Climate, caprice and consensus: Planning for water scarcity in Southern Africa

Southern Africa's meteorology is characterized by spells of anomalous oceanic and atmospheric circulation patterns which lead to highly unpredictable weather conditions from year to year. The El Nine Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomena, which are largely caused by differential warming of the Pacific ocean with respect to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans have been a major cause of capricious climate in Southern Africa. There is strong empirical evidence to show that ENSO years have low rainfall and lead to droughts in the region. Water is generally a scarce resource throughout the subcontinent despite the presence of large river systems such as the Zambezi. This is primarily due to the geographic distances between supply areas and demand centers. The unpredictability of rainfall makes planning for water availability particularly acute. Several forecasting techniques are being investigated in the region along with planning though retrospective climatology. These measures can also be potentially useful to refine regional impact studies of global climate change models. However, lessons learned during the 1991 drought show that information availability and methods are relatively useless without the appropriate institutional mechanisms to galvanize each country. The crucial part of the process is to gain a degree of institutional agreement and consensus among the various countries of the region. Given the inherently transboundary nature of water resources, the planning for climatic influences on water availability can only be successful if the regional development organizations such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) are able to provide the support for utilizing climatic data and integrating such models into larger welter policy programs.