Why Africa? And why environmental change?
Hey guys! I'm Beth, a final year physical geography student at UCL. I have a keen interest in environmental change and the physical process and causes which change our planet.
Living in London the weather, specifically rain, makes up half the small talk I have, along with the following debate about whether or not to bring an umbrella. Rain here is seen as somewhat of an inconvenience to everyday lives, which in fact is something we should take for granted. Access to enough, and safe, water is not a universal luxury across the world, with around two billion people today not being able to access safe drinking water (Figure 1). There are many other uses for water which allow food security, development and more, but without it can lead to a struggle in everyday life. This blog will explore water in Africa, and to explore the stereotype that Africa has no water, and how they manage and use it.
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| Figure 1: Statistics highlighting the inaccessibility to water worldwide, leaving many in water scare conditions. |
But why Africa? Well it is a diverse continent, with complex boundaries across especially when it comes to water as it is divided into 24 hydrological basins, with eight major river systems (Braune and Xu, 2010) (Figure 2). This leads to transboundary sharing of water between the countries. Obviously, this can lead to conflicts over who has the management rights, as each country wants to prevent themselves falling into water scarcity. Furthermore, African countries are more susceptible to the effects of climate change due to their proportion of people in poverty, making them more vulnerable (Carter and Parker, 2009).
Water scarcity is the term when a country does not have sufficient enough water to sustain their population, which further leads to food insecurity (Falkenmark, 1989). There are issues with measuring water scarcity despite the future of water with climate change being unknown.
My focus will be on environmental change as anthropogenic climate change looms over us, threatening societies. It is believed that water sector will feel 93% of the climate change impacts (Caretta et al., 2022). Putting it under threat, and places such as Africa are more vulnerable to these impacts despite the global north being the main polluters over the past 200 years, which is incredibly unfair (MacAlister and Subramanyam, 2018).
My future blog posts will focus on water management schemes ranging from national scales to local scales and how societies will have to adapt to withstand environmental changes which will be faced in the coming years.
Come back to explore more!
I really enjoy the tone in this blog post; it's engaging while ensuring the main points are put across!
ReplyDeleteThank you Amelia, for this positive feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
DeleteHi Beth, I enjoyed the nature of this blog post, as it connects your experience with weather in the immediate context of the UK and helps highlight the contrast in Africa. I really appreciate how well you communicated the points in a way that made it free from jargon and simple to understand, enabling others to learn a lot from it.
ReplyDeleteThanks Safiyah! I appreciate this and I'm glad it was an easy post to understand- some topics can be complex enough without complex jargon explaining it.
DeleteThis is such a great first post. I really like how you have written in a colloquial tone whilst still giving me the facts, it helps to make it an easy and enjoyable read!
ReplyDeleteHi Lucy, thank you! I find academic jargon can often be used in a way that makes a topic hard to follow, which can make some confusing and complex topics even harder to read about.
DeleteHello Beth, I love this introductory post! Not only was it extremely engaging but it gave a great overview to your topic. I was wondering if you would be able to speak on your positionality, especially as a researcher in Western Europe studying a continent such as Africa?
ReplyDeleteThanks Charlotte, that is a really interesting question! As a researcher I have very little connection to Africa other than my interests in the difference in our climates and physical geography. This makes it a difficult topic to appropriately talk about, as I am very aware of certain stereotypes pertaining to Africa, such as having no water or the typical images which show Africa as if the whole continent is a desert! Each country within Africa has unique climate, cultures and people and when discussing Africa this should be acknowledged. ESPECIALLY when discussing topics such as these, where there is an element of thinking about mitigations for climate change. These differences have to be recognised as one solution will not fit all. Things I do in my everyday life will not work in Ghana and things which work in Ghana will differ from the other 53 countries. It is the most important to be educated on how to write about Africa to ensure you do not fall into any of these stereotypes!!!
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