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Uvira is a city located in an enclave between Lake Tanganyika, the Burundi border and the forested mountain.

During the rainy seasons, the water descends violently from the mountain and passes through an undersized bridge that creates a bottleneck that multiplies the power of the water.

During this same rainy season, the waters descending from the mountain will flow into Lake Tanganyika. This results in a significant increase in the height of the tides.

These two combined actions create an insidious degradation of the weakened banks which end up being washed away by the river on one side and the lake on the other.

The result is collateral damage, such as the disappearance of neighborhoods in the city of UVIRA as the banks deteriorate.

Today 50,000 people are homeless and are waiting for land to rebuild their lives.

But this situation is not a curse if local preventive actions are put in place.

  1. The first thing is to forbid the inhabitants of the city to rebuild where the water has already done its work of destruction. Indeed, the water except creation of major equipment such as a dam for example will always return to the same place.
  2. Probe the banks and the new limits of the banks in order to assess which parts will leave with the next onslaught of water. Banks don’t disappear by accident, it’s like gangrene. There are warning signs of soil degradation that can easily be spotted by surveys. In the absence of being able to solidify or reinforce these sick banks, it is possible to plan an evacuation plan before the next disasters.
  3. Who says evacuation plan says new lands to be found in territories at the water shelters. Evacuating populations with their property and houses that they can dismantle and reassemble before disaster strikes is infinitely easier than helping a population that has lost everything.

This situation is also not a curse if local actions with substantive work are put in place.

  1. The first basic action to be carried out is to replace the too narrow bridge after having widened if possible also the bed of the river to reduce the pressure of the water coming down from the mount. Floating or tilting bridges can also be a solution to let the water through during heavy rains.
  2. The second possible action is to create a dam upstream from the town of UVIRA. The topography of the mountain would make it possible to make one a few kilometers above the town. This would make it possible to channel the waters of the devastating heavy rains. Moreover, this would have the advantage of bringing abundant electricity to the town of Uvira. How to finance a project of such magnitude? This can be done through a partnership with all the mining companies around Uvira. Today the farms are manual and moderately profitable. Tomorrow, with electricity from a dam, these operations will be able to be mechanized with high operating efficiency.
  3. Other possible actions, putting tidal engines in Lake Tanganyika and in the flow of the river, both generators of electricity because the water there is powerful which can supply the city but also possible machines for remodeling the drainage of the area by distributing for example the flow of the river in different relief channels.

Rehouse people yes, but not just anyhow.

  1. Giving a new piece of land carved out of sliced ​​plots to preventively displaced people means helping them to have a better life but with the risk of reproducing the only model they know, which is that of the city dormitory or worse in the city slum. A city is not an alignment of plots, it is a living organism in which public spaces, services, shops and vegetation are intertwined.
  2. The city of Uvira is landlocked on the Burundian border. Since the COVID crisis, the border has closed, blocking the passage of products essential to life. This is a problem especially for food products. It is important to blend the city with individual and agricultural garden spaces.
  3. Global warming is present and temperatures are also rising in Uvira. Planting in a city reduces the ambient temperature by 20%. It is important today to plant as many trees as possible in order to create a new city, new neighborhoods with a pleasant life.
  4. Creating new neighborhoods is an opportunity to rethink the city as a whole for today, but especially for tomorrow. We must get out of colonial and postcolonial models to create a city that will integrate into the world of tomorrow by creating viable basic equipment and services such as electricity and the internet.

Rehouse people yes, but beware the victims of climatic disasters and repeated attacks who have lost everything are fragile people who can be easily abused.

Giving land and housing to vulnerable people who do not have the capacity to feed themselves properly is an open door to scams. It’s like giving them a diamond. Would you give a beggar a diamond in his ecosystem? No one would do it because it would already be very dangerous for them. So give land, a new life yes, but not under any conditions. Because, in the event of famine, which is the most probable risk, they will sell their land and in less than 10 years, the original population will have been replaced by opportunistic people who will have abused them.

There are simple solutions but they require methodological tools.

1. The first is to create territorial regulations that will reinforce local or state laws. This is what we offer in our Parks REGENERATION MATRIX university program. In this approach, we can create territorial rules such as not being authorized to resell land for a defined period or legal tools to fight against banditry. These rules can be associated with citizen surveillance actions, as in the 10-house rules found in certain regions of the DRC.

2. You can create urban plans with areas assigned to such and such activities. With an upgrading plan between the old districts and the new districts. This is to limit any stigmatization between the populations of such and such neighborhoods which could lead to conflicts between gangs of young people or between citizens.

3. We can strengthen the power of intramural exchanges of goods, food and services for vulnerable populations by distributing a specific local currency for reinforcement. This allows aid recipients to remain independent and quickly get out of the system of humanitarian infusions which can be seriously detrimental to them and to their children if this aid persists beyond 3 years.

Here are some things we shared with you. We have 40 such programs that we can apply in order to find the best solutions for a booming city of Uvira.