Water scarcity is on everyone’s mind. Long taken for granted, water availability has become dependent on economics, politics, and people’s food and lifestyle choices. But as anxiety mounts—and 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 scarcity is on everyone’s mind. Long taken for granted, water availability has become dependent on economics, politics, and people’s food and lifestyle choices. But as anxiety mounts—and 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 scarcity is on everyone’s mind. Long taken for granted, water availability has become dependent on economics, politics, and people’s food and lifestyle choices. But as anxiety mounts—and 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.
ONE
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 received was that the
earth was doing so, carrying the game with it—they were
in such vast numbers... bundreds 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 Dimban-
gombe now meets the slightly larger Titsingombe River. This revived‘6 WATER IN PLAIN SIGHT
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—vlein 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 Cen-
tre for Holistic Management, says this is thanks to the new water. Atnearly
cighty, Savory is trim and spindle-legged in timeless bush garb: khaki
shorts; a loose, buttoned cotton shirt; a felt hat with a shady brim. IFit’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,
ora 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
Jong, lanky necks pitched at an angle; shoulder muscles rippling as, sud-
denly 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 x 4 and ramble along the dusty road to a clear
ing. 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 yeas, 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, includ
ing Affican fish eagle, catfish, turtles and otters, "though we havent seenTHE ELEPHANT POOLS 7
them in a while, We do have a croc in here, but he may not be here now.
Its an cleven-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
ime: this is the sound of Africa, a layering of quict 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 comes naturally—that is, by marriage. The first
time he brought me to South Aftica’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. "T 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
hhis 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 doesnt look like much.
In fact, the spot looks trashed—like, well, a gang of wild elephants had