Wednesday, April 24, 2024
News and Views from the Global South
SOUTHERN AFRICA: Testing the Waters Ahead of Closer Collaboration
Tinus de Jager
- You would expect to find children in the Vaal River outside Parys on a hot afternoon. But 28 of them, on the Gauteng side of the river, are not swimming; they are doing research for ORASECOM.
Children have been drafted in to assist with surveying water quality as part of raising public awareness of the river's health. Credit: Tinus de Jager
School children at five sites have been given kits (including nets to gather samples and charts to identify the plant and animal species they gather); the Parys group took enthusiastically to the banks of Vaal, squeals of delight – or was it horror – from the gathered grade 7s greeting the discovery of a wriggly red bloodworm.
ORASECOM, now in its tenth year, serves to advise Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa on best practices to utilise a shared water resource. Each of these Southern African countries use water from the Orange and Vaal (Senqu) rivers.
Peter Pike, of the Department of Water Affairs in South Africa, says the goal should be to share the benefits of the system amongst the four states involved in ORASECOM. But, he says, the countries need to trust each other and the water quality survey is the first step in building that relationship.
“ORASECOM has a function to advise the parties, they have to find each other and decide what to do… We are now at the stage where we are gathering real information to be shared between the four states and the organisation can start advising the states.”
Development and water
The four countries covered by the basin have different development issues but fair and sustainable management of the water depends on a shared vision by these states.
“Everything is a trade off. We have to make use of the water now for development, but we also have to protect the resource. A quality survey will not solve the development issues, but it is a link in the chain to solve the longer-term problems,” Pike says.
“There is already more trust amongst the four member states and I think the joint basin survey is an indication of this.”
Lenka Thamae, the executive secretary of ORASECOM, says while a lot of research has been done on the quantity of water available in Southern Africa, the new study would provide the first shared data on water quality in the Orange-Senqu. “Water quality has always been lagging behind a bit, but it is a key element; important to all for states along the river system.”
Scientists will test the water quality all along the basin, analyse the data, share the results and gain some idea of what needs to be done in the different sectors. The tests will be analysed by all four states, the results will standardise the tests and hopefully create some shared goals amongst the four participating countries.
And the children will play their part too. Like in Parys, children living on the banks of the rivers will help test the water at four other sites. They will also gather samples and make a judgement on the health of the river.
Gavin Quibell, who heads up the survey, says while the data collected by the children will form part of the study, getting children involved in the project is more about education: “If we get them on the river bank, maybe they will get the parents, brothers and sisters involved and more conscious about the state of their river… while they may not be able to solve pollution issues themselves, the knowledge that their river is healthy or not will help raise the consciousness of this generation and the next.”
Four white basins on the river bank might not seem like much, but had the undivided attention of the 28 children from Parys.
The results of the water quality survey are expected to be made public in the first half of next year.
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