Water and Environmental Change in Africa

The new Netflix documentary " Brave Blue World - Racing to Solve our Water Crisis" explores the innovating technologies and sciences that have the potential  to help solving the world's  water crisis. It focuses its story line on multiple countries across Africa and discusses the innovative ways to provide safe water and sanitation facilities to the global population in a changing world. There is an emphasis on how environmental change is altering the way people access clean freshwater and many of the case studies discussed are in African nations.  The documentary aims to make the viewers question their beliefs on fresh water access by asking questions such as: is water a global issues? Is water a scarce resources? Is technology the solution to accessing clean water? The production team visited sites across the world and met with pioneers that are employing original techniques to solve water issues within their communities.  Beth Koigi, the founder of...

Cover image courtesy of: NCM In this blog, my aim will be to explore the relationship between water and environmental change on the African continent.  The focus of this blog will be about how deforestation and land use change is affecting the hydrological cycle in the world with a direct focus on Africa and the Congo Basin. Moreover the relationship between water and Africa will be explored on a large scale to understand why water has always been an issue in Africa and highlight how the changing environment is deepening these issues.  The reason I want to explore this subject of environmental change and water is that "Water is the primary medium through which people in Africa will experience climate change impacts" ( Taylor, 2001:1 ). Through this, my blog will dive into issues such as how deforestation affects the global hydrological cycle, land use change and extreme weather events to further understand how water is linked to economic, social and political issues in Africa...