Hello! My name is Eva and I am a third year Geography student. I started this blog with the intention to showcase my research and thoughts on how environmental changes has implicated the water supply in the African region. I will also delve deeper into the steps taken to alleviate water related issues arising from changes in the environment, and discuss their pros and cons. In the context of this blog, environmental change is interchangeable with climate change, since the environment and climate are closely interconnected in their processes and feedback.
Figure 1: CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in the last 800,000 years
Climate change is defined as “a large-scale, long-term shift in the planet’s weather patterns and average temperatures.” (Metoffice.gov.uk, 2018). While the Earth has undergone countless natural climate changes in the last 4.5 billion years, the massive increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, as seen in figure 1, has accelerated a phenomenon known as global warming, which is when the Earth’s global temperature increases more than it should. This anthropogenic influenced global warming has resulted in severe implications that negatively impact humans directly and indirectly.
Figure 2: Climate Change Vulnerability Index 2015
(Source: Verisk Maplecroft, 2014)
According to the Climate Change and Environmental Change Atlas 2015, 70% of countries around the world that are severely threatened by climate change happen to be in Africa. These countries, as seen in figure 2, fall within the Sub-Saharan African region, which is found to suffer the worst of consequences resulting from climate change, including a decreasing water supply in an already water-stressed environment (Ngoran, Dogah & Xue, 2015). Water stress occurs when a population uses more than 20% of their renewable water reserves (Vorster, 2014). In fact, by 2020, South Africa-based Dr. Mary Galvin estimates that approximately 250 million Africans would be threatened by imminent water stress due to climate change implications (Taylor, 2011).
Additionally, climate change brings about the following problems that overtly (and covertly) affect the water supply and quality, as well as its distribution within Africa. These can be further split into natural and anthropogenic problems (350Africa, 2014), which I will go into more detail in the following weeks. The table below showcases some of these water-related issues, but is not representative of the multitude of issues that Africa is experiencing/would experience because of climate change.
Table 1: List of natural and anthropogenic water-related problems arising from climate change
References:
Ngoran, S. D., Dogah, K. E., & Xue, X. (2015). Assessing the Impacts of Climate Change on Water Resources: The Sub-Saharan Africa Perspective. Journal of Economics and Sustainable Development,6(1), 185-193.
Taylor, D. (2011, November 21). Climate Change Threatens Africa's Biggest Water Sources. Retrieved from https://www.voanews.com/a/climate-change-threatens-africas-biggest-water-sources--134258698/160327.html
Vorster, M. (2014). Climate change-related human security threats to border integrity and safeguarding for South Africa (Doctoral dissertation).
An interesting opening post!
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