scholarly journals Water Security in Africa in the Age of Global Climate Change

Daedalus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 150 (4) ◽  
pp. 7-26
Author(s):  
Allen Isaacman ◽  
Muchaparara Musemwa

Abstract This essay explores the multiple ways in which the nexuses between water scarcity and climate change are socially and historically grounded in ordinary people's lived experiences and are embedded in specific fields of power. Here we specifically delineate four critical dimensions in which the water crises confronting the African continent in an age of climate change are clearly expressed: the increasing scarcity, privatization, and commodification of water in urban centers; the impact of large dams on the countryside; the health consequences of water shortages and how they, in turn, affect other aspects of people's experiences, sociopolitical dynamics, and well-being, broadly conceived; and water governance and the politics of water at the local, national, and transnational levels. These overarching themes form the collective basis for the host of essays in this volume that provide rich accounts of conflicts and struggles over water use and how these tensions have been mitigated.

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thulani Dube ◽  
Philani Moyo ◽  
Moreblessings Ncube ◽  
Douglas Nyathi

<p>Several local studies have been carried out on the impact of climate change on livelihoods and development especially in developing countries. However, there is a general scarcity of literature that makes a comparative appraisal of the impacts of climate change on agro-ecological based livelihoods across the African continent. This paper seeks to address that gap by making a comparative analysis of the effects of climate change on agro-based livelihoods across the African continent, focusing on Eastern, Western, Southern Africa and the Sahel region. A cross continental perspective on this issue is important in informing current global climate change negotiations and response strategies both at global level and national levels. While some studies have been conducted at individual country levels about the projected and recorded impacts of climate change, there remains a dearth of literature that reviews and consolidates these findings to give an overall holistic picture about continental and sub-continental impacts in Africa especially as relating to local agro and ecological based livelihoods. This study finds out that the impact of climate change is invariably negative across the whole of Africa as it leads to failing agricultural yields and a reduction of bio-diversity. The paper recommends an intensification for the support of livelihood diversification strategies in rural development planning. It further recommends policy strategies that particularly targets the poor and vulnerable communities whose livelihoods hinge on agriculture and natural ecosystems as these will suffer the most from the impact of climate change.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 553-557
Author(s):  
Qingyun Duan ◽  
Anmin Duan

Abstract Energy and water cycles have been a hot research topic in the global scientific community. The global climate change observed over the last century is having a profound impact on global and regional energy and water cycles, leading to more frequent extreme climatic events and affecting water security, ecosystem and socioeconomic development around the world. The impact is especially obvious over the highland regions such as the Tibetan Plateau. Here we have an interview with one of world's most renowned experts in hydroclimatology, Professor Soroosh Sorooshian from the University of California at Irvine, to share his insights on the subject of energy and water cycles.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yong Zhang ◽  
Lu-yu Liu ◽  
Yi Liu ◽  
Man Zhang ◽  
Cheng-bang An

AbstractWithin the mountain altitudinal vegetation belts, the shift of forest tree lines and subalpine steppe belts to high altitudes constitutes an obvious response to global climate change. However, whether or not similar changes occur in steppe belts (low altitude) and nival belts in different areas within mountain systems remain undetermined. It is also unknown if these, responses to climate change are consistent. Here, using Landsat remote sensing images from 1989 to 2015, we obtained the spatial distribution of altitudinal vegetation belts in different periods of the Tianshan Mountains in Northwestern China. We suggest that the responses from different altitudinal vegetation belts to global climate change are different. The changes in the vegetation belts at low altitudes are spatially different. In high-altitude regions (higher than the forest belts), however, the trend of different altitudinal belts is consistent. Specifically, we focused on analyses of the impact of changes in temperature and precipitation on the nival belts, desert steppe belts, and montane steppe belts. The results demonstrated that the temperature in the study area exhibited an increasing trend, and is the main factor of altitudinal vegetation belts change in the Tianshan Mountains. In the context of a significant increase in temperature, the upper limit of the montane steppe in the eastern and central parts will shift to lower altitudes, which may limit the development of local animal husbandry. The montane steppe in the west, however, exhibits the opposite trend, which may augment the carrying capacity of pastures and promote the development of local animal husbandry. The lower limit of the nival belt will further increase in all studied areas, which may lead to an increase in surface runoff in the central and western regions.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanyun Liu ◽  
Lian Xie ◽  
John M. Morrison ◽  
Daniel Kamykowski

The regional impact of global climate change on the ocean circulation around the Galápagos Archipelago is studied using the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) configured for a four-level nested domain system. The modeling system is validated and calibrated using daily atmospheric forcing derived from the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis dataset from 1951 to 2007. The potential impact of future anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the Galápagos region is examined using the calibrated HYCOM with forcing derived from the IPCC-AR4 climate model. Results show that although the oceanic variability in the entire Galápagos region is significantly affected by global climate change, the degree of such effects is inhomogeneous across the region. The upwelling region to the west of the Isabella Island shows relatively slower warming trends compared to the eastern Galápagos region. Diagnostic analysis suggests that the variability in the western Galápagos upwelling region is affected mainly by equatorial undercurrent (EUC) and Panama currents, while the central/east Galápagos is predominantly affected by both Peru and EUC currents. The inhomogeneous responses in different regions of the Galápagos Archipelago to future AGW can be explained by the incoherent changes of the various current systems in the Galápagos region as a result of global climate change.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naseer Ahmed Abbasi ◽  
Xiangzhou Xu

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstracts:&lt;/strong&gt; Influenced by global climate change, water shortages and other extreme weather, water scarcity in the world is an alarming sign. This article provides evidences regarding the Tunnel and Tianhe project&amp;#8217;s feasibility and their technical, financial, political, socioeconomic and environmental aspects. Such as how to utilize the water vapour in the air and to build a 1000 km long tunnel project to fulfill the goal of solving water shortage in China. The projects are promising to solve the problem of water, food and drought in the country. In addition, the telecoupling framework helps to effectively understand and manage ecosystem services, as well as the different challenges associated with them. Such efforts can help find the ways for proper utilization of water resources and means of regulation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Key words: &lt;/strong&gt;Sustainability; water shortage; transfer project&lt;/p&gt;


Author(s):  
Viktoriia Sydorenko ◽  

This article is devoted to an overview of such a category of migrants as climate refugees. The author pays attention to the general characteristics of the impact of global climate change on migrants. Particular attention is paid to the disclosure of the term “climate refugee”, the reasons for the emergence of this category of people, as well as the problems of counting climate refugees. The author also provides examples for solving these problems.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marine Prieur ◽  
Alexander C. Whittaker ◽  
Fritz Schlunegger ◽  
Tor O. Sømme ◽  
Jean Braun ◽  
...  

&lt;p&gt;Sedimentary dynamics and fluxes are influenced by both autogenic and allogenic forcings. A better understanding of the evolution of sedimentary systems through time and space requires us to decipher, and therefore to characterise, the impact of each of these on the Earth&amp;#8217;s landscape. Given the current increase in the concentration of atmospheric carbon, studying the impact of rapid and global climate changes is of particular importance at the present time. Such events have been clearly defined in the geologic record. Among them, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) has been extensively studied worldwide and represents a possible analogue of the rapid current climate warming.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The present project focuses on the Southern Pyrenees (Spain) where excellent exposures of the Paleocene-Eocene interval span a large range of depositional environments from continental to deep-marine. These conditions allow us to collect data along the whole depositional system in order to document changes in sediment fluxes and paleohydraulic conditions. Because hydrological conditions have an impact on sediment transport through hydrodynamics, paleoflow reconstructions can shed light on changes in sediment dynamics. This information is reconstructed from the statistical distributions of channel morphologies, characteristic system dimensions including bankfull channel depth and width, and grain-sizes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;With this approach, our aim is to provide both qualitative and quantitative assessments of the magnitude and extent of the perturbation of sedimentary fluxes along an entire source-to-sink system during an episode of extreme climate change. This will lead to a better understanding of the impact of abrupt climate change on earth surface systems in mid-latitudinal areas, with possible implications for current climate adaptation policy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This research is carried out in the scope of the lead author&amp;#8217;s PhD project and is part of the S2S-FUTURE European Marie Sk&amp;#322;odowska-Curie ITN (Grant Agreement No 860383).&lt;/p&gt;


Author(s):  
Maria Polozhikhina ◽  

Climate conditions remain one of the main risk factors for domestic agriculture, and the consequences of global climate change are ambiguous in terms of prospects for agricultural production in Russia. This paper analyzes the impact of climate change on the country’s food security from the point of view of its self-sufficiency in grain primarily. Specific conditions prevailing on the Crimean peninsula are also considered.


2018 ◽  
Vol 488 (1) ◽  
pp. 277-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adebayo J. Adeloye ◽  
Bankaru-Swamy Soundharajan

AbstractHedging is universally recognized as a useful operational practice in surface water reservoirs to temporally redistribute water supplies and thereby avoid large, crippling water shortages. When based on the zones of available water in storage, hedging has traditionally involved a static rationing (i.e. supply to demand) ratio. However, given the usual seasonality of reservoir inflows, it is also possible that hedging could be dynamic with seasonally varying rationing ratios. This study examined the effect of static and dynamic hedging policies on the performance of the Pong reservoir in India during a period of climate change. The results show that the reservoir vulnerability was unacceptably high (≥60%) without hedging and that this vulnerability further deteriorated as the catchment became drier due to projected climate change. The time- and volume-based reliabilities were acceptable. The introduction of static hedging drastically reduced the vulnerability to <25%, although the hedging reduction in the water supplied during normal operational conditions was only 17%. Further analyses with dynamic hedging provided only modest improvements in vulnerability. The significance of this study is its demonstration of the effectiveness of hedging in offsetting the impact of water shortages caused by climate change and the fact that static hedging can match more complex dynamic hedging policies.


2014 ◽  
Vol 937 ◽  
pp. 663-668
Author(s):  
Qiu Jing Li ◽  
Xiao Li Hou ◽  
Li Xue ◽  
Hong Yue Chen ◽  
Yun Ting Hao

Climate change refers to man-made changes in our climate, which is caused by changes in temperature, precipitation, and CO2. There is a lot of data coming from all over the world indicating that phenology of garden plants and biodiversity are being impacted by climate change. In the context of climate change, landscape plants can enhance carbon sink function, improve plant design, and mitigate climate change and so on. To determine the impact of these changes on garden plants, scientists would need to strengthen the study of garden plants under global climate change, including different garden type responses to climate change, invaliding species phenology study, extreme weather impacts on landscape plant phenology, the dominant factor of affecting garden plants in different regions, interactions of multiple environmental factors on influence mechanism of garden plants.


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