Posts

Concluding thoughts

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The issues on water development that we touched on during the posts such as groundwater, land-use changes, food security, sanitation and management techniques by community or private sector are long standing issues beyond their relation to environmental change. As the literature reviews have shown there are many causes for the current issues of many African nations, whether it be post-apartheid influences, a post-colonial economy that established dependency on the Global North and destroys local economies, an unstable democracy, an unorganized government, or corrupt local council. The relationship all these topics have with environmental change is the projected unpredictability regarding its impacts. Environmental change adds to the existing issues and complicates solutions more by now incorporating aspects like major weather variability, floods, droughts, unpredictable water borne disease patterns, food and water scarcity, safe water access; meaning the prevention of such events and c...
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Managing water resources & Environmental Change

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So far, we’ve tackled many ways in which environmental change will impact water and development in Africa, however we’ve neglected the stakeholders in charge of the management of these water resources. In this post I will be discussing the relationship between environmental change and water resource management and debate different approaches to water management. An  adaptation to climate change in Africa study  concluded that climate change is likely to be responsible for the displacement of agriculture and water resources thus affecting economic investments and stakeholders. The paper also outlines that the most critical need in Africa is organization to ensure the promotion of ‘sound adaptive strategies in the context of sustainable development objectives’ and that oftentimes community and civic groups lack the appropriate funding, technology, and personnel to achieve the same goals as centralized or private management. However, is this always the case? Different papers on t...
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How to not solve Climate Change – COP27 the step-by-step guide

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  After high expectations from the build up to COP27, also advertised as ‘Africa’s COP’ , the outcome was rather disappointing . As the deadline of the Paris Agreement looms around the corner, this years’ COP27 has failed to go beyond the promises of COP26 and has announced no new targets. The talks were mainly dominated by negotiations for a compensatory fund for developing countries meant to promote climate justice, a very significant point from an Africa oriented perspective, seeing as Africa is set up to suffer the most repercussions of climate change despite being the smallest contributor to it. This ‘loss and damage’ discussion failed to set up such a fund during COP26, however this year it seems we were provided with a ‘de jure’ agreement. Sunday morning it was announced that members had agreed on setting up the fund HOWEVER, there are no further details, which suspiciously sounds like a ‘business as usual’ situation. No information was provided to say who will pay, how ...
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Just how unhealthy is Climate Change?

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  In this blog series so far, we have discussed very intuitive meanings of water development and rather obvious environmental change impacts. In today’s post however, we will be dwelling into less mediatized and perhaps understood water development and climate change interactions. Today I will be exploring water development understood as sanitation and health and how climate change will drastically shift the paradigm of sanitation. To illustrate the positive correlation between environmental change and increased risk regarding neglected tropical diseases (NDTs) in Africa I will be using the case study of Schistosomiasis. The disease is characterized as ‘an acute and chronic parasitic disease caused by blood flukes (trematode worms)’ , the larva of which are released by freshwater snails. Contamination primarily occurs when the larva penetrates the skin during contact with the infested water and although drinking infested water isn’t directly responsible for infection, the mouth ...
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Is groundwater the key to environmental change in Africa?

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This post will explore the effects of environmental change on groundwater and groundwater recharge rates, their relationship with climatic regions, land-use change, agriculture and finally discuss how they might be incorporated into adaptive strategies to climate change in Africa. Roughly  50% of Africa ’s population relies on groundwater stores as their main water supply, placing groundwater at the center of the water and environmental change in Africa discussion. It has already been established that annual runoff and groundwater recharge are  more sensitive to the distribution of rainfall events , rather than the total annual runoff. Recharge rates have a positive response to extended and moderate rainfall events, and a negative response to both extreme rainfall events (high flood risk) or low intensity rainfall (increased evaporation rate). As discussed in the last blog post, climate change is projected to cause extreme weather events, such as more intense rainfall that w...
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‘Climate change’ the phrase of the century

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Hi and welcome to my blog Water & Environmental Change in Africa, which will explore themes relating to climate change, the acceleration of the hydrological cycle, climate injustice, land-use change, agricultural practices, and adaptive strategies within the African continent. Before we begin, it’s relevant that I explain who I am, and my reason for writing this blog series. My name is Bianca, and I’m a Geography student. I think of myself as a physical geographer, mostly because science has always made sense to me, however, understanding environmental change requires both a physical and human geography perspective, one that incorporates the socio-economic, cultural and political as well as hydrology. For today’s blog I’ll be presenting a simplified introduction to climate change and then draw attention to its effects which are already drastically impacting parts of Africa.   Environmental Change – Beginner’s Guide Undoubtedly everyone has heard of climate change, but do ...
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