Southern Africa has significant biodiversity and natural resources, as well as a robust legal framework for natural resource management across borders. However, most countries in the region are water scarce or water stressed. National policies lack harmonization across countries and between sectors, and poor and vulnerable populations lack enough benefits and incentives for sustainable resource management.
In response to Zimbabwe's critical health status and the degraded state of the country's water infrastructure, USAID's Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) funded 12 projects related to the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Promotion (WASH) sector in schools, hospitals, and clinics across the country. These water supply intervention activities began in fiscal year FY 2009 and continued through FY 2012 to determine whether they provided adequate access to improved water during the rainy and dry seasons.
From June 2012 to December 2017, the USAID-funded Resilience in the Limpopo Basin Program (RESILIM) contributed to significant advances in water management, biodiversity, and climate change adaptation across an area of Southern Africa as large as Sweden that is home to 18 million people.
From June 2012 to December 2017, the USAID-funded Resilience in the Limpopo Basin Program (RESILIM) contributed to significant advances in water management, biodiversity, and climate change adaptation across an area of Southern Africa as large as Sweden that is home to 18 million people.
The objective of the Resilience in the Limpopo Basin Program (RESILIM) of USAID Southern Africa is to enhance the resilience of people and ecosystems in the Limpopo Basin Program (LRB) by strengthening the capacity of the Limpopo Watercourse Commission (LIMCOM), and its key stakeholders, to address issues of climate change adaptation and biodiversity conservation within the context of trans-boundary integrated water resources management (IWRM).
Resilience in the Limpopo Basin (RESILIM) | 2012–2017
River basins in southern Africa, like river basins around the world, are under threat from increasing water use and shifting rainfall patterns, which are exaggerating flood and drought cycles and degrading water quality. It is hard enough for one country to adapt to these changing conditions, but most of the world’s water basins — 263 lake and river basins, covering almost half of the earth’s nonocean surface — cross national boundaries. To ensure that collaboration rather than competition wins out in basin management, neighboring countries need to work together.
This Exposure story describes efforts of the USAID Resilience in the Limpopo River Basin (RESILIM) project to protect the Marico River catchment, one of eleven sub-catchments that form the Limpopo River Basin. RESILIM (2012–2020) works Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe f to preserve the health of the Limpopo River.
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People living in the Limpopo River Basin in Southern Africa face water shortages, increased floods, and declines in crop productivity as climate change further stresses an already water limited region. Trans-boundary cooperation and action is needed to prevent further degradation of critical river ecosystems, to secure biodiversity and ecosystem services, and to support robust livelihoods in the basin.
The Limpopo River basin is one of the most vulnerable transboundary basins in the Southern African region, because of water scarcity and climate-related risks, as well as in its limited capacity to adapt. Water Demand Management (WDM) can reduce these risks through conservation and re-use of water resources.
