Posts

Reflecting upon it all

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In this blog I set out to explore food and water in Africa. My first post on Natural endowment allowed me to entertain my passion for physical geography by explaining how both the ITCZ and geology in Africa play a hugely important role in manipulating the frequency, distribution and storage of water.    But, my goal was not to just deliver factually accurate information about food and water in Africa, but rather to draw insightful conclusions that can create a measurable impact on you, the reader. To do this, I felt that there was not a more globally pressing issue than that of climate change. This led me into exploring the potential impacts of climate change on food and water in Africa if nothing were to be done. This post demonstrated the ways that climate change may impact rainfall events across Africa (Figure 12) and therefore food production patterns going forward. A key finding in this post was that climate change is expected to lead to an increase in extreme precipitati...
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Surface water in Egypt

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  The Aswan Dam:   My blog centralises climate change because I believe that groundwater in the past has often been underrepresented in discussions of solutions for combating the effects of climate change on food and water. This is not however to say that surface water is not also critical to the story of food and water in Africa. Differing regions have differing characteristics, some of which can be favourable towards surface water and vice versa. Therefore, I will not neglect the importance of surface water and this post serves as a testament to this.    A key example that comes to mind when thinking about surface water in Africa is Egypt – a country that is much more dependent on surface water than it is groundwater and resultantly has its most substantial infrastructures based around surface water. However, Egypt is not alone and there is diversity in other countries that too depend on surface water such as countries centred around the River Zambezi including Zam...
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Groundwater - the saviour?

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Over the last few weeks I have explored climate change and its potential implications for food and water across Africa. I have demonstrated some of the potential effects of increased water variability and in some places scarcity as a result of global warming and what this means for agricultural food production. However, in this post, I am going to ask myself, is it really as bad as we think? Recent estimates suggest that water storage in Africa’s groundwater reserves are  20 times   larger than that of water stored in reservoirs and lakes above ground. In fact, over 80% of domestic rural water supplies in Sub-Saharan Africa are derived from groundwater sources. Groundwater can be extracted  using boreholes, springs and wells  (Figures 9 to 11 respectively) and is often of an incredibly high quality and superior to that of surface waters. This is because surface water in Africa is vulnerable to direct contamination whereas rain water that passes through geo...
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Climate change - food security in South Africa

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  South Africa: In this post I am going to assess how climate change might affect food and water in South Africa. This may seem like a strange case study location to choose as relative to other African countries, South Africa is often perceived as one that is considered “a food secure nation” ( Masipa, 2017 : 4 ).    However, within  Hendricks (2005)   study he calculates that between 58 to 73% of households have experienced food insecurity across South Africa despite its assumed ‘food secure’ status. Further urgency has also recently been added towards assessing the potential effects of global warming on food security in South Africa by  “the worst drought”   it has ever experienced  “in living memory”   and water shortages that have persisted in South Africa from 2015, up until today. Watch the following video to understand the magnitude of this drought problem in  South Africa  – this is what inspired me to choose South Afri...
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Climate change and sub-Saharan Africa

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How is climate change going to impact food security in sub-Saharan Africa?    This week we are going to explore how climate change and its impact on water might affect food securities in sub-Saharan Africa .  Anderson (1990)   argues that food security occurs where individuals have the ability to obtain a sufficient amount of food on a daily basis, whereas   Ziervogel (2009)   argues that food security is not just about availability but also about the access and utilisation of this food. This blog post will therefore explore the relationships between water, climate change and food security relative to these 5 key concepts:        Food accessibility        Food availability         Food stability     Food utilisation        Food affordability    The UN Development Report highlights  that   25%   of  households in sub-Saharan Af...
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Climate change and water and food in Africa?

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Previously we understood why the distribution and frequency of rainfall in Africa is so variable. This week we are going to explore the potential impacts of climate change on this variability and distribution. It is important to understand and prepare for what might happen to water in Africa if climate change continues and worsens.    I have chosen to talk about this as Africa has been labelled the most vulnerable continent in the world to the effects of climate change ( Masipa, 2017 ). Studies undertaken by organisations such as the  World Bank   and the  Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change  emphasised that climate change will severely impact agricultural land which will in turn affect food securities across Africa ( Vogel, 2000 ). This is further supported by the   IPCC  who have argued that agricultural productivity in sub-Sharan Africa will have declined from anywhere between 9 to 21% by 2080 as a result of global warming ( Masipa, ...
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Natural Endowment

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Natural endowment – Prosperous for some but a source of downfall for others:   Naturally favourable traits are no exception when it comes to countries and their geographic location ( Ndikumana et al, 2010 ). It is common to instantly connect natural endowment to countries that have benefited greatly from their natural characteristics. For example, the countries of  OPEC   who found themselves living on top of the most in demand energy source of the 20th century. However, countries with less favourable natural characteristics are less commonly thought of in these contexts. This is no exception for the continent of Africa and its relationship with food and water. This is epitomised as just 4% of crop land in Sub-Saharan Africa is irrigated ( Siebert et al, 2010 ) and withdrawals of freshwater in the majority of countries in Africa are below  Malin Falkenmark’s  definition of requisite water availability ( Falkenmark, 1989 ). I am therefore dedicating this pos...
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