Climate Justice and Environmental Inequality Capstone: The GRZI

The Green and Resilient Zimbabwe Initiative is a proposed nonprofit for Buhera District, a rural area in Zimbabwe's Manicaland Province with around 245,000 residents. Most of them are subsistence farmers who grow maize and millet on communal land managed by local chiefs. When it rains, they eat. When it doesn’t, they go hungry.

Buhera doesn’t have a water issue in the way I first thought. There is water underground, stored in aquifers beneath fields that are parched from the sun. El Niño-induced drought has pushed millions of Zimbabweans into severe food and water shortages while the groundwater remains unreachable for those living right above it.

This distinction became the foundation of the entire project. A scarcity issue and an access issue require different solutions. If Buhera were just dry, the honest answer would be relief trucks. But since it’s not just dry, the intervention we design will bridge the gap between the water and the people, permanently, and then withdraw.

We identified three main causes, each with a different level of tractability. The climate issue, driven by El Niño and changing rainfall, is beyond our control. The infrastructure issue stems from a colonial decision to designate Buhera as Tribal Trust Land, leading to years of neglect. This choice made by people long gone still affects harvests today. While costly, it can be addressed. The third cause is education, and this is the easiest to influence.

Focusing on tractability rather than size shaped the project. Drought is the biggest cause, and it’s a tough target for a small organization. Knowledge is smaller yet a much better lever. GRZI shifted from being a water charity to a teaching organization that also drills boreholes.

Another important point from our analysis is that the cost of water scarcity isn’t distributed evenly. It primarily impacts women and children, who spend hours each day hauling water. A project that shortens the distance to water does more than just support agriculture.

The intervention is designed with four techniques that we will teach and provide. Drip irrigation delivers water directly to a plant’s roots drop by drop, preventing loss to the sun. Zai pits are small holes dug around each plant to catch rainwater and compost; this method is simple yet effective. We also incorporate integrated pest management and drought-tolerant seeds.

The sequence of these techniques is intentional. The borehole accesses the aquifer. A solar pump draws water since there is no reliable electrical grid, and diesel costs are ongoing. A tank stores the water and creates gravity pressure. Drip lines then direct water to crops, while zai pits and hardy seeds help use every drop efficiently.

What makes this strategy effective is that it is designed to fail safely in one direction. If you give a farmer a borehole without training, it will likely fail. If you provide training without a borehole, they cannot utilize what they've learned. However, the low-tech solutions, like zai pits and resilient seeds, can keep functioning even if the hardware fails, which is a real concern in an area with frequent borehole failures. These simple methods serve as a backup plan.

The goal isn’t just to feed Buhera. We aim to help Buhera become self-sufficient so that money and dignity remain in the district instead of coming through trucks once a year.

At first, our SMART goals received a critical note that stung for about an hour but later became the most useful feedback: these goals were not measurable.

We had proposed to "map all accessible groundwater sources" and "identify the farming communities with the greatest need." But how would we map them? Over what distance? By which method—census, survey, or intuition?

The feedback pointed out that a genuine goal has three components, while optimistic writing often includes only the first. There needs to be a number, a method for measuring it, and a baseline. We need to know how much, how we will record it—whether through GPS units, harvest logs, or surveys—and what the starting point is because a percentage without a baseline is meaningless.

So, the mapping goal was adjusted to include four GPS units to identify groundwater sources and borehole sites within two years. The yield goal became: record what each household grows per hectare on the day they enroll, provide a harvest log, and compare their Year-10 harvest against their beginning figures.

A key insight is that the baseline is essential for the entire timeline. Every future claim depends on knowing the initial figure. Year 1 fieldwork with a clipboard isn't just preparation for impressive outcomes; it ensures that these outcomes can be verified.

Then we found out our grant request would be $20,000.

At that moment, our plan included eight communities, sixteen boreholes, hundreds of households, and payroll costs, adding up to roughly $400,000. A request for $20,000 didn’t modify that plan; it ended it.

What remained were two boreholes, two solar pumps, two tanks, and support for 25 farming households in a single ward. The number 25 wasn’t just a random choice; it reflects what can be realistically served by two shared boreholes after accounting for drilling, pumping, and storage costs along with the expense of one drip kit. The budget aligns with our capacity, allowing us to justify it.

The deeper lesson is about the purpose of a smaller grant. A $400,000 proposal from a group of high school students is unrealistic. A $20,000 proposal that provides evidence to present to the Green Climate Fund is strategic. The real goal of the pilot is not merely to establish 25 irrigated farms. It’s about creating documented evidence of before-and-after conditions that make future, larger requests credible. Small does not imply a compromise on ambition; it is how ambitious projects can start.

The last analytical insight was recognizing how much of this work is already being done by others.

We don’t need to purchase a drill rig. Mutare Boreholes has been drilling in Manicaland for years, and hiring them is far cheaper than owning our equipment. We also won’t create an extension service, as Agritex already has government officers in these villages. ZINWA provides permits and keeps records of every borehole drilled, including unsuccessful ones, which is especially valuable in a region with many dry wells. The Rural District Council controls whether we can operate, while local chiefs determine if the community wants us—this local approval is what truly matters.

Each of these decisions not to build something makes a $20,000 budget stretch. Almost every function a larger organization would need to staff, we can borrow from existing institutions in the area.

This leads to the next step: local mentors trained from within each community, who will eventually run the offices we hand over. If GRZI needs to exist indefinitely, it has failed. Creating a plan for our own obsolescence feels odd when you’re proud of your work, but I believe it’s the core goal.

GRZI may be a hypothetical initiative, but Buhera is real, as are the droughts, the aquifers, and the drilling company whose number is included in our presentation. Somewhere between these realities lies the true purpose of this project.

YYGS SGC CAPSTONE .pdf

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