Draining Africa's Eden
Wildlife and warfare don’t mix. You don’t have to be a conservationist to know that when fighting breaks out, the natural world tends to suffer, particularly in Africa, where the bushmeat and ivory trades seem to have had a symbiotic relationship with conflict. So it was surprising and reassuring to discover in 2007 that healthy populations of large mammals had survived 22 years of civil war in Southern Sudan.
It’s ironic, then, to learn that peace in the region may be putting one of Africa’s most precious ecosystems in danger. Five years after the end of hostilities, the Sudanese and Egyptian governments are dusting off plans conceived more than 100 years ago to build a series of canals in Southern Sudan that will drain the continent’s largest wetland in an effort to improve downstream flow in the White Nile.
When you consider that population growth, climate change and development are all set to increase pressure on water supplies in one of the world’s driest regions, any attempt to relieve that pressure would seem sensible. But critics of the plans are warning that the costs will far outweigh the benefits. ‘The whole thing is off base,’ says Paul Elkan, director of Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) operations in Southern Sudan. ‘This is an old construction project based on old plans and old wisdom. If we are to have any chance of tackling climate change and all the other environmental challenges we face in the 21st century, this is just the kind of issue where we have to start applying some enlightened thinking.’
Lived-in system
Covering an area twice the size of Wales, the Sudd is one of the world’s most important wetlands. It’s formed where the Bahr el Jebel – as the White Nile is known at this point – meets the plains of Southern Sudan. Designated a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance in 2006, it supports a rich biota, with five types of ecosystem providing habitat for 100 mammal and 470 bird species, both resident and migratory. Among these are more than 5,500 elephants and 4,000 Nile lechwe, a threatened antelope that’s endemic to the region. What really make the Sudd stand out, however, are the 1.2 million antelope that migrate 1,500 kilometres every year to graze on its floodplain.
But its value lies not just in its biodiversity. It’s very much a lived-in system, with three tribes all dependent on the wetland for their livelihoods, says Michael Lock, co-editor of The Jonglei Canal: Impact and Opportunity. ‘The Nuer and Dinka pastoralists bring their cattle down to graze on the floodplains for the dry season before retreating to the higher ground, where they grow sorghum around their homesteads in the wet season,’ he says. ‘The Shilluk have a more sedentary lifestyle, fishing and cultivating crops as well as rearing cattle.’
According to Elkan, it’s important to recognise the value of the Sudd within its context. ‘When you consider its role in the migration of wildlife and in the movements of the pastoralists, you see that it’s part of a much larger ecosystem that includes the Jonglei Plains – Africa’s largest intact area of savannah.’ Together, the Sudd and the plains form an area three times the size of the Serengeti National Park.
Elkan was part of a WCS team that surveyed this vast area in 2007. Astonished at the concentrations of wildlife that they found, the team announced that they had hit upon the conservationist’s El Dorado. Elkan’s WCS colleague Michael Fay, a veteran of conservation throughout sub-Saharan Africa, said: ‘I have never seen wildlife like that, in such numbers, not even when flying over the Serengeti.’
Three years on, Elkan is concerned about the impact the canal project would have on the region. ‘No-one can say exactly what would happen,’ he says. ‘But it’s clear that building a canal would create a physical barrier that would cut across the wildlife migration route and the path taken by the pastoralists and their cattle.’
Experience shows that cattle might be able to use bridges or even swim across the canal, providing they had suitable entry and exit points. But there’s no indication how the migrating wildlife would respond to a huge body of water that suddenly appeared in its way. ‘Nowhere in their migration do these antelope encounter a large body of deep water,’ Elkan says. ‘Even if they were provided with crossing points, these would make them vulnerable to poaching.’
What effect draining the entire swamp would have is more difficult to predict. But given that millions of wild animals and thousands of humans and livestock have a stake in the Sudd, it’s clear that it wouldn’t be positive.
Back on the agenda
The idea of bypassing the Sudd isn’t a new one. British engineers drew up plans for a diversionary canal in 1938, after surveys in 1904 revealed that the Bahr el Jebel lost around half of its volume to evaporation as it meandered its way through the Sudd. The Sudanese and Egyptian governments eventually started excavating a canal in 1978. But having completed only two thirds of it, work was abandoned in 1983 when the Sudan People’s Liberation Army sent a unit to destroy the machinery following the outbreak of war. (Indeed, resentment at the government’s failure to consult the Southern Sudanese about the canal’s construction contributed to the outbreak of hostilities that year.)
This was the first part of a two-stage initiative, known as the Jonglei Canal Project (JCP). Starting downstream of Bor, the capital of Jonglei state, the first canal was to be 360 kilometres long, up to 50 metres wide and four metres deep. It would improve flow at Malakal, at the tail of the swamp, by almost 30 per cent. A second canal, to the west of the first, would increase that figure to 50 per cent. The dividend would be shared equally between the two partners.
Since the end of the war in 2005, the JCP has returned to the top of the agenda, as the World Bank-supported Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) tries to resolve disputes about the allocation of water in the region. Each member state – Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda – has its own development concerns. But when it comes to water, Egypt may have the most at stake, with 87 per cent of its resource coming from the Nile and demand set to outstrip supply in 2017.
As a result, members of the Egyptian Nile Water Sector management committee have held meetings with their Sudanese counterparts, both within the NBI and independently. However, none of those involved would confirm the extent of the plans for the resumption of construction, perhaps conscious that the project remains a sensitive issue.
Indeed, aware that the project’s direct benefits will be felt downstream, the Sudanese government has highlighted a number of indirect benefits it says will help those in the south, notably improved navigation of the river, an all-weather road along the canal’s length, year-round water supplies to the local population and the reduction of the damaging effects of flooding.
Despite such promises, few in the south have ever believed that the project would be anything other than a disaster. The priority should always be whether it would benefit the south, says Victor Lotombe, director general of the environment in the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS). ‘At the very least, there should be a full and proper environmental and social impact assessment. But my personal belief is that there is no way that it could benefit the south. There is no sense in it. It will only cause more problems for us.’
Others point out that even the downstream benefits may not be worth the trouble they cause upstream. ‘When you look at the actual quantities of water involved, they are meagre compared to what is actually needed,’ says Lock. Phase One would supply Egypt with an extra 1.9 cubic kilometres per year and Phase Two, an additional 1.6. Together, they represent an increase of less than five per cent of Egypt’s current supply. ‘What’s the point in increasing water flow in Egypt by two, three or even five per cent, when the population there is increasing by that much every year?’ asks Lock. ‘It’s like pissing in the wind.’
Revenue raiser
Southern Sudan is due to hold a referendum over its independence from the government in Khartoum in 2011. With all bets on a ‘yes’ vote, the GoSS may end up with the final say on the canal. However, Lotombe believes it won’t be a priority. ‘We have many issues to deal with after a long war – social, economic, political,’ he says. ‘We feel that if there is to be investment in this country, it should be in these areas before we even think about the canal.’
But according to Elkan, this need for social and economic development could tempt the GoSS to sell off the rights. ‘South Sudan is under great pressure in terms of international concessions at the moment,’ he says. ‘For a government that wants to earn revenue to stand on its own two feet, the offer of millions of dollars may be difficult to resist.’
There are opportunities for the south to benefit materially from keeping the Sudd intact, says Lotombe. ‘There is great potential for a fisheries industry and for wildlife tourism. And the abundant reed and papyrus species mean we could also think about paper production.’
Elkan believes this idea could be taken further. ‘Southern Sudan has the opportunity to become Africa’s Costa Rica,’ he says. ‘It has huge blocks of intact habitat and natural resources with relatively low human population densities. Managing these sustainably could bring enormous long-term benefits from carbon trading, ecosystem services, ecotourism and so on, as well as a well-managed oil sector.’
But it’s unlikely to happen unless the developed world puts its money where its mouth is, he continues. ‘The GoSS has a strong environmental and natural-resource-management agenda and values it highly. But it’s under tremendous pressure to earn revenue, build capacity to manage the resources, write the laws and enforce the laws.
It’s up to the international community to materialise some of the principles we promote concerning the environment to help enable the GoSS to make a decision that will support its long-term interests.’
The hydrology of the Sudd
The Sudd consists of a permanent swamp of between 2,800 and 16,600 square kilometres that expands to as much as 40,000 square kilometres during the rainy season. It’s formed as the Bahr el Jebel reaches the flat plains north of Mongalla, having tumbled down almost 200 metres from Nimule on the Uganda–Sudan border. As the river slows, it doesn’t have the force to dig a channel in the heavy clay soil that has the capacity to carry all of the water. With nowhere else to go, it spills out over the land.
Two factors influence the size of the swamp. Seasonal rains that fall on the Sudd itself, as well as in the river catchment between Lake Victoria and Mongalla, create the annual flood between April and November. (The water that collects in the catchment forms seasonal rivers, so-called torrents, such as the Aswa and Kit, which enter the river between Lake Albert and Juba. These rivers are virtually dry for most of the year but become flash floods during heavy rainfall and add an average of four cubic kilometres of water – up to 14.9 per cent – to the mean discharge.)
More interestingly, perhaps, the permanent area of swamp expands and contracts enormously over longer periods according to the outflow of Lake Victoria, which itself is influenced by seasonal rains that supply the Luvironza, Kagera and its other tributaries. Records show that between 1905 and 1960, the mean annual flow at the head of the swamp was 26.8 cubic kilometres. However, following unusually high rainfall in and around the lake in 1961, the figure between that year and 1980 was 50.3 cubic kilometres.
April 2010
It’s ironic, then, to learn that peace in the region may be putting one of Africa’s most precious ecosystems in danger. Five years after the end of hostilities, the Sudanese and Egyptian governments are dusting off plans conceived more than 100 years ago to build a series of canals in Southern Sudan that will drain the continent’s largest wetland in an effort to improve downstream flow in the White Nile.
When you consider that population growth, climate change and development are all set to increase pressure on water supplies in one of the world’s driest regions, any attempt to relieve that pressure would seem sensible. But critics of the plans are warning that the costs will far outweigh the benefits. ‘The whole thing is off base,’ says Paul Elkan, director of Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) operations in Southern Sudan. ‘This is an old construction project based on old plans and old wisdom. If we are to have any chance of tackling climate change and all the other environmental challenges we face in the 21st century, this is just the kind of issue where we have to start applying some enlightened thinking.’
Lived-in system
Covering an area twice the size of Wales, the Sudd is one of the world’s most important wetlands. It’s formed where the Bahr el Jebel – as the White Nile is known at this point – meets the plains of Southern Sudan. Designated a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance in 2006, it supports a rich biota, with five types of ecosystem providing habitat for 100 mammal and 470 bird species, both resident and migratory. Among these are more than 5,500 elephants and 4,000 Nile lechwe, a threatened antelope that’s endemic to the region. What really make the Sudd stand out, however, are the 1.2 million antelope that migrate 1,500 kilometres every year to graze on its floodplain.
But its value lies not just in its biodiversity. It’s very much a lived-in system, with three tribes all dependent on the wetland for their livelihoods, says Michael Lock, co-editor of The Jonglei Canal: Impact and Opportunity. ‘The Nuer and Dinka pastoralists bring their cattle down to graze on the floodplains for the dry season before retreating to the higher ground, where they grow sorghum around their homesteads in the wet season,’ he says. ‘The Shilluk have a more sedentary lifestyle, fishing and cultivating crops as well as rearing cattle.’
According to Elkan, it’s important to recognise the value of the Sudd within its context. ‘When you consider its role in the migration of wildlife and in the movements of the pastoralists, you see that it’s part of a much larger ecosystem that includes the Jonglei Plains – Africa’s largest intact area of savannah.’ Together, the Sudd and the plains form an area three times the size of the Serengeti National Park.
Elkan was part of a WCS team that surveyed this vast area in 2007. Astonished at the concentrations of wildlife that they found, the team announced that they had hit upon the conservationist’s El Dorado. Elkan’s WCS colleague Michael Fay, a veteran of conservation throughout sub-Saharan Africa, said: ‘I have never seen wildlife like that, in such numbers, not even when flying over the Serengeti.’
Three years on, Elkan is concerned about the impact the canal project would have on the region. ‘No-one can say exactly what would happen,’ he says. ‘But it’s clear that building a canal would create a physical barrier that would cut across the wildlife migration route and the path taken by the pastoralists and their cattle.’
Experience shows that cattle might be able to use bridges or even swim across the canal, providing they had suitable entry and exit points. But there’s no indication how the migrating wildlife would respond to a huge body of water that suddenly appeared in its way. ‘Nowhere in their migration do these antelope encounter a large body of deep water,’ Elkan says. ‘Even if they were provided with crossing points, these would make them vulnerable to poaching.’
What effect draining the entire swamp would have is more difficult to predict. But given that millions of wild animals and thousands of humans and livestock have a stake in the Sudd, it’s clear that it wouldn’t be positive.
Back on the agenda
The idea of bypassing the Sudd isn’t a new one. British engineers drew up plans for a diversionary canal in 1938, after surveys in 1904 revealed that the Bahr el Jebel lost around half of its volume to evaporation as it meandered its way through the Sudd. The Sudanese and Egyptian governments eventually started excavating a canal in 1978. But having completed only two thirds of it, work was abandoned in 1983 when the Sudan People’s Liberation Army sent a unit to destroy the machinery following the outbreak of war. (Indeed, resentment at the government’s failure to consult the Southern Sudanese about the canal’s construction contributed to the outbreak of hostilities that year.)
This was the first part of a two-stage initiative, known as the Jonglei Canal Project (JCP). Starting downstream of Bor, the capital of Jonglei state, the first canal was to be 360 kilometres long, up to 50 metres wide and four metres deep. It would improve flow at Malakal, at the tail of the swamp, by almost 30 per cent. A second canal, to the west of the first, would increase that figure to 50 per cent. The dividend would be shared equally between the two partners.
Since the end of the war in 2005, the JCP has returned to the top of the agenda, as the World Bank-supported Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) tries to resolve disputes about the allocation of water in the region. Each member state – Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda – has its own development concerns. But when it comes to water, Egypt may have the most at stake, with 87 per cent of its resource coming from the Nile and demand set to outstrip supply in 2017.
As a result, members of the Egyptian Nile Water Sector management committee have held meetings with their Sudanese counterparts, both within the NBI and independently. However, none of those involved would confirm the extent of the plans for the resumption of construction, perhaps conscious that the project remains a sensitive issue.
Indeed, aware that the project’s direct benefits will be felt downstream, the Sudanese government has highlighted a number of indirect benefits it says will help those in the south, notably improved navigation of the river, an all-weather road along the canal’s length, year-round water supplies to the local population and the reduction of the damaging effects of flooding.
Despite such promises, few in the south have ever believed that the project would be anything other than a disaster. The priority should always be whether it would benefit the south, says Victor Lotombe, director general of the environment in the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS). ‘At the very least, there should be a full and proper environmental and social impact assessment. But my personal belief is that there is no way that it could benefit the south. There is no sense in it. It will only cause more problems for us.’
Others point out that even the downstream benefits may not be worth the trouble they cause upstream. ‘When you look at the actual quantities of water involved, they are meagre compared to what is actually needed,’ says Lock. Phase One would supply Egypt with an extra 1.9 cubic kilometres per year and Phase Two, an additional 1.6. Together, they represent an increase of less than five per cent of Egypt’s current supply. ‘What’s the point in increasing water flow in Egypt by two, three or even five per cent, when the population there is increasing by that much every year?’ asks Lock. ‘It’s like pissing in the wind.’
Revenue raiser
Southern Sudan is due to hold a referendum over its independence from the government in Khartoum in 2011. With all bets on a ‘yes’ vote, the GoSS may end up with the final say on the canal. However, Lotombe believes it won’t be a priority. ‘We have many issues to deal with after a long war – social, economic, political,’ he says. ‘We feel that if there is to be investment in this country, it should be in these areas before we even think about the canal.’
But according to Elkan, this need for social and economic development could tempt the GoSS to sell off the rights. ‘South Sudan is under great pressure in terms of international concessions at the moment,’ he says. ‘For a government that wants to earn revenue to stand on its own two feet, the offer of millions of dollars may be difficult to resist.’
There are opportunities for the south to benefit materially from keeping the Sudd intact, says Lotombe. ‘There is great potential for a fisheries industry and for wildlife tourism. And the abundant reed and papyrus species mean we could also think about paper production.’
Elkan believes this idea could be taken further. ‘Southern Sudan has the opportunity to become Africa’s Costa Rica,’ he says. ‘It has huge blocks of intact habitat and natural resources with relatively low human population densities. Managing these sustainably could bring enormous long-term benefits from carbon trading, ecosystem services, ecotourism and so on, as well as a well-managed oil sector.’
But it’s unlikely to happen unless the developed world puts its money where its mouth is, he continues. ‘The GoSS has a strong environmental and natural-resource-management agenda and values it highly. But it’s under tremendous pressure to earn revenue, build capacity to manage the resources, write the laws and enforce the laws.
It’s up to the international community to materialise some of the principles we promote concerning the environment to help enable the GoSS to make a decision that will support its long-term interests.’
The hydrology of the Sudd
The Sudd consists of a permanent swamp of between 2,800 and 16,600 square kilometres that expands to as much as 40,000 square kilometres during the rainy season. It’s formed as the Bahr el Jebel reaches the flat plains north of Mongalla, having tumbled down almost 200 metres from Nimule on the Uganda–Sudan border. As the river slows, it doesn’t have the force to dig a channel in the heavy clay soil that has the capacity to carry all of the water. With nowhere else to go, it spills out over the land.
Two factors influence the size of the swamp. Seasonal rains that fall on the Sudd itself, as well as in the river catchment between Lake Victoria and Mongalla, create the annual flood between April and November. (The water that collects in the catchment forms seasonal rivers, so-called torrents, such as the Aswa and Kit, which enter the river between Lake Albert and Juba. These rivers are virtually dry for most of the year but become flash floods during heavy rainfall and add an average of four cubic kilometres of water – up to 14.9 per cent – to the mean discharge.)
More interestingly, perhaps, the permanent area of swamp expands and contracts enormously over longer periods according to the outflow of Lake Victoria, which itself is influenced by seasonal rains that supply the Luvironza, Kagera and its other tributaries. Records show that between 1905 and 1960, the mean annual flow at the head of the swamp was 26.8 cubic kilometres. However, following unusually high rainfall in and around the lake in 1961, the figure between that year and 1980 was 50.3 cubic kilometres.
April 2010
|
FIND OUT WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT ON TWITTER:
| |
 |
