ALM UNDP

Adapting to Water Shortages in Arid Namibia

By Servaas van den Bosch

“Normally it rains this time of year, but not a drop has fallen,” complains farmer Paulus Amutenya. “My crops are burning on the field.” It’s mid‐November in Outapi, a small farming town in Northern Namibia, not far from the Angolan border. Outapi is always hot, but this year the rains that cool the soil and allow crops to germinate are exceptionally late. For weeks now farmers have been praying for clouds to appear in the clear blue sky.

‘Tate’ Paulus wipes the sweat of his face and overlooks his few hectares of wilting crops. Groups of women dot the field, weeding between the tomatoes or watermelons. Unlike most subsistence farmers in the area Amutenya employs around a hundred casual workers who depend on him, and he is worried if he will be able to continue to employ them. “Without rain, plants are more susceptible to pests and eventually they succumb to heat stress.” He points to a watermelon with scorched yellow patches. “These melons are naturally covered by their leaves so they ripen nice and evenly, but now the leaves are burnt and the melons are ripe on the top, but not at the bottom.”

He blames the changes in climate.

“Temperatures are rising and rains are becoming more and more unpredictable over the years, but what can I do,” he shrugs.

Farming in Namibia, where the Namib and Kalahari deserts meet, has never been easy. The driest country in sub‐Saharan Africa receives a pitiful 270 millimetres of downpour per year on average. Of this 83 percent evaporates as soon as it hits the ground. Climatologists predict temperatures in the country will rise with 1 to 6 degree in the next several decades, while rainfall could drop another 200 millimetres. Already, in the past few years, rains have been erratic leading to alternating heavy floods and dry spells.

The consequences are devastating for a country where 70 percent of the people to some extent depend on agriculture.

To help farmers adapt to climate change, the Country Pilot Partnership (CPP), an alliance of seven Ministries in Namibia supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), has started a three year adaptation pilot project in the area.

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‘At first they laughed at Me’

By Servaas van den Bosch

“The neighbours asked me why I am playing with my land,” recalls Fukuile Tashiya laughing. “They said the field looked excavated. ‘Can you even grow plants in these big holes?’ they teased me. It’s not hard to see why Tashiya draws the ire of his fellow farmers. The 30 by 40 metre plot directly in front of his homestead vaguely resembles a playground for elephants. However, a closer look reveals a coordinated plan in the ripped earth. Deep furrows, alternated with dark heaps of freshly dug up earth, run over the length of the plot. Although the field looks out of place among the sandy top soils of Namibia’s Omusati region, Tashiya knows that at the end of the growing season he will be the one laughing.

“Instead of just planting the crops on top like we always do, last year I sowed my mahangu (pearl millet) in these lines and the result was great,” he explains. “My yield was much better and the size of the grain was big compared to other plots,” says the old farmer. Tashiya, whose gathering of clay and straw huts is situated some thirty kilometers up the road from the northern town of Outapi, is one of the farmers that took part in a conservation agriculture pilot project.

Through the Climate Change Adaptation project (CCA) of the Country Pilot Partnership (CPP) hundred demonstration plots were ploughed all over the region to show farmers how they can have a better yield while using less water and saving on labour.

In Tashiya’s case the project assisted him with ploughing and weeding and with fertilizer and seeds. “Also the project explained to us the benefits to farm in this way. It sounded  interesting, but I wanted to start with a small plot first because I did not know if this new method was going to work,” says Tashiya. After overcoming the initial skepticism, the  CCA pilot project under the Country Pilot Partnership (CPP), an alliance of seven Ministries in Namibia supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), farmers are warming up to the idea, says project manager Andreas Shilomboleni.

“Instead of conventional disc plows, rippers are used,” he explains. “These dig narrow and deep furrows. The project has one mechanized ripper available that farmers can use. The only disadvantage is that they need a tractor. In the future we plan to distribute animal‐drawn rippers because many small‐scale farmers don’t have access to tractors.”

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Improve your Goat and beat climate change

By Servaas van den Bosch

The shadows are already getting longer as we head off to tate Reinhard’s homestead deep in the mopane woodlands of northern Namibia. Andreas Shilomboleni, coordinator of the Country Pilot Partnership’s (CPP) Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) project guns the Landcruiser over sandy roads that meander between the thousands of oshana’s ‐ open spaces that get flooded in the rainy season.