Community-led wetland restoration may hold key to Harare’s water crisis

Community-led wetland restoration may hold key to Harare’s water crisis


HARARE — By 6 a.m. on Sunday, the line at a water well in Harare’s Budiriro suburb is already long. It snakes all the way into a nearby street, and some people have begun fighting over who should get water first. If they’re lucky, they get clean water once a week. In other suburbs of Zimbabwe’s capital, it can take weeks or months. Meanwhile, as the water crisis grows, the city’s wetlands, which were once able to easily store water, are being drained for new housing developments or paved surfaces as the city grows. This is also happening across the country. According to a 2022 audit of Zimbabwe’s Environmental Management Agency’s (EMA) wetlands protection, these ecosystems are being converted for commercial activities, such as construction, mining and agriculture. “As the city is developing, it’s encroaching more and more into the wetland areas,” says Robert Neil Cunliffe, an independent environmental consultant from Harare. “Those areas are being converted from a natural grassland community to a paved surface.” In the capital, 3,717 hectares (9,185 acres) of wetlands have so far been affected by construction, which translates to about 16% of its wetlands, according to the audit. Other factors, such as inadequate enforcement of orders and pollution, are also responsible for the decline of the country’s wetlands. After decades of witnessing water mismanagement and the destruction of wetlands across the city, residents and local organizations have joined forces with city officials to protect and restore a small, 34-hectare (84-acre) wetland in the suburb…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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South Africa Today – Environment

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