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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Municipal water development and management practice in Zimbabwe: some critical comments with special reference to the impact of drought on urban development
Author:Musandu-Nyamayaro, Oscar
Year:1992
Periodical:Review of Rural and Urban Planning in Southern and Eastern Africa
Issue:1
Pages:21-47
Language:English
Notes:biblio. refs., ills.
Geographic terms:Zimbabwe
Southern Africa
Subjects:water supply
urbanization
urban development
water management
droughts
Abstract:This paper provides a critical review of municipal water planning, development and management in Zimbabwe with a view to highlighting the factors underlying the current water and sanitation crisis in Mutare and Bulawayo. The paper argues that, although the water supply and sanitation crisis that has crippled Bulawayo and Mutare in the 1980s is popularly being attributed solely to environmental factors (drought), it is, to a very large extent, a function of an interplay of a number of nonenvironmental factors, of which the most important are of an economic, planning, institutional, and political nature. Water development practice, disaster preparedness, and water resources and infrastructure management practices in a number of Zimbabwean cities are inadequate. Since Harare has hardly felt the impact of the current drought, a comparison is made between water development practice in Harare on the one side, and Mutare and Bulawayo on the other. In conclusion, policy and strategy directions for a dependable water supply are presented. The strategies that towns need to develop should be based on 'systems urban management' perspectives which link city growth with investment in infrastructure and the development of spare capacity to mitigate the impact of drought or an unforeseen rise in demand. Ref.
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