This is the end of this blog, and I am very happy to have written it along this term.
Globally it widened my knowledge about the relationship between Africa and water resources. I knew that I had shortcomings about this continent, and they were partly confirmed as reality. Africa suffers from droughts and decline of water resource availability. But, my shortcomings were completed by a panel of other dynamics that I couldn't suspect.
In the same way that environmental changes affect intensively human activities in this Continent, we can also notice that humanity also generates consequences on environment (what we can see in the case of Lake Victoria for example).
As there is a close connexion between people and environment resources in Africa, interactions between both are more intense. For instance, in Europe countries like UK, if precipitation decreases, you generally still have food, or still have your job. Because people's life are disconnected to environment where they live. In Africa, activities highly rely on environmental resources driving to a significant dependance.
The complexity to estimate the globally situation of water resource on the African continent was the main difficulty to begin this blog. I definitely was right to feel puzzled about my mere representation of Africa mainly come from ARTE's documentaries that made me underestimate the diversity of this continent.
First, because of time scale.
African developement is going on definitely faster than it has been done for the industrialized countries, which making the assessment very uncertain because it is not happening on the same way as first industrialization.
Time scale also means variabilities, both seasonal or interanual, it can be observed as the most important changing characteristic of Africa's climate. Particularly with regard to water resource that is significantly marked by increase of extreme events.
I've tried to expose some hydrological concepts that are being modifying be this variabilities, but I want to specify that what I've written is only a part of the pattern, and it really depends on regions, land-use, water management, demography and urban planning of the area you study.
Second, because of spacial scale. It is very ambitious to analyse water and environmental changes on a continent as large as Africa. Both because of cultural and environmental heterogeneity.
Africa is composed about more than 50 countries, well known for their high diversity of local traditions, also colonized by different empires, contributing to a wide range of local particularities.
Moreover, as this continent crosses the ZCIT, the variety of the climate is highly significant, leading to many various ecosystems, and biomes.
Therefore, the historical aspect that characterises each region has been recurrent in my posts. Indeed, I've noticed along my readings and my researches that most of the difficulties that are facing African population are related, more or less, to the historical background.
The establishment of new lifestyles, or the basis of development of certain regions drove me to understand that these issues are deeply linked with inappropriate actions made in the past. Therefore,
I think it could be very relevant to integrate anthropological and historical analysis to deepen the African water and developement thoughts in order to be more connected with the social reality of this Continent, that is definitely plays a significant role in behaviours, and also not often included to management projects.
In addition to this complexity of components I had to take in account, I also noticed along the posts that I had to integrate interactions between components themselves in my analyses.
Hydrological patterns and processes (downstreams and upstreams, groundwater and water surface), transboundaries dynamics and interdependance demonstrated the fragility the relationships between components. Indeed, water availability issues in Africa appears to me as a problem of distribution. Natural conditions basicaly drive to an inequal distribution, but the role of politics in this distribution is also highly significant.
All of it working with on going environmental changes, Africa already has to include this dimension to the future development and management of the Continent, partly thanks to an increase of surveys, and a improve of the quality of datas.
For all these reasons, i think results from papers that I've read for this blog are relavant but also questionable. I found a lot of article asserting that precipitation rates were increasing, but in the same time found out other papers estimating the contrary.
Depending on multiple factors mainly methods of assessments, absence of datas, spatial and time scales, I quickly found that using datas about all the continent was quite uncertain, guiding my posts to more specific regions (Often West Africa because representing a part of the African environmental diversity through arid, semi-ardi and humid areas).
About water resource, even if I've been unprecised about the prospective of precipitation rates, we can assume that the water resource will be more and more uncertain, and the variability is dramatically going to increase. So, what I've understood from this blog is that the best approach for water and development in Africa is not only estimate how much water is Africa going to be able to use, but also WHEN.
The most relevant response to that could be working on ways to attenuate the uncertainity of this resource through time through small-scale AND large-scale approachs.
Globally it widened my knowledge about the relationship between Africa and water resources. I knew that I had shortcomings about this continent, and they were partly confirmed as reality. Africa suffers from droughts and decline of water resource availability. But, my shortcomings were completed by a panel of other dynamics that I couldn't suspect.
In the same way that environmental changes affect intensively human activities in this Continent, we can also notice that humanity also generates consequences on environment (what we can see in the case of Lake Victoria for example).
As there is a close connexion between people and environment resources in Africa, interactions between both are more intense. For instance, in Europe countries like UK, if precipitation decreases, you generally still have food, or still have your job. Because people's life are disconnected to environment where they live. In Africa, activities highly rely on environmental resources driving to a significant dependance.
The complexity to estimate the globally situation of water resource on the African continent was the main difficulty to begin this blog. I definitely was right to feel puzzled about my mere representation of Africa mainly come from ARTE's documentaries that made me underestimate the diversity of this continent.
First, because of time scale.
African developement is going on definitely faster than it has been done for the industrialized countries, which making the assessment very uncertain because it is not happening on the same way as first industrialization.
Time scale also means variabilities, both seasonal or interanual, it can be observed as the most important changing characteristic of Africa's climate. Particularly with regard to water resource that is significantly marked by increase of extreme events.
I've tried to expose some hydrological concepts that are being modifying be this variabilities, but I want to specify that what I've written is only a part of the pattern, and it really depends on regions, land-use, water management, demography and urban planning of the area you study.
Second, because of spacial scale. It is very ambitious to analyse water and environmental changes on a continent as large as Africa. Both because of cultural and environmental heterogeneity.
Africa is composed about more than 50 countries, well known for their high diversity of local traditions, also colonized by different empires, contributing to a wide range of local particularities.
Moreover, as this continent crosses the ZCIT, the variety of the climate is highly significant, leading to many various ecosystems, and biomes.
Therefore, the historical aspect that characterises each region has been recurrent in my posts. Indeed, I've noticed along my readings and my researches that most of the difficulties that are facing African population are related, more or less, to the historical background.
The establishment of new lifestyles, or the basis of development of certain regions drove me to understand that these issues are deeply linked with inappropriate actions made in the past. Therefore,
I think it could be very relevant to integrate anthropological and historical analysis to deepen the African water and developement thoughts in order to be more connected with the social reality of this Continent, that is definitely plays a significant role in behaviours, and also not often included to management projects.
In addition to this complexity of components I had to take in account, I also noticed along the posts that I had to integrate interactions between components themselves in my analyses.
Hydrological patterns and processes (downstreams and upstreams, groundwater and water surface), transboundaries dynamics and interdependance demonstrated the fragility the relationships between components. Indeed, water availability issues in Africa appears to me as a problem of distribution. Natural conditions basicaly drive to an inequal distribution, but the role of politics in this distribution is also highly significant.
All of it working with on going environmental changes, Africa already has to include this dimension to the future development and management of the Continent, partly thanks to an increase of surveys, and a improve of the quality of datas.
For all these reasons, i think results from papers that I've read for this blog are relavant but also questionable. I found a lot of article asserting that precipitation rates were increasing, but in the same time found out other papers estimating the contrary.
Depending on multiple factors mainly methods of assessments, absence of datas, spatial and time scales, I quickly found that using datas about all the continent was quite uncertain, guiding my posts to more specific regions (Often West Africa because representing a part of the African environmental diversity through arid, semi-ardi and humid areas).
About water resource, even if I've been unprecised about the prospective of precipitation rates, we can assume that the water resource will be more and more uncertain, and the variability is dramatically going to increase. So, what I've understood from this blog is that the best approach for water and development in Africa is not only estimate how much water is Africa going to be able to use, but also WHEN.
The most relevant response to that could be working on ways to attenuate the uncertainity of this resource through time through small-scale AND large-scale approachs.
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