrhoea, and Zambia has for decades suffered from the highest rates of malnutrition and stunting in Africa, the urban bias in policies and budgets is the main reason.
This bias is also evident in Coverage This is about the current crisis, which focuses on urban residents being deprived of electricity due to blackouts in Kariba, rather than on the nine-tenths of rural Zambia who have never had access to electricity.
The second reason is the consistent preference of many African governments for hydroelectric power. In most parts of the continent, the penchant for hydroelectric power plants is a colonial legacy that persisted eagerly after independence; Examples include Zambia and the Kariba Dam.
Dams can provide flood control, enable year-round irrigation and hydroelectric power generation, and in the age of global warming, their reservoirs can manage extreme weather events while their energy is renewable and clean – or so their proponents claim.
Over the past two decades, billions of dollars have been spent developing or building dams in Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and elsewhere. Despite the crisis in Kariba, where the reservoir has not been fully operational since 2011, and at the smaller hydropower stations, Kafue Gorge, Lower Kafue Gorge, and Itize-Tezi Power, Zambia also wants to boost its capacity through the $5 Batoka Gorge Hydro Project Billions of dollars. This seems reckless when the global trend is that climate change is undermining hydropower generation and irrigation capacity.
Furthermore, it is important to emphasize that the distributional effects of dams are not neutral. They are built in rural areas, but their main beneficiaries usually reside elsewhere. While dams provide or provide relatively reliable and affordable electricity to urban departments and mining interests of interest to governments, people and ecosystems close to the project often suffer.
Kariba was built between 1955 and 1959 by British colonial powers without an environmental impact assessment and displaced tens of thousands of Tonga-Juba people who suffer A long history of broken promises regarding compensation and resettlement.
They, like the other 90% of rural Zambians who lack electricity, have historically not enjoyed the spoils of the dam, while successive Zambian governments have celebrated Kariba as a symbol of Zambian nationhood and South African brotherhood.
Climate changes, like large dams, do not affect everyone equally. The simultaneous crises in the water, energy and food systems underscore that in Zambia, and many other African countries, fundamental decisions must be made urgently.
We should no longer ask rural people to bear the brunt of debt repayment and associated austerity measures. They cannot be forced to adapt to climate devastation and broader economic distress 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 budgets must be provided for this.
Power outages and crop failures as a result of the recent drought once again point to the injustices and risks associated with urban bias and large dams. Global warming will only reinforce these diseases – unless different paths are firmly pursued.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
