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Ecologists dam the Zambezi's dams

Africa Intelligence - 8 March 2001

THE INDIAN OCEAN NEWSLETTER # 939 - 08/03/01
MOZAMBIQUE/ZAMBIA : Ecologists dam the Zambezi's dams

Speaking on CNN's Insight programme on March 6, Mozambique's
ambassador to the United
States, Marcos Namashulua said that he believed more dams were
needed, "not only in
Mozambique but in other countries as well" to avoid a recurrence of
the flooding that has so far
claimed some 60 lives and left over 80,000 people homeless. But a
report by the World
Commission on Dams, a think tank set up and financed by aid
agencies, industry,
governments, and NGOs, says that flood damages have gone up as more
and more dams
have been built, and favours "non-structural solutions" as a way out
of the flooding impasse.
With dams regulating river flow, settlement patterns have also
changed, with people living and
farming in flood zones. These people are much more vulnerable when
there is flooding.

According to the NGO International Rivers Network, Mozambican
scientists and outside
experts believe the solution to the problem is the restoration of
the Zambezi's normal flood
regime (the river flooded naturally in November/December and again
in February/March in the
pre-dam era) via a coordinated release strategy from the dams along
the river. Under such a
plan, "dams would release medium-sized floods for use by floodplain
farmers and fishers, and
establish an adequate flood warning policy for larger floods." Not
more dams, but better flow
regulation are what the ecological experts appear to agree on.
Meanwhile, authorities in
Zimbabwe say that three people have died and 15,000 displaced from
their homes along the
banks of the Zambezi in that country.

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