Water & Environmental Change in Africa

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...