Skip to main content

Don't neglect climate change

In view of current conversations being dominated by events up north in Glasgow - the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) - I wish to dedicate a post to briefly highlight the implications of anthropogenic warming on water distribution and 'hydropolitics' in southern Africa and the continent more broadly.

This podcast episode I came across encapsulates some impactful and interesting themes surrounding the intersections of climate change and water. Although it mostly examines the Asian context, its ideas can be extrapolated to the African continent:

With existing climatic and political dynamics of the southern Africa region, and exacerbated by climate change, water endowments will be far from static (Goulden et al., 2009). The IPCC's 5th assessment report predicts that - although not certain - southern Africa will likely experience a modest general downward trend in seasonal rainfall, heightened drought vulnerability, and more erratic dry spell frequencies and precipitation onset. In particular, western portions of the region will likely be even drier (Mgquba and Majozi, 2018). Considering a solid bilateral water agreement is already in place in the eastern part of southern Africa through the LHWP, this poses questions for the downstream riparians of western South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia in terms of allocation.

A universal concern raised in the podcast is the emergence and growth of an 'everyone for themselves' scenario - that the water supply and distribution effects of climate change would trigger sovereign nations to instinctively think and act only in their interests. For transboundary basins such as the Orange-Senqu, however, this mentality is untenable and problematic. Management approaches that are not only integrated and collaborative but also flexible and adaptive are crucial. In my next post, we will critically examine the management framework of the Orange-Senqu basin.

Another aspect mentioned is the complexity of balancing demands under climate change. With pressures across food and energy security, urbanisation, and others, a nexus framework that considers all such interlinked aspects together is appropriate. Virtual water, which was touched on briefly, is an encouraging and resilient solution incorporating water, food, and trade/politics - I hope to return to explore this fascinating concept later.

See you next week!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Blog reflections and final thoughts

To meaningfully wrap up my term-long exploration of water's political entanglements across the African continent, I wish to dedicate this space to reflect upon key takeaways as well as how my final posts' themes may have progressed and differed from the angle laid out in my introductory post . Diversity Although the  Orange-Senqu river basin  formed an early focus, attempts were made to acknowledge issues and opportunities elsewhere, from the integration of the virtual water trade in the Maghreb  and continental groundwater endowment variations , to balancing sectoral stakeholders in urban sanitation and water provisioning in Nairobi . After all, whilst the notion of Africa's natural environmental characteristics influencing its hydrological landscape plays a part in all countries' water woes, each country's specific challenges are unique. The continent's sheer size and diversity also presents differing political and socio-demographic climates, producing nuances...

Setting the Stage for Water Tensions in Africa

Water is a crucial resource - not just to sustain life but entire nations through supporting industry, agriculture, and trade. Accessing water, however, is in reality far from a simple feat, owing to discrepancies in spatial distributions of water resources, man-made demarcations, and societal demand, rendering water an easily politicised and contested resource. Welcome to my blog, where I explore the theme of water and politics in relation to development. I will examine just how inextricable politics and power relations are to any discussion of water access, focussing specifically on Africa. Few places beyond this continent exemplify the politics of water access more clearly: despite holding abundant freshwater at 9% of global supply  (Gaye and Tindimugaya, 2019) , a combination of colonial legacies and natural environmental landscape factors mean that Africa is today especially vulnerable to water conflict. In this introductory post, I will explore both these factors in a bit mor...

A viable solution to transboundary basin allocation issues? The case of southern Africa

Previously, I introduced the premise of water contestation in Africa continentally, outlining a mismatch in water needs and distribution exacerbated by climatic and political factors. I now wish to delve into a region whose transboundary tensions, conflict, and mediation over water I find particularly interesting: southern Africa and the Orange-Senqu river basin. A large swathe of inland southern Africa is dominated by the previously mentioned kilometre-high plateau and a narrow coastal belt that is especially mountainous towards South Africa - this creates sharp topographic gradients, which have a marked effect on weather systems' movement, orographic precipitation, and hence noticeable rainfall distribution and vegetation gradients across southern Africa (Reason, 2017) . The Orange-Senqu basin lies in the heart of the region, with its main river straddling four countries: it rises from Lesotho's Maluti Mountains and traverses westwards across South Africa, Botswana, and Namib...