Causes of physical water insecurity in Africa: PART I

This blog post is going to look at the causes of physical water insecurity in South Africa due to environmental change; whilst part two of this blog is going to look at the social and political factors that lead to water insecurity due to environmental change forcing factors; so make sure to stick around for both parts!

Africa is the second driest continent in the world (Naik, 2016). This means that the continent as a whole is already in a fragile water security position in certain locations. Environmental change across the continent has and is going to increasingly put pressure on these already fragile water resources into the future. However, water security and environmental change is not homogenous across Africa.  Countries experience both pre-existing water availability and environmental change differently. Countries such as South Africa and Niger have significant physical water availability issues, whereas, other countries such as Nigeria and The Democratic Republic of Congo have comparably very little physical insecurity. Figure 1.1 highlights the Urban populations that are risk from water insecurity by 2050.

Figure 1.1 - Urban populations at risk from water insecurity due to climate change by 2050 - IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2014)

This highlights how the water crisis and environmental change should not be looked at in uniform manner; with geographical, political and economic context key in understanding any such water crisis problems. Water insecurity can be both attributed to physical and social factors (Habiba et al. 2013). 

In the 2014 IPCC Forth Assessment Report a series of graphics were created highlighting the risk of climate-related driving factors on a range of contexts. Figure 1.1 shows the key risk, the climate driver and the time frame for the environmental change issue. It shows clearly that physical water insecurity caused by the negative externalities attributed to environmental change will have significant detrimental impacts across large swathes of Africa, with "very high" risk in the long term if we maintain our current adaptation potential (IPCC, 2014).

Figure 1.2 Risk of water security issues due to climate-related drivers across Africa - IPCC (2014)

So firstly I am going to look at how environmental change has led to physical water insecurity in South Africa. Changes in  hydrological patterns in recent years have led to significant water insecurity outcomes for the country. For example, the Western Cape province in the South West has suffered from three consecutive years of below average precipitation, from 2015-2017 (WWA, 2018), see figure 1.3 for projected annual precipitation change.  This short term decrease in precipitation has led to a significantly reduced reserve of effective water availability. The uses of which range from domestic to agricultural to industrial activities (WFA, 2018) . One outcome that resulted from this 'extreme weather event' was the "Day Zero" event (Stoddard & Antonie, 2018), where water availability was decreasing at such a rate that reservers would completely deplete if significant action was not taken. This 'Day zero' led to extreme public policy measures to curtail water consumption in Cape Town. For example, a 87L limit on capita water consumption was imposed in attempts to stave off the cities water reserves running dry, later being updated to only a mere 50L per day per capita (Capetown.gov, 2018). The three consecutive years of considerably below average rainfall was argued as being a rare and "freak event" (wolski, 2018); however, we are seeing more "freak events" due to environmental change associated with climate change. Therefore, climate change is going to create more water crisis events into the future as the negative externalities associated with a warming world multiply.

Fig 1.3 Environmental change is leading to significant projected decreases in precipitation in areas such as South Africa and Niger - IPCC Forth Assessment Report (2014)

Whilst other factors such as the political context of Cape Town have arguably also led to the water insecurity in Cape Town, via the mismanagement of water resources for the wealthy; for instance swimming pool usage is of particular significance, environmental change via changing short term weather patterns were the main driving factor behind this severe water crisis in South Africa. Studies have shown that "climate change has significantly increased the likelihood of drought in South Africa by a factor of three" (WWA, 2018). This shows unequivocally that environmental change through climate change is one of the main factors affecting the physical availability and insecurity of water in Africa, in specific, in South Africa and Cape Town.

In part two of this blog I'm going to look at the ways in which environmental change have led to political and social water insecurity in Nigeria. Stay tuned for that in the coming days!