Zambezi Basin

Zambezi Basin

Climate change vulnerability and risk

Published in Jonathan Lautze, Zebediah Phiri, Vladimir Smakhtin, Davison Saruchera, The Zambezi River Basin, 2017

Richard D. Beilfuss, Charles Nhemachena

Overall, climate change in the Zambezi Basin poses serious risks for hydropower and other water resources development, with decreasing runoff, worsening droughts and more extreme floods. Hydropower dams being proposed and built now will be negatively affected; yet energy planning in the basin is not taking serious steps to address these huge hydrological uncertainties. The result could be dams that are uneconomic, disruptive to the energy sector and possibly even dangerous to downstream communities and livelihoods.

Scanning climate change impacts on water resources of the largest African river basins

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Journal Information

Published in International Journal of River Basin Management, 2020

Ahmed Musa Shamseddin, Thameur Chaibi

Zambezi basin. The Zambezi basin is the fourth largest river basin in Africa (after Congo, Nile and Niger) and covers 1.4 Mio km2. (Kling et al.2014). It is shared by 8 countries: Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The basin has subjected recently to a prolonged drought cycle of 26 years since 1980 (World Bank 2010).

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Climate change vulnerability and risk

Scanning climate change impacts on water resources of the largest African river basins