WATER POLITICS

But that was all before an epic drought that slowed the Zambezi to a trickle and brought water levels to nearly the lowest point on record.

Intermittent outages started in March and gradually intensified as the hydropower generators switched off.

And Zambia, for several months now, has plunged into near-total darkness.

“We were swimming in happiness that we were largely green,” Zambia’s president, Hakainde Hichilema, said in an interview at his office last month. “The drought has told us that even when we were largely green, it was a risk.”

Hydropower is the world’s most widely used form of renewable energy, propelling development in South America, parts of China and India, and much of sub-Saharan Africa. But over the past two years, a wave of extreme droughts has wrought havoc on this critical energy supply. As the Earth warms, this once promising resource is becoming less reliable in meeting the needs of the growing population — in some instances leading to desperation and potential political instability.

Factories shut down. People struggle to find water and cook. And measures aimed at short-term survival wind up damaging the environment.

“We are back to the old age,” said Miles Sampa, a Zambian opposition politician.

In Zambia — a democracy with six decades of post-colonial peace — people in the widely electrified capital now go days at a time without lights. In moments when the power does flicker on, it often comes around 1 or 2 a.m.: Zambians tell of waking up mid-sleep to wash clothing or iron their shirts.

Bakeries can’t make bread without generators. Butchers don’t have meat. Appliances are useless. One woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation at work, described feeling sick “all year” because she hadn’t been able to refrigerate her insulin. Albert Khondowe, a 32-year-old optometrist with hypertension and failing kidneys, said he hasn’t been able to undergo a proper round of dialysis in months and often can’t fit into his shoes because of swelling and sores. Sarah Mwila Bwalya, 37, said she’s trying to pursue a master’s degree in finance with three-hour online classes. But both her phone and laptop peter out well before the class is finished.

“It’s a weird way of living,” she said. “People are living in depression.”

This drought-driven crisis also threatens to undercut the world’s climate goals, by tying many countries more tightly to fossil fuels as they deal with shortfalls.

Hydropower — which makes up about half of the world’s clean energy supply — saw a record decline last year. To weather that turmoil, Beijing fired up more coal plants. India increased coal imports. The International Energy Agency says that global emissions from electricity generation would have fallen last year, instead of rising to another record high, had it not been for unexpected, drought-related hydropower failures on multiple continents — and the policy decisions that followed.

This year, the extreme shortages have shifted to others part of the world. Amid a historic South American drought, Ecuador is contending with daily blackouts, and its government leased a Turkish barge-mounted power plant as an emergency measure.

In almost any scenario where the planet meets its climate goals, hydropower plays a major role. But one 2022 study, led by researchers at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), found that 26 percent of existing dams are located where there’s medium to very high risk of water scarcity. By 2050, the study projects, climate change will push that figure up to 32 percent.

The International Energy Agency has singled out Africa’s vulnerability, noting its high dependence on hydropower and the “increased risk of water stress due to changing and erratic precipitation patterns” as the planet warms.

“Of all the different climate solutions — wind, solar — it’s definitely the one that is the most vulnerable to the climate itself,” said Jeff Opperman, the global freshwater lead scientist at the WWF.

Zambia has moved quickly to double the capacity of an existing coal-fired power plant that, when the expansion is completed in two years, will give the country a modest energy boost. It has also rush-ordered diesel generators, distributing them in markets across the capital of Lusaka. But in the meantime, there’s an even dirtier fuel that is booming in demand: charcoal.

Made by cutting and incinerating trees, the charcoal arrives in Lusaka on truckbeds. It’s towed to markets by people with rickety wheelbarrows. It’s parceled into small bags and sold along roadsides. And, eventually, it is heated under steel grills by people who would have preferred an alternative.

Government officials say they want to crack down on production, which is decimating Zambia’s forests.

But people need to cook.

“Charcoal,” said Jimmy Simwinga, 46, a restaurant owner, “has become a diamond in this time.”

So one of the world’s highest deforestation rates continues to rise — at least until the lights come back on.

Falling water levels

Follow the transmission lines going south out of Lusaka, past the small villages and baobab trees, and they lead eventually to the Kariba Dam. It’s a colossus of concrete and ambition, one of the largest infrastructure projects ever launched in southern Africa.

It’s also the starting point for understanding Zambia’s current crisis.

The dam resembles a banked wall, stretching one-third of a mile, standing as tall as New York’s 22-story Flatiron Building. It was built in the 1950s with the purpose of holding back the natural flow of the Zambezi, allowing humans to control how and when the river could pass. Once the dam was in place, the world’s largest artificial lake formed behind it — a vast resource from which Zambia and Zimbabwe, known at the time as Northern and Southern Rhodesia, could draw power. When Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother inaugurated the project in 1960, she declared a “new era in the economic life” of the region. Engineers would construct hydropower plants on both sides — first in present-day Zimbabwe, and then another in Zambia in the 1970s.

But right now, Zambia’s Kariba hydro plant — the country’s single biggest source of power — is operating at one-tenth of its capacity.

Cephas Museba, the plant manager, kicked off a recent tour by describing the “mighty Zambezi,” then stopped himself.

“Well, it’s not mighty right now,” he said.

In good times, the Zambezi is fed by rainfall across a wide area that includes Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia. But research shows that droughts have increased in frequency since the dam was built. And hotter temperatures linked to climate change have increased evaporation rates.

Human activity has also played a role in increasing the vulnerability of the hydro system. Both the Zambian and Zimbabwean utility companies have sometimes drawn water from the dam beyond their allotted share, especially in seasons of scarcity.

So with the arrival of the latest drought, attributed to the weather pattern known as El Niño, the situation reached a breaking point.

Looking out from Museba’s office, the scale of that crisis doesn’t immediately register. The artificial lake holds a gargantuan amount of water and still appears full. But with hydropower, 20 or 30 feet of lost depth matters profoundly. The hydropower system sucks water only from the upper portion of the lake — in this case, anything above the 475.5-meter (1,560-foot) mark — which is free of sediment and doesn’t damage the machines. And by pulling water from on high, the system can take advantage of gravity, with water racing through downhill chutes, gaining maximum force as it reaches the turbines.

Only now there’s barely any usable water left.

“This will give you an idea,” Museba said, pulling up a chart on his computer showing lake levels year by year.

In some years, good rainy seasons swelled the lake — increasing the size of that upper, usable seam by more than 10 feet. Even a several-foot rise, given the immensity of the lake, equates to more than a million Olympic swimming pools — and ample power for two countries.

In October 2021, the water stood a healthy 18 feet above the minimum operating level. A year ago, it was 10 feet above.

But then the rainy season failed to replenish the lake. Zambia kept using water.

Now, Zambia has only two feet left — a figure ticking down day by day as it’s drained for power.

The margins are so thin, Museba said, Zambia would need multiple consecutive years of good rain to restock and generate hydropower at full capacity.

“If we are not careful, we may not recover,” he said.

Museba closed his laptop, put on a helmet, and got into a Toyota pickup truck. He drove closer to the dam, where school groups were arriving in buses and birds circled overhead. Museba took pride, he said, in working with an energy source that doesn’t pollute the planet. He described hydropower as “beautiful.”

But recently, he said, little had been working as designed. His job had become more like “maintenance.” The six hulking generators — which normally whirred in the subterranean powerhouse — had gone mostly silent. In the 1960s and 1970s, engineers who worked on the dam never saw the slabs of concrete that were now exposed above the lake.

“Without the rainfall, this infrastructure becomes a white elephant,” he said.

The following day was a national holiday for prayer.

Museba said he’d ask for rain.

Complicated coal

With the vulnerability of its electricity system fully exposed, Zambia now finds itself in a position common among African countries. Its energy needs are huge. It has a growing population and scores of rural areas still to connect to the grid. Its massive debt makes it hard to borrow and attract investment. How Africa scales up power — and whether governments here tap clean energy or fossil fuels — is complex and will help shape the planet’s climate over the next century.

Zambia is trying to address these questions in a rush.

“You now have to summon all the sources you have,” said Hichilema, who became wealthy as a cattle rancher before entering politics and winning the presidency in 2021. “Otherwise you’re in an economic shutdown.”

In an interview at his official estate, where impalas and monkeys roamed the grounds, Hichilema said his government intends to keep emissions low as it revamps its energy system. He has pushed the idea of mini-grids, allowing private individuals to sell power to the once-dominant state utility company, and he recently returned from a visit to China with a pledge for several big solar projects. He predicted a coming “explosion” of green energy projects and electricity generation.

Still, most Zambians can’t yet afford solar panels. The big projects are still a few years from coming online. And even when solar expands, it can’t quite replace what hydro had once provided: continuous power.

So, coal.

Wealthy countries that decry coal, he said, don’t always understand the trade-offs at play.

Yes, he said, coal is one of the “undesirables.” But the stability of one of the most functional democracies on the continent might be at stake. Without electricity, there are no jobs, he said, and without jobs, there is despair. Governments have been pulled down for less.

“Ultimately, disorder sets in. You have lost your country,” Hichilema said. “So we must be very careful, as a global community, when we make general pronouncements, ‘We must not invest in that.’”

Zambia doesn’t have oil or gas, but it sits on large reserves of coal. It operated a 300-megawatt coal-fired power plant before the hydropower shortfall; its capacity will rise to 600 megawatts. Because many international lenders had sworn off funding coal, Zambia tapped its national pension fund to help finance the work. At the groundbreaking, Hichilema called it a “major step towards addressing our nation’s energy deficit.”

The coal plant, Hichilema said in the interview, would stave off an even worse scenario that’s unfolding now. As Zambians seek out charcoal, they are cutting down forests that absorb carbon dioxide if they are left standing.

“If you didn’t have that [stable] energy, you’d destroy more of your assets, carbon sink assets,” Hichilema said. “It’s as simple as that.”

A few months ago, Zambia’s government issued a directive against the use of charcoal. Officials raided furnaces deep in the bush. They intercepted trucks bound for Lusaka.

But the crackdown didn’t last.

Collins Nzovu, who served previously as the environment minister and now is the minister of water development, said the measures faced popular resistance. Plus, it was hard to enforce restrictions on cooking fuel when people had few affordable alternatives. Nzovu said that charcoal now flows into the capital unabated — a problem “much worse than coal.”

“We are losing so much forest,” he said.

A burning choice

On the left-hand side of a winding road, two hours south of Lusaka, a gash in the forest hints at the charcoal industry’s toll. On one recent morning, five people worked across the half-mile circle of land, now barren and smoldering, only blackened stumps poking up from the dusty ground.

One of the women, Violet Shaduze, 48, looked up.

This was a family operation, Shaduze explained. Her mother and daughter, standing nearby, both helped gather the wood. Her 14-month-old grandson toddled atop the ashen burn pit. Farther away, where trees still stood, her husband worked to knock them down.

She said they’d been subsistence maize farmers, but their crops had failed in the drought. They’d all taken to eating one meal per day, even the child. They needed money.

And in Zambia these days, that meant charcoal.

So they’d come to this forest.

“It’s competitive,” said Shaduze, who said her charcoal goes to wholesalers bound for Lusaka. Making good charcoal requires care: keeping the wood dry, covering it with dirt, burning it slowly and depriving it of oxygen. She said the multiday process is so delicate that she sleeps next to the pile.

“It’s a continuous process,” she said. “I’m already picking up logs for the next batch.”

She said she felt a little guilty about the work. “There’s a reason God created these trees,” she said. But so long as the drought persisted, she felt she had little choice.