Water and environmental change in Africa

Urbanisation & Nairobi This blog has so far been focused on physical geography. I have touched on, but not fully broached social issues like urbanisation. UN estimates suggest that  1.5 billion people in Africa will be living in urban areas by 2050  but this isn't always led by a changing climate: education, pay and quality of life are all generally better in urban environments than rural.  There is evidence that climate change is becoming a factor.  In Kenya,  climate change has already caused loss of pasture for livestock and forced  some of Kenya's nomadic communities to relocate to urban centres .  Over the last 50 years, Nairobi's population has exploded from almost  50,000 to 5 million  people. One of these slums, the Dandora Slum, sits on the banks of the Nairobi River. Only 6% of it's inhabitants have piped water in their housing .  Figure 1: A section of the Nairobi River.  Source: The Star, Kenya Nairobi & The...

A nation of lakes Out of the 667 lakes in Africa, 64 of them are in Kenya. Part of this extensive lake system runs through The Great Rift Valley, which  runs from Lebanon down to Mozambique and cuts a backbone through central Kenya. It protrudes at the joining of divergent tectonic plates, producing the lakes and volcanoes along it's ridge-line. The main inflow to the Valley within Kenya is from Lake Turkana in the north, which itself receives inflows from the Omo River in Ethiopia. Figure 1: Map showing all the locations in mentioned in this blog.  Source: Google Earth Despite it's considerable lakes,  Kenya's overall land area is 80% classified as arid and semi-arid land . When  thinking about environmental change in relation to Africa, the negative connotations of dry lakes and wells spring to mind.  In 2010, the Rift Valley lakes were at their lowest levels since 2002.  As a consequence, studies found that it was expected that a warming climate would re...

GM Crops - Burgeoning issue In 2018, 35% of Kenya's GDP came from the agriculture sector. In  Kenya, over 70% of the working age rural population works in the agricultural sector .  90% of Sub-Saharan Africa's is reliant on rain-fed agriculture . Africa and Kenya's over-reliance on this type of agriculture means that droughts can cause huge financial problems and reduce food security massively. In 2016, small holder farmers in eastern Kenya lost more than 80% of their crops. Kenya recently took the steps to lift bans on genetically modified crops to help ease some of the pressure .  Benefits of GM Africa's population is predicted to increase by over 1 billion by 2050.   Compared to Africa's population, the share of genetically engineered crop acreage is very small and only commercially cultivated in four countries .  The growing population will need to sustain itself with both food crops and cash crops to continue economic development. Studies have also shown t...

So far, I have been blogging about flooding, drought and the effects on Africa. As I type, discussions at COP27 are shifting from prevention of climate change to adaptation and mitigation. Part of this was on the monitoring and how best to work together in response to climate disasters. As a response, I want to spend the next two blogs talking about mitigation strategies. In our previous lecture, we were shown data from monitoring stations in Nigeria. There were some unusual trends within the data so Julian began investigating. He found that the maintenance of the monitoring stations had declined over the years, resulting in unreliable data. Things like this might not be flashy, but they are such a basic element of monitoring and early flood detect. Large conferences like the COP sessions always involve people wanting to make inspiring speeches and making bold promises. Damaged hydrometers being repaired or replaced doesn't result in the headline grabbing news they want so this alm...

Backbone of Society Kenya's agricultural sector has been described as   "a crucial backbone of Kenya' economy" , employs  75% of the working population and 65% of total exports . Most of the farming in Sub-Saharan Africa in general is dominated by smallholder farms. Whilst estimates of 70-80% have been proposed by the media, there is little evidence to suggest this is true .  What is true is  98% of these smallholder farms are rain-fed  instead of being irrigated, and erratic weather patterns is one of the biggest challenges facing these farmers.  A 2018 study found that that understanding patterns of weather in Kenya is key to economic stability.   Historically, farmers in these regions have been able to tolerate Kenya's rather erratic weather but with an increasing levels of inconsistency, can these smallholder farms survive? Most research in the impacts of climate change point towards an overall decrease in rainfall patterns  as well ...

Perennially challenges I've just written a blog on the damage that drought can have to an economy and local community. 1.4 million people have now been displaced by the opposite .  Flooding is a perennial challenge in Nigeria and this will continue in a changing climate . The climate and low relief geography in this region does tend to favour flooding and floodplains but I read something very interesting in the Conversation about the potential causes being multi-functional damming and poor management. Multifaceted and mismanaged In a perfect world, a dam should have an agreed purpose. Flood control, hydro-electricity generation, navigational channels, fisheries... There are many uses for dams but trying to fit too many of these functions into one location can result in problems. For example, a dam built upstream from a wetlands can cause wetlands downstream to dry out. This can reduce the amount of water available to the people in the downstream region (and many other issues ...