eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Water scarcity is on everyone's mind. Long taken for granted, water availability has entered the realm of economics, politics, and people's food and lifestyle choices. But as anxiety mounts - even as a swath of California farmland has been left fallow and extremist groups worldwide exploit the desperation of people losing livelihoods to desertification - many are finding new routes to water security with key implications for food access, economic resilience, and climate change.
Water does not perish, nor require millions of years to form as do fossil fuels. However, water is always on the move. In this timely, important book, Judith D. Schwartz presents a refreshing perspective on water that transcends zero-sum thinking. By allying with the water cycle, we can revive lush, productive landscapes. Like the river in rural Zimbabwe that, thanks to restorative grazing, now flows miles further than in living memory. Or the food forest of oranges, pomegranates, and native fruit-bearing plants in Tucson, grown through harvesting urban wastewater. Or the mini-oasis in West Texas nourished by dew.
Animated by stories from around the globe, Water In Plain Sight is an inspiring reminder that fixing the future of our drying planet involves understanding what makes natural systems thrive.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466879003 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 07/26/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 258 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Water in Plain Sight
Hope for a Thirsty World
By Judith D. Schwartz
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2016 Judith D. SchwartzAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-7900-3
CHAPTER 1
THE ELEPHANT POOLS
Making Rainfall Effective
The scene which met my eyes the next morning is beyond my power to describe. Game, game everywhere, as far as the eye could see — all on the move, grazing. The game did not appear to be moving; the impression I received was that the earth was doing so, carrying the game with it — they were in such vast numbers ... hundreds of thousands of blesbok, springbok, wildebeest, and many others were all around us.
— George Mossop, southern Africa, 1860s
Water has reappeared in a remote corner of rural Zimbabwe, some ten minutes of scarcely drivable dirt road off the Victoria Falls–Bulawayo road and into the bush.
This new water has replenished the Dimbangombe River, which now extends a full kilometer farther upstream than anyone, including the chiefs and elders of the five local tribes, can remember. Even now, in September, the parched heart of the dry season with the hope of rain still a good two months away, there's a steady flow where the Dimbangombe now meets the slightly larger Tsitsingombe River. This revived juncture is marked by a large winterthorn tree, a tree treasured in these parts because, unlike most trees, it holds on to its green leaves through the dry months, only to drop them once it rains.
Upriver from this spot a small, marshy meadow — vlei in the Afrikaans language — has a clear film of water coursing over the mud. Allan Savory, who founded the organization that presides over this land, the Africa Centre for Holistic Management, says this is thanks to the new water. At nearly eighty, Savory is trim and spindle-legged in timeless bush garb: khaki shorts; a loose, buttoned cotton shirt; a felt hat with a shady brim. If it's in the heat of the day — from about noon to three, a stretch I come to think of as "the stupid hours" since the heat leaves me barely able to think — he'll be wearing shoes, perhaps a thin-soled kudu-skin pair with holes at the toe, or a tawny-shaded pair of Crocs; otherwise, not. He prefers to go barefoot. This way every step he takes is telling him something about the state of the land: the temperature of the soil, its cover, whether or not it's compacted.
"This is the giraffes' favorite area," he says. It's quiet with no animals in sight, but I imagine a herd of giraffes ambling by this very spot: their long, lanky necks pitched at an angle; shoulder muscles rippling as, suddenly and in a single unit, they break into a run.
Savory scans the vista with the intentness of someone attuned to the slightest variation in plant type or the recent presence of antelope, no matter how fleet-footed. "Ten years ago we would not have seen water here into September," he tells me and my husband, Tony Eprile.
We get back in the 4 × 4 and ramble along the dusty road to a clearing. We walk to where the river is running clean and silvery over the rocks. A red dragonfly skims by. "This part of the river goes dry after the rainy season, around April, then in July, after the coldest time of year, it starts to flow again," Savory says. "A few years back, after July the water began returning more strongly and staying longer into the eight-month-long dry season. This year, for the first time, it didn't go dry at all."
This area is home to numerous water-loving species, he says, including African fish eagle, catfish, turtles and otters, "though we haven't seen them in a while. We do have a croc in here, but he may not be here now. It's an eleven-foot croc with a slightly damaged jaw. One year he spent the dry season in an abandoned porcupine den."
Savory points out the track of a warthog, with its distinct two toes, in the dirt along the bank. Above us, weaverbird nests dangle from the trees. The air is still but for the chattering of birds and the soft rustle of grasses as we brush against them. A wave of well-being sweeps over me: this is the sound of Africa, a layering of quiet and song that fills up the space in a way that somehow makes the sky feel that much more immense. Tony spent his childhood in South Africa, so my nostalgia for this environment comesnaturally — that is, by marriage. The first time he brought me to South Africa's famed Kruger National Park, he insisted we get up early so we could sit in the stillness and simply listen to the sounds.
A bird darts past too quickly for me to note its shape and color. "That's a striped kingfisher," Savory says. "I caught one in the car on the way to fetch you."
We move quietly and in single file a few yards away from the river in search of more signs of new water: Savory, then me, then Tony with his camera, striding into the grasses as if we're on a kind of water safari. We pause, and where we stand the ground is moist and all the plants are green. These are sedges, which favor moisture; they look like grass but grow in bunches, sprays of slender leaves spreading outward from the base. Savory shows us that reeds, whose existence virtually defines wetlands, are now established as well. "I never dreamt of having water here," he says. "We have Egyptian geese all year. Look, you can see water lilies — this is two months until the rain begins and there's still water. If this had been a wet year we could have explained it. But we've had seven years of average or below-average rainfall."
Finally Savory takes us to the elephant pool, where the new water has made the biggest change in the landscape. It doesn't look like much. In fact, the spot looks trashed — like, well, a gang of wild elephants had been through and ransacked the place. And that, says Savory, is the point. For the elephants don't need that particular watering hole anymore.
This had long been the site of the river's permanent pool, where elephants could water any time of year. You see, elephants like to wallow. They bathe to cool down and wet themselves in preparation for lolling around in the mud. A good coating of mud protects their skin from the harshsun — elephants, with their delicate skin and sparse hair are susceptible to sunburn — as well as from parasites and biting insects. For elephants, baths are also an important social activity and a time in which to play and squirt each other with their trunks.
On the plus side for us humans, the lack of water everywhere else meant that you always knew where to find elephants (there are several wild herds in and around the Africa Centre's land). Savory used to bring guests to the nearby observation hide for game viewing. Often, he recalls, "I couldn't get guests out of the hide and safely cover the short walk to the car because of the damned elephants. As it got darker, one herd after another kept coming to get water." Savory and his friends would have no choice but to wait, assuming their place in the pachyderm caravan until the animals, sometimes hundreds of them, had their drink. Then the people could return to camp.
Now that the wild elephants in the area have several watering spots to choose from, they no longer have to walk several kilometers from all directions to the sole reliable pool. The pathways — centuries-old trails carved out by generations of elephants over time — are grown over with sedges and brush; without elephants digging and trampling and mucking about, the site of the pool has silted up.
The hide, a stone structure that was once prime real estate for sighting and photographing game, is deserted, its sides crumbling. Savory tells a story about the hide in its heyday. One time a guide left a group of visitors alone for several moments so they could enjoy looking at animals at their leisure. "The guide returned and there were three lions sitting on top of the hide," he says, chuckling over the memory. "The people were inside, terrified."
* * *
When I refer to "new water" at Dimbangombe, I don't mean that water has suddenly materialized out of nowhere (the amount of water on the planet remains fairly constant), or been "taken" from somewhere else. Nor do I mean reclaimed water in the sense of treated wastewater (as in, say, the "toilet to tap" NEWater program in Singapore). Rather, this water is "new" in that it hadn't previously been available.
It's not that the Dimbangombe Ranch at the Africa Centre hadn't been receiving any rain. Though, admittedly, the previous rainy seasons had been lackluster, it was still near the average of 650 millimeters (a little over 25 inches), which is typical for dryland savanna landscapes. For the longest time, the land was languishing, kiln-dry and withered despite the rain, but now the ranch and the animals that dwell there are flourishing.
Through the pages of this book we'll travel around the world: to California, Mexico, Brazil, West Texas, Australia and back to Africa. At each stop we'll find new water — water held in the soil, cycled through plants, captured as dew — and gain new insights on how water flows across the land, insights that can help us replenish water sources and make the best use of what we have.
For the moment we're in Zimbabwe, a landlocked state with a wealth of big game and a deeply troubled past, where Allan Savory and his colleagues at the Africa Centre have launched and guided a mini-miracle in land and waterrestoration — one that offers critical lessons on how to address water problems, whether stemming from too much or too little, around the globe.
* * *
Once touted as the "breadbasket of Africa," Zimbabwe has in the last decade or so been plagued by food insecurity. Much of the population depends on international food aid; due to chronic malnutrition, one in three children has stunted growth. The country's economy is so dire and improvisational that there is no national currency, the Zimbabwe dollar having inflated itself beyond relevance. Rather than carrying around Z$100 trillion banknotes, as was the case in 2009, people dig into their pockets for U.S. dollars, British pounds or South African rands. The price charged may or may not make any sense, and vendors invariably try to barter their stock in lieu of change, which they likely do not have.
There are a number of reasons for this predicament, among them Robert Mugabe's failed regime and the government-enforced land reforms. As an explanation for rampant and recurring food shortages, however, the Zimbabwe government and the global aid community generally look to drought. Indeed, the landscape across much of the country looks parched, and crops regularly wilt from moisture stress so that a season's yield may be simply written off. "Even the goats are suffering," a seventy-six-year-old subsistence farmer named Simon Sibaya told Bloomberg News in late 2013. "This is a dry place always, but last season what few crops we had failed."
If drought is defined as a lack of precipitation, the rain records cast doubt on this as the culprit for Zimbabwe's ills. For the country's crops have also been decimated by floods. When the rainy season hits, it can hit hard. As I write, three months after visiting a Zimbabwe so dry and dusty it reddened the eyes, I've been reading reports of flooded bridges, homes washed away, an air force rescue of people who were stranded for two days. Not to mention the wholesale destruction of crops, the extent of which augurs plenty of hunger ahead. "Brace for More Floods," Harare-based NewsDay warned in January 2015.
Perhaps the trouble is not quite as simple as a scarcity of water descending from the sky, though that is generally the story that gets told. In any event, Matabeleland North, the Africa Centre's home province and the nation's poorest, has been beset by the same deluges and dry spells as the rest of the country. And yet, the 8,000-acre Dimbangombe Ranch has newly formed watering holes that are luring wild elephants and other game from nearby areas. Instead of losing crops, the rural communities that work with the center are seeing improved growing seasons and getting off food aid. In Sianyanga Village, a young mother named Busie Nyachari says that whereas in the past they would rush to be in line to receive assistance, now "we are able to feed our families, and neighboring communities come to us for food."
Which raises the question: Is the condition we call "drought" something other than the absence of rain? And can the advent of new water at Dimbangombe teach us how to ensure that there's sufficient water to support people, the land and wildlife in regions prone to dry periods? In other words, do people in water-challenged areas have options more promising than praying for rain or piling up sandbags?
* * *
Savory wants us to have a good view of the place where the two rivers meet, so we hop back into the 4 x 4 bush vehicle and rattle our way along the improvised road. It's late morning and the air has warmed yet another notch. Still, there's a hint of breeze strumming through the grasses. Savory glances around without speaking, and I catch myself wondering if he's expecting me to read the landscape as he does. Beyond the basic visual units of river, grass and tree, I don't know what I should be looking for.
I'm humbled by the awareness that the signs and signals of this terrain — of any terrain, in fact, were I to be totally honest — constitute a language I don't speak. Savory, by contrast, is an accomplished, even legendary tracker, savvy to the subtle details that suggest an animal's recent presence or a change in conditions. He honed this ability as a wildlife ranger in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) in the 1950s, when his responsibilities included hunting rogue elephants and man-eating lions. He later drew on this knowledge during the long civil war that yielded Zimbabwe's independence. As a military officer he developed tactics suited to bush guerrilla warfare and established the Tracker Combat Unit that became the elite "Selous Scout" regiment. Since then his teachings on military tracking have been used widely, including for the U.S. Special Forces.
More than a skill or even a set of skills, tracking is a way of knowing, a kind of metaperception that involves all the senses and is grounded in a particular place and time. It is the ultimate "now" continually referring back in time to "then": you're fully attuned to what's happening around you even as you're deciphering cues about what occurred beforehand. You're thinking about today's weather and yesterday's weather and if the murky hoofprints indicate that there'd been a strong wind. And what all of this might mean to predator or prey and how it might inform that animal's behavior. For example, whether the lion, bushbuck or kudu is likely seeking water or looking for shelter. Standing there with Savory on a grassy bank within sight of that familiar beacon, the winterthorn tree, his keenness to his surroundings is palpable.
Tony indicates a black, smallish, red-eyed bird and wonders aloud if it's a fork-tailed drongo. Savory nods. As a child, Tony devoted much time to poring over nature books. He hasn't lost his discerning eye. Now Savory walks slowly toward the water, still barefoot, wooden walking stick in hand. He waves the stick to draw our attention to the bank's left side. "That land belongs to the national park service," he says. He grips the stick with two hands and holds it horizontally, at chest level. "During the rainy season, the flooding from the parkland reached three meters high. Our vehicle would have been underwater." He moves toward some trees that line the bank and points to where driftwood and other debris had caught on the limbs. This tells us just how high the water was flowing during the flood.
"Right here we have two catchments, the parkland and the Africa Centre," he says. "The water coming off the Africa Centre's land only came up to here." He lowers the stick to just above his knees. We then follow him to where we can see the twigs and whatnot left stranded along the tree line by the streaming current. "This one is up a meter. The other comes up three meters." The Africa Centre's land absorbed most of the water, so that flooding was kept to a minimum. On the parkland hardly any water soaked into the soil. Instead it streamed away, destabilizing the bank and causing erosion. As a result, the fast-running water carried off valuable topsoil along with the flotsam. Savory gestures toward the embankment on the Africa Centre side, noting the higher grass with deeper roots, and how the slope has remained intact.
"This junction of rivers — here's the whole story," he says. He invites us to consider the flooding and other problems that confront properties like the parkland, which, he says, is far from the most degraded land in the area.
The flip side of the floods — the damage caused by coursingwater — is that with the water simply sluicing off the parkland, the soil there remains dry. It's a cruel irony: during the dry season everyone's waiting for rain, and when it finally arrives the greater part of it rushes away. By contrast, the center's Dimbangombe Ranch holds on to more of the rain. This is why the grasses grow high and lush, and why the wild elephants that roam the area have more choice as to where to wallow and play.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Water in Plain Sight by Judith D. Schwartz. Copyright © 2016 Judith D. Schwartz. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Dedication,
Introduction: Water in Plain Sight,
1: The Elephant Pools: Making Rainfall Effective,
2: Pipes, Pumps and Beaver Ponds: Moving Water across the Landscape,
3: The Birds of Chihuahua: Water and Biodiversity,
4: Missing the Water for the Trees: How Plants Make Water,
5: Farming for Water: Industrial Agriculture's Water-Guzzling Secrets,
6: Dew and the Desert: What Goes Up Must Come Down,
7: Storm Waters Dreaming: Dousing the Flames in Australia,
8: Good Riddance to the Infernal Ants: Helping the Water Poor and Avoiding Water Wars,
Acknowledgments,
Notes,
Index,
About the Author,
Copyright,