Contextualising Water Scarcity and Groundwater

 


The water crisis in Africa: source


Water scarcity affects over 2.6 billion people worldwide, and has severe environmental, economic and social consequences (Wutich 2012). As explained in my previous post, due to water scarcity, there is an unequal disadvantage towards women since they are required to travel far to fetch water which isn’t necessarily drinkable and  resulting in loss of energy, time, and having severe health impacts (Kameri-Mbote and Kariuki 2015).  Hence many policy interventions aim to address this including the SDGs. I aim to continue exploring throughout my blog. But first, it is important to contextualise the water scarcity situation within Africa order to gain a deeper understanding of how it impacts the gender discrepancy in certain regions. In this post, I will define water scarcity, look at the reasons for its existence, and then explore groundwater and its use.    

Water scarcity

Simply defined, this is the lack of availability of water in relation to the demand (Damkjaer and Taylor 2017). This is  due to the physical geography, institutional failure and inadequate infrastructure which in turn impact water supply (UN n/d).

Sub-Saharan Africa has an arid/hyper-arid type climate, and this makes the region much more vulnerable to global climate change patterns such as El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO). In addition, impacts of global warming are much more significant in Africa, with the effects already being felt. Sub-Saharan Africa is projected to have the highest global temperature rise which directly affects water resources since there will be more evaporation and therefore less water availability. Moreover, rainfall patterns are changing due to environmental change, which results in more variability in rainfall. in sub-Saharan Africa there will be decreased periods of rainfall, further worsened by the fact that rainwater isn’t an all-year round water source, with variability from year to year and region to region (Kamei-Mbote and Kariuki 2015) thus further increasing water scarcity (Naik 2016).  Therefore with the already limited water supplies, coupled with the rapid population growth, water demand has increased significantly in sub-Saharan Africa resulting in governments introduce water fees which many citizens cannot afford (CBNC Africa 2018).

Due to various aspects to account for when defining water scarcity, it is very difficult to quantify. The most widely used water scarcity index is Falkenmark (1989) Water Stress Index (WSI), alongside the Water-to-Availability Ratio (WTA) (Damkjaer and Taylor 2017). However, despite these becoming more sophisticated over time, these indices rely on MARR (mean annual river runoff), and thus doesn’t account for green water (soil water), which is important in Sub-Saharan Africa since it accounts for almost all food production (Carter and Parker 2009). In addition, they do not account for groundwater use (Damkjaer and Taylor 2017), and for Africa, 35% of all water withdrawn comes from deep groundwater (Carter and Parker 2009).

Groundwater

Estimated groundwater storage in Africa: source


This is underground water in saturated zones beneath the land’s surface (USGS n/d). From the image we can tell that Northern Africa has a high level of groundwater storage which could potentially be as much as s 75 × 106 m3 per km2 (Bonsor et al 2018). This is due to the lower porosity of rock type, high levels of recharge, and more Mediterranean-type climate (DNI 2009). Active recharge occurs in wet areas across central Africa. Within Sub-Saharan Africa we can see groundwater storage is not as high, due to lack of recharge because of the arid climate, low rainfall and ground rock type.  yet there is still sufficient groundwater storage averaging at 1000-10000mm in depth (Bonsor et al 2018).

Access to groundwater through boreholes has become a common practice and the advantage of boreholes is that the water is pathogen free because it has been naturally filtered and percolated through the soil (Marcantonio 2018). But of course, there are issues associated with that, such as contamination by the rust from the iron pipes, not to mention groundwater being an already-limited resource (Marcantonio 2018).

Unfortunately, due to water scarcity, women are disproportionately disadvantaged. I believe that issues surrounding safe water access won’t be fulfilled unless there is a level of gender equality  (UNSDA n/d). Thus, due to this water scarcity, next week I will examine female water collection, and the related issues.


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