Africa, Water, and Environmental Change: The connection, explained

Welcome! 

 

A key starting point for this blog series has been Binyavanga Wainaina’s “How to Write About Africa”. Although not explicitly about environmental change, Wainaina’s satiric essay perfectly captures stereotypes that often provide an over-simplification and misinterpreted view of the continent. For me, the essay was necessary reading and one quote stood out to me in the context of environmental change, Africa is “hot and dusty with rolling grasslands”. This sardonic quote provides a crucial reminder that assuming climate systems are homogenous across Africa is a gross simplification. In fact, Goulden et al. (2009) report that climate systems vary widely from humid, through to arid, and tropical type climates. Furthermore, African water resources are unevenly distributed throughout the continent and any assessments on the availability of water resources must take a regional perspective. From here, I hope to engage with several countries within sub-Saharan and southern Africa. First, to understand how climate change is propagating to affect different water resources, and then to explore how they are building climate resilience. 

Figure 1. Here's a video to Binyavanga Wainaina’s “How to Write About Africa”. Source: (Wainaina, 2005; Read by Leynes, 2019). 

Connecting Africa, Water, and Climate Change

 

A study published in PNAS reported that persistent greenhouse gas emissions and increasing global temperatures will cause a substantial impact on blue water resources. They found that changing amounts and timing of precipitation and evapotranspiration will see about 40% more people be at risk of absolute water scarcity (water supplies below 500m/cubed per person). Although they omit other freshwater sources in their assessment, the finding is significant as a further study highlighted that increased water scarcity may also cause further impacts on food security, economic prosperity, and development. For Africa, several IPCC reports have illustrated previous and current increases in temperature (Figure 2) will cause an increased frequency of extreme climatic events including intense storms, heavy rainfall events and droughts. This is not surprising – climate and the hydrological cycle are tightly coupled, and Africa already has a highly variable climate. However, because Africa is such a vast continent, the way in which water resources will respond to climatic effects will vary across the continent - essentially there is no Africa-wide climate effect on supply (Collier et al. 2008). Some areas will become wetter, others drier, and some regions may gain economic benefit while others may be adversely affected. For example, the southern African region is regarded as one of the most vulnerable regions in Africa and climate change will impact on availability and use of water resources. In contrast, water resources in East Africa may actually increase and the effects may be more favourable. This discrepancy and uncertainty over the distribution of freshwater resources under climate may impact on development. Therefore, this blog series will focus on the variability of water and environment across Africa and will explore ways in which communities living in these highly variable and uncertain environments can maintain access to safe water. 

Figure 2. African annual mean temperature anomalies °C in 20th-century Source: (Collier et al. 2008) 

A Focus on Adaption. 

 

With concerns about climate 'extremes' growing (UNESCO, 2020), building resilience to climate variability is essential, especially as demand is expected to increase dramatically as a result of increasing populations (2 billion in Africa by 2050).  In fact, Africa already has the lowest proportions of national populations with access to safe water and its vulnerability is exacerbated by the region’s low adaptive capacity, widespread poverty and low technology uptake. It is clear more must be done to ensure communities have consistent access to safe water and countries have the ability to adapt. Therefore, over this blog series, I will also explore how countries can build climate resilience by managing political, economic, cultural and physical factors that often are central to water stress. 

 

I hope you are looking forward to this blog series as much as I am. See you next week!