Water & Environmental Change in Africa

Welcome to my final post! We've been looking at water and development, the ways in which it is managed, and some potential issues which may occur in the future. I have been hinting at environmental change... and finally, we're going to discuss it now. Firstly, what is environmental change ? : anthropogenic and natural processes leading to physical changes in the environment as well as in the climate, which leads to increased variability in  surface water,  rainfall and soil moisture ( Taylor et al., 2013 ). Ways in which Ghana's climate may change include: Changes in annual rainfall, as well as changes to the temporal and spatial pattern of rainfall ( Carter and Parker, 2009 ) (Figure 1). This can be from phenomenon such as as El Ni ñ o-Southern Oscillation and La Ni ñ a - which can effect global temperatures and precipitation due to the changes in trade winds effecting moisture being transferred within the atmosphere. Seasons may change, in terms of length, start da...

Welcome back guys! We briefly touched on groundwater in the past blogs, but it definitely deserves its own post due to its significance within water management. It has the potential of being a sustainable source of water, able to withstand environmental change where other sources may wither. Groundwater is the largest store of unfrozen water on this planet, lots of aquifers are comprised of ancient stores of water which has been collecting for thousands of years. African countries are not the only regions of the world which use groundwater as a main source of fresh water- half the global population rely on groundwater for potable wate r . What is the issue with groundwater?  It is "out of site and all too often out of mind" ( Gaye and Tindimugaya, 2019 ). For this reason, groundwater has been excluded from most water scarcity metrics, only including above ground water as an accessible of safe water as it can be quantifiably measured ( Damkjaer and Taylor, 2017 ). The recharg...

COP is a gathering of parties from around the world, who come together to assess how effective measures from the previous year have been in limiting climate change. There is a big push for a complete change to renewable energy, to reduce the impacts of climate change. This year it took place in the UAE, with the president of this climate change conference (Sultan Al-Jaber) also standing as a chair for a major oil company in Abu Dhabi who plans to double oil drilling by 2027 ... Sounds counterproductive?  I thought so too. However, some are trying to debate that he is a good figure to head to transition talks at COP due to him working with the UAE's technology sector for the transition to clean energ y - I'll let you make up your own mind as to whether this was a good appointment! COP's can be a draining and demoralising process of events, often culminating in nothing robust. But it is an important time for all to get their voices heard here, from scholars and academics to a...

Figure 1: Lake Volta, the Akosombo Dam and Kpong Dam in Ghana. Hi guys! Here is a brief update on the situation in Ghana which I spoke about a couple of blogs ago (Figure 1). An article published yesterday debates the historical negligence of the Volta River Authorities and Ghanaian government to local communities since the Akosombo and Kpong dams erection in 1965 and 1982 respectively, as well as the current affairs.  26,000 people have been displaced by the spillage, but no recorded deaths 8,000 rescued by the navy The history of the Volta River Authorities has not been addressed and no compensation has been agreed for the communities who suffered the losses No aid for the communities to move belongings away from flooding Not adequate enough time given for an evacuation despite a simulation ran earlier this year Flooding did not stay within unoccupied flood zone, as predicted This is not a stand-alone event. It has happened before- the last recorded spillage was in 2010 - and it...

Welcome back to the blog! This week, remaining in Ghana, together we'll explore small-scale, bottom-up water management schemes as opposed to the large, national scale scheme we looked at last time, where communities lack input in how water is managed.      Figure 1:  A hand dug well, with a bucket and rope to abstract water. Rural communities get most of their water from shallow groundwater for irrigation and livestock ( Owusu  et al., 2016 ). Studies have been lacking in how to sustainable use groundwater, despite accounting for over 100 times more than Africa's renewable freshwater  ( Gaye and Tindimugaya, 2018 ). Local communities manage water in a few ways, all of which are low in technology which allows them to be self-sustaining (Figure 1). Examples are hang-dug wells in dry riverbeds, , or hand pumps which provide water for 200 million rural Africans ( Hope, 2015 ).    As Ghana is  one of western Africa's key agricultural produce...

  While reading the news I stumbled across devastating events that took place in Ghana, with major flooding from dam spillage destroying communities in the dark shadows of two major dams-  Akosombo and Kpong . This isn't a nice welcome back to my blog, but this is the harsh reality of environmental change, but thought t his next blog post should centre around dams as a national scale of water management. Dams have played a key role in societies development in the past thousands of years (Figure 1), allowing for a permanent water source for communities to settle  as they had access to a stable  water supply, some flood control, irrigation for crops  ( Altinbilek, 2002 ).  No longer did people rely as much on seasonal rains, as reservoirs accumulate water . Farming became a way to support a bigger community with food instead of hunting and gathering .  Figure 1: The remains of the Sadd el Kafara dam constructed in 2600 BC, in Cairo, Egypt . Constru...