Water and Environmental Change in Africa

 Welcome to my final blog post. The title of this post is a quote from the Chief Executive of Water Aid, Tim Wainwright, and I found that it really resonated with me. Such a short quote speaks volumes, yet the message is so often overshadowed by more mainstream issues such as fossil fuel emissions. That is why I will be dedicating this final post to COP 28 and my thoughts on the future.  Figure 1: The President of COP 28, Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber My previous post focused on COP 27, the African COP. I will now be moving on to the more recent discussions in Dubai at COP 28. Beginning with the positives from the conference, the African Water Facility headed events on 'Water Security for Climate Resilience in Africa', drawing the world's attention to such vital matters. Bringing this topic to a global stage is crucial. Additionally, 195 nations committed to "transitioning away" from the use of fossil fuels, something that took 28 conferences to agree on! However, this...

Welcome to the penultimate post in this series! Before I begin, I want you to consider these questions. Did you know that the World Health Organisation estimates that 2 billion people globally lack access to safe water (Perez et al., 2015) ? Or that Africa is the world's fastest urbanising continent ? Both were just as shocking to me. Therefore, this blog will first delve into an African urban case study of The Cape Town Drought and then into discussions of COP 27.  Figure 1: Residents queueing to collect water from the Kalk Bay Spring, Cape Town.  South Africa primarily relies on rainwater to meet demand . This is becoming increasingly difficult in light of climate change. Rains have become unpredictable with an increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. The Cape Town Drought lasted between 2015 and 2018 and was made three times more likely by anthropogenic climate change ( Trisos et al., 2022 ). Water sales contributed to 14% of the city's total revenue; ...

Hello again! This blog aims to discuss the role of water storage in aiding water and development in Africa in the age of climate change. Conversations of climate change are inherently political, and thus, so are the decisions regarding adaptation, mitigations, and sustainability. Unfortunately, the vulnerability of communities is also determined by non-climatic factors  (Mason et al., 2011) . One way to help reduce vulnerability is through increased water storage. Dams are used globally; however, this blog will focus on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Investments in such water infrastructure are needed to ensure water security, so the structure of the economy plays an important role, especially with the looming threat of climate change.  Figure 1: A graph showing the relation between Ethiopia's GDP and rainfall (Grey and Sadoff, 2007) In Ethiopia, hydrological variability is strongly related to economic growth, as shown in Figure 1. Models show that if there is a s...