4 | F RIDAY, AUGUST 2, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
world
average, according to Washington
Zhakata, the director of the Climate
Change Management Department in
the Zimbabwean government. A cy-
clone inundated the country in March,
but it did not raise the water table and is
not included in this year’s rainfall tally.
Although the field of attribution sci-
ence — which studies how climate
change influences individual weather
events — is still evolving, it has been es-
tablished that global warming can make
extreme weather events, including
drought, more frequent and more in-
tense.
Harare, a city of quiet suburbs with
clusters of low-income tenements, all
circling a compact central business dis-
trict, has been hit hard.
“So much time spent waiting — it af-
fects the productive part of the econ-
omy,” said Mr. Gomba, the mayor. “It af-
fects the whole cycle of life.”
President Emmerson Mnangagwa
took over the country after leading the
coup that toppled Mr. Mugabe. Mr.
Mnangagwa had served as the former
president’s right-hand man.
Mr. Mnangagwa’s government says it
is in the process of improving Zimba-
bwe’s economy, pointing to austerity
measures that led to a rare budget sur-
plus in the first quarter of the year.
“Zimbabwe is on a journey of reform,”
the finance minister, Mthuli Ncube,
wrote in a recent article. “We are head-
ing in the right direction,” he added.
But the government has so far been
unable to stop spiraling inflation, cur-
rency devaluation and import costs. Its
decision in June to ban the use of foreigncurrency, in an attempt to stabilize the
value of the newly created Zimbabwean
dollar, has instead made it even harder
for firms to import goods from abroad.
“We had a window of opportunity
when Mugabe left power,” said Kipson
Gundani, the chief economist at the Zim-
babwean National Chamber of Com-
merce. “But we missed that window.”President Mnangagwa denies that
the fault lies with his own administra-
tion. In an interview, he blamed local po-
liticians from opposition parties, like Mr.
Gomba, for the water mismanagement.
The national government is procuring a
$71 million loan from the Chinese gov-
ernment to renovate the Zimbabwean
water system, Mr. Mnangagwa said.
“When that is done,” he said, “the
works will begin.”
But the authorities’ record is hardly
promising. The construction of a new
dam, first proposed during the early
years of Mr. Mugabe’s rule, has been re-
peatedly delayed. Broken municipalboreholes are often left unreplaced. And
excessive construction of informal
housing at the city limits has led to the
overuse of springs and wells by an influx
of new residents.
At a spring in the scrubland on the
southern fringes of Harare, the water
this week had slowed to a trickle, and
residents had to wait for about three
hours to fill their buckets.
This time last year, several residents
said, the same process took just a few
minutes. But since then, a municipal
borehole in a nearby township broke —
it has yet to be replaced — and several
wells dried up, compelling more resi-
dents to trek to the farther spring.
“We always have problems with wa-
ter shortages,” said Patience Chi-
wakata, a 35-year-old subsistence
farmer. “But this year it is much worse.”
The most desperate scenes this week
were in the more formal settlements
closer to the city center, where the waits
were far longer and where scuffles
broke out after some tried to force their
way to the front.
Residents said they were washing
less, drinking less and relieving them-
selves less.
Ms. Kaitano, the jeans wholesaler, had
only once been able to take her clothes
to market since the taps last dried up,
losing around a week’s income. Her
friend, Susan Chinoda, allowed her
three children just one cup of drinking
water a day, and one toilet break.
“We’re seriously restricted from liv-
ing our lives,” said Ms. Chinoda, 32. “Wa-
ter is life.”Residents lining up for water at a borehole southeast of Harare, Zimbabwe. “So much time spent waiting — it affects the productive part of the economy,” said the mayor.PHOTOGRAPHS BY ZINYANGE AUNTONY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESTaps run dry in Zimbabwe
Tendai Marima contributed reporting.Z IMBABWE, FROM PAGE 1Washing laundry in buckets in Harare. Many Zimbabweans have resorted to extreme
rations of water, limiting how much they drink, wash and use the toilet.Residents face daily blackouts,
shortages of medicine, fuel and
bank notes, and an inflation rate
of more than 175 percent.Two hundred reindeer died of starvation
last winter on a remote Arctic archipela-
go, researchers in Norway reported,
highlighting what they said were the ef-
fects of climate change on vulnerable
ecosystems.
The archipelago, Svalbard, lies be-
tween the Norwegian mainland and the
North Pole and is made up mostly of un-
disturbed natural landscapes, with its
own subspecies of reindeer. The Norwe-
gian Polar Institute has been surveying
the reindeer there since 1978. According
to the institute, this winter was the dead-
liest for the animals since a similarly fa-
tal season in 2007-08.
Ashild Onvik Pedersen, a terrestrial
ecologist at the institute, said on
Wednesday that climate change had in-
creased the frequency and the amount
of rain in the high Arctic. Heavy winter
rains had then turned to ice, preventing
reindeer from reaching their usual veg-
etation.
“Once you get the rain on the top of
the snow, most often it completely
freezes to solid ice that completely cov-
ers the plants,” she said.
Climate change has also made for
warmer and longer summers in Sval-
bard, helping to increase the reindeer
populations. That leads to greater com-
petition among the animals for limited
food resources, putting them at greater
risk of starvation.
Estimates for Norway’s total reindeer
population are around 220,000. Rein-
deer herding is a way of life for the Sami,
an indigenous people of fewer than
140,000 who inhabit mostly the northern
reaches of Sweden, Norway, Finland
and Russia. The total Svalbard reindeer
population is not known, according to
the Norwegian Arctic Institute, but
monitoring of certain areas has shown
an exponential rise in the number of ani-
mals. In one valley, their number grew
from 400 to 1,200 between 1979 and 2013.
Svalbard reindeer, unlike their cous-
ins elsewhere, do not live in herds and
tend to be stationary, Ms. Pedersen said.
Using GPS signals, researchers found
that the reindeer have been venturing
far from their normal grazing areas.
They have descended on the shores for
seaweed and have hiked up into the
rocky Arctic desert, much like mountain
goats, in pursuit of the vegetation there.
In the early 20th century, the Sval-bard reindeer population was severely
depleted by hunting. The animals have
been a protected species since 1925 in
Norway, helping the population recover.
Over 40 years of monitoring has allowed
researchers to observe changes pre-
cisely, including those resulting from cli-
mate change.
The Arctic has been warmer over the
past five years than at any time since
records began being kept in 1900, and
the region has been warming at twice
the rate as the rest of the planet, accord-
ing to a report last year by the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra-
tion in the United States.
Across Arctic regions in Russia,
northern Scandinavia and Greenland,
wildfires are common in the summer.
But this year, the number and intensity
of the fires made for an unusual sight,
burning huge sections of the Arctic and
unleashing plumes of smoke visible
from space. Mild spells have been a rare
phenomenon in Svalbard, but they have
increased in frequency in recent years,
Ms. Pedersen said.The effects of climate change are be-
ginning to show, scientists say, with Ms.
Pedersen and others warning of the ef-
fects on reindeer and other species in
Svalbard as far back as 2013. “Icing is
predicted to become more frequent in
the circumpolar Arctic and may, there-
fore, strongly affect terrestrial ecosys-
tem characteristics,” they wrote in an
article in the magazine Science.
More recently, in April, a study pub-
lished in the Ecological Society of Amer-
ica’s Ecosphere journal found that the
animals were increasingly isolated by
the lack of sea ice and the presence of
ice-covered pastures.
Dozens, even hundreds, of the ani-
mals have been wiped out by various ca-
lamities over the years. In 2017, more
than 100 reindeer were killed in a four-
day period by freight trains rolling
through Norway, prompting an outcry
for the national railway to do more to
protect the animals.
In 2016, more than 300 reindeer, hud-
dled together in a storm, were killed by
lightning on the Norwegian mainland,
their carcasses left sprawled across a
hillside. But that episode ended on a
hopeful note.
The bodies of the animals became a
laboratory, attracting scavengers from
around the region that left in their feces
an unusual concentration of plant seeds
from the area, potentially spawning new
plant diversity, Norwegian scientists
said.Death of 200 reindeer laid
to Arctic climate change
LONDONGlobal warming is taking
toll on fragile ecosystem,
Norwegian researchers sayBY PALKO KARASZThe reindeer starved to death
last winter on iced pastures.Andrei Chernikov, an information-tech-
nology specialist from western Ukraine,
was near the end of Yuval Noah Harari’s
book “21 Lessons for the 21st Century”
when he stumbled onto something that
concerned him directly — a description
in the “Post-Truth” chapter of how Rus-
sia’s government in 2014 attempted to
hide its invasion of Ukraine and annex-
ation of Crimea.
Mr. Chernikov, 35, was reading a hard
copy of the book in Ukrainian, but when
he switched to the Russian e-book ver-
sion on his tablet, the same chapter con-
tained different material. Instead of
events in Crimea, it began with an anal-
ysis of President Trump’s statements to
illustrate the proliferation of fake news
in the modern world.
“The difference between Ukrainian
and Russian languages texts powerfully
exposes the stated issues,” Mr.
Chernikov wrote in a Facebook post that
quickly went viral.
Other discrepancies emerged, caus-
ing an uproar in Ukraine, Russia and be-
yond. The New York Times found that
the Russian version of the book was
heavily censored, with mentions of the
fighting in Ukraine and Crimea re-
moved and criticism of the Russian gov-
ernment toned down or cut, among
other changes. The Russian version did-
n’t mention any of the changes.In one instance, Russia was replaced
with Hungary as a country that is ex-
perimenting with new types of non-lib-
eral democracy and dictatorship. The
sections which described Russia as an
“ideologically bankrupt country” where
“oligarchs monopolize most of a coun-
try’s wealth and power” were removed,
as was the description of Russian Presi-
dent Vladimir V. Putin as a leader with
“no global worldview.”
For Mr. Chernikov, the omission of
Russia’s invasion of his country was par-
ticularly stinging.
“People who perished in eastern
Ukraine are buried 150 meters away
from where I live,” he said in a phone in-
terview from his home in Ivano-
Frankivsk. “What I am worried about
here is that the authoritarian regime has
implemented itself in Russia in full.”
Following the outcry, Mr. Harari, in an
interview, tried to explain what hap-
pened.
He agreed to omit the mentions of Mr.
Putin’s announcement about Russia’s
2014 annexation of Crimea, he said, see-
ing it as a necessary compromise to
make the book available to Russian
readers.
“I really faced a dilemma whether to
change these examples and publish the
book or to leave them in and publish
nothing,” Mr. Harari said. “I would
never agree to write something which is
not true, and I would never agree to
change the main message of the book.”
Still, he was troubled to learn of other
changes that he had not approved. For
example, in the original book’s dedica-
tion, Mr. Harari references his husband,
noting that “I only know how to write
books. He does everything else.” But in
the Russian translation, “husband” was
changed to “partner.”
“If that’s true, I’m really furious,” hesaid. “I’m openly gay. I go around the
world speaking about it.”
Mr. Harari also was surprised to learn
that his description of Russian ag-
gression in Crimea in other sections of
the book had been altered. He said hewould contact his Russian publisher to
object to the changes, and he worries
that the attention the book is drawing
could increase scrutiny.
The Russian publisher, Sindbad, de-
clined to comment, saying that its maineditor is away from Moscow and will be
unavailable for several weeks.
Mr. Harari, an Israeli historian and
philosopher, rose to prominence with
the English translation of his 2014 best
seller, “Sapiens: A Brief History of Hu-
mankind.” He followed up with a sequel,
“Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomor-
row” and then published “21 Lessons for
the 21st Century,” a collection of essays
that explores the technological and po-
litical problems humanity must solve in
the coming decades. In a review for The
New York Times Book Review, BillGates called the book “fascinating” and
praised Harari for sparking “a crucial
global conversation about how to take
on the problems of the 21st century.”
Mr. Harari’s works are published in
more than 50 languages, and he holds
world rights to his books, which allows
him to approve or decline requests for
translation rights.
Foreign publishers often make
changes when translating books, typi-
cally to make them more accessible to
readers in other countries. Publishers
sometimes censor sensitive material
without notifying the authors, who don’t
discover the changes until readers point
them out. Andrew Solomon was infuriat-
ed to learn that the Chinese translation
of his 2001 book about depression, “The
Noonday Demon,” left out his references
to being gay, despite a provision in his
contract stating that he had approval
over any changes from the original. He
only learned of the changes after PENAmerica, a free-speech organization,
checked the translations against the
originals of several books as part of a re-
port on Chinese censorship.
“The dishonesty of the publisher was
as troubling as the censorship,” Mr. Sol-
omon said. He’s since rescinded transla-
tion rights from that company and sold
them to another publisher in China that
will release an unexpurgated edition.
Although censorship has been de-
clared illegal in Russia, the situation
with Mr. Harari’s book reminded many
of Soviet-era methods. For instance, Er-
nest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell
Tolls” was published for the first time in
1968 with at least 20 cuts, according to
Russian researchers. More recently,
“Rocketman,” a movie released earlier
this year based on the life of Elton John,
had gay scenes cut from the Russian
version, according to film critics.
Mr. Harari said that in general, he is in
favor of making changes in order to
reach a global audience, as long as those
changes don’t undermine the substance
of his arguments. “We are living in a
more complicated reality, and it’s impor-
tant to reach people in nondemocratic
societies,” he said. “And for that you
have to make compromises.”
Yet some reform advocates see such
compromises as a setback. Natalia
Arno, the president and founder of the
nonprofit Free Russia Foundation, said
it was hypocritical of Mr. Harari to write
about “post-truth” and information ma-
nipulation, then omit a reference to dis-
information coming from the Kremlin.
She added that he was wrong to think
that the only way to reach Russian read-
ers was to alter the book when bootleg
translations of banned books and arti-
cles are common. “If this book was pro-
hibited in Russia,” she said, “many more
Russians would read it.”Russian censors go to work on book by popular historian
Yuval Noah Harari agreed to some changes to “21 Lessons for the 21st Century.”EMILY BERL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES“I really faced a dilemma whether
to change these examples and
publish the book or to leave them
in and publish nothing.”MOSCOWThey alter passages
about Putin, gays and the
annexation of CrimeaBY IVAN NECHEPURENKO
AND ALEXANDRA ALTER- An article on July 25 about the actor
and podcast host Marc Maron mis-
spelled the surname of a writer. He is
Kurt Andersen, not Anderson. - An article in the July 20-21 edition
about day trips from New York City mis-
stated the price of a round-trip train ride
from the city to Philadelphia. The off-
peak fare is $52, not $33.50. - An article on Tuesday about the lack of
applicants for tens of thousands of man-
ufacturing jobs in France misstated
Agnès Pannier-Runacher’s title. She is
France’s secretary of state for economy
and finance, not its economy minister.- An article on Tuesday about Amazon’s
investments in the grocery industry
misstated the name of a grocery store
chain. It is Kroger, not Krogers. - An article on Wednesday about an al-
gorithm that identifies which patients
are most likely to become infected with
H.I.V. misidentified the institution at
which Julia Marcus works. She is now at
Harvard Medical School, not Kaiser Per-
manente.
CORRECTIONS
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