Save River at Birchenough Bridge, Zimbabwe
Supporting partnerships between basins
By Zoe Rosenblum
Spring/Summer 2023
Editor’s note: Zoe Rosenblum is a second-year geography Ph.D. student in CEOAS at Oregon State. She is working with Aaron Wolf to map out the world’s transboundary wetlands and explore how countries work together to sustainably manage their shared water resources.
“Go build partnerships.” This is the assignment that I received from my advisor when our collaborators invited us to tour our study area and present a joint session at the WaterNet 2022 Conference in South Africa.
My journey started with the 1:50 a.m. shuttle to the Portland Airport on October 4. Too many hours later, I arrived in Johannesburg at about 6:30 p.m. local time on October 5. A young man holding a sign with my name on it greeted me, and we discussed foods, languages and jobs on the short drive to my hotel in Pretoria. The hotel lobby was crowded by a Mozambican youth gymnastics team who had a competition nearby. I checked in with ease and then, too tired to eat, showered and headed to bed with the lullaby of cars honking melodically to the beat of the music blasting at the corner market.
My first day in the country, I walked to our partners’ offices and was delighted to find that Global Water Partnership and International Union for the Conservation of Nature have adjacent offices in the same building. They hosted a delicious lunch catered by a local restaurant, as a way of welcoming their partners. As soon as we sat down to eat, the ideas started rolling out:
“You must not let my colleague forget to tell you about our idea to send students from the basinto study at OSU.”
“Can we publish a book on the basin?”
“You must come back again and bring Aaron [Wolf, my advisor].”
So, on Day 1, I learned the hospitality of my hosts, the importance of meeting in person to informally discuss project ideas, and the cultural significance of eating in someone’s home (or office) before discussing business.
The next day, seven of us traveled to Mutare, the third largest city in Zimbabwe, near the border with Mozambique. Here we had two packed days of touring the transboundary basins through the eyes of the catchment managers and hydrologic engineers who work for the Zimbabwe National Water Authority. There are three river basins we focus on: the Buzi, Pungwe and Save Basins, known together as the BuPuSa Basin.
The work of transboundary water cooperation is to bring together countries that share water resources to discuss the burdens and benefits of water management. The BuPuSa Basin spans Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The project with GWP and IUCN centers around strengthening capacity of the two countries to establish protocols for sharing data, water and more.
From Mutare, we drove south to the Save River, where we observed low flows (it was the end of the dry season) and sedimentation. It was hard to imagine the 2019 flooding event from Cyclone Idai, described by engineers, which washed away monitoring equipment, bridges and even houses and humans.
Project partners in the basin are improving monitoring and developing early warning systems for such flooding. Now, water level dataloggers send an automatic alert to an engineer’s phone when certain flow thresholds are reached, and the engineer then alerts a WhatsApp group that includes engineers on the Mozambican side about flash flooding potential. Improvements may include a more reliable power system for the dataloggers, raising awareness about flood risk and preparedness, and installing flag systems to communicate river level and flood warnings.
“THESE DAYS WE ACCOMPLISH A LOT THROUGH ZOOM, BUT IT HAS YET TO REPLACE FACE-TO-FACE CONNECTION.”
After a week of tours and meetings in Zimbabwe, we returned to South Africa for the WaterNet Conference. The conference presents research and projects from across the Southern African Development Community, drawing together policymakers, academics and practitioners. Our session reflected on the use of data in transboundary water negotiations, including engaging keynote addresses from different continents, institutions and organizations.
A key observation from this trip is that informal environments often are the best for productive discussions. How well my partners took care of me in the region spoke volumes — Pinnie guiding me through a questionable border crossing, Tariro ensuring I tasted the best foods in Harare, Cebo making all of my transitions between hotels and airports as easy as possible. These days we accomplish a lot through Zoom, but it has yet to replace face-to-face connection. By traveling to the region, I gained more context about how our work at Oregon State fits into the many projects in the basin and established lines for informal dialogue with our partners.
