Water lot of opportunities!

This blog has given me the chance to explore how environmental change is affecting water and development across Africa. Predictions for environmental changes expect Africa’s hydrology to take a pretty big hit over the next few decades. This will add yet another obstacle to Africa’s continuous struggle to achieve the development it desires.

It’s easy to paint a negative picture of the situation:

Already, water supplies are declining near mountainous regions due to loss of the forest cover that intercepts cloud moisture, and glaciers are expected to disappear completely. The use of hydroelectric power – currently driving many SSA countries and their economies – is under threat due to falling river levels. Agricultural yields in SSA are diminishing due to ever-increasingly unpredictable weather patterns, particularly for small-scale farmers. In urban areas, more frequent and intense floods are damaging the already inadequate sanitation systems and polluting drinking-water infrastructure, advancing the spread of disease and further decreasing living standards for slum dwellers. Conflicts over water supplies are expected to increase on both a transboundary and regional scale.

But as the saying goes, ‘while the challenges are great, so are the opportunities’. This is where human intervention comes into play. Such interventions will be required on all scales – within local communities, regional governments, national governments, and across international bodies.

Governments can invest in reforestation programmes. Energy generation can be diversified. Water management can be more efficient. Urban sanitation infrastructure can be developed. Negotiations and agreements can be instituted to avoid water wars.

Farming methods can be completely transformed: the use of farming inputs can increase crop yields, more resilient crops can be introduced, and new water harvesting techniques can be implemented. And this year’s COP22 is just one example of how effective international cooperation can be by focusing discussions on Africa’s agriculture and water issues.

As I have highlighted previously, good governance and political stability is essential to achieve any of these ambitions. Many of these solutions also require access to capital, but this can be acquired through funding from NGOs, social enterprises, and payments from developed nations who owe heavy reparations for the climate change they have created.

I am confident that with the appropriate adaptations and international support, rather than us facing climate changes in Africa with trepidation, we will be watching Africa’s bright future unfold.

Localised water wars?

Whilst potential conflicts on an international scale can often be avoided through diplomatic negotiations and agreements, this is not the case for regional water wars, particularly in countries with already existing social, political or economic instability (Engelke and Sticklor 2015).

Regional conflicts often erupt between pastoralists and farmers; drought is depleting grazing areas for nomadic herders and so pastoralists are increasingly invading farmland (Taylor 2011). Such disputes occur in low-income nations where survival is dependent on water access, and the desperation of the situation means that the clashes flare up rapidly (Ashton 2002). In 2007, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon branded the conflict in Darfur the world’s first climate change conflict, stating that harsher droughts had kick-started war between farmers and pastoralists in the region (Notaras 2009).

Water shortages due to environmental change can trigger migration to regions with larger water supplies. Environmental migration can create conflict with the receiving population by increasing the strain on resources, especially in cases where there is tension between different ethnic communities (Reuveny 2007).

One region experiencing environmental migration is between the Omo River in Ethiopia and Lake Turkana in Kenya. There are 24 tribes reliant on the Omo River and the downstream Lake Turkana for their water supply. However, the Horn of Africa has experienced recurrent drought for the past 40 years, and the drought cycle has intensified from once every eight years to once every two to three years (Adano and Daudi 2012). Less rainfall, alongside the diversion of water for irrigation and dam projects, has caused the river to retreat. Lake Turkana receives 90% of its water from the Omo River, but a combination of rising temperatures and less rainfall has caused the lake to recede into Kenya. In the past, the tribes have used indigenous knowledge to adapt their agricultural practices and water usage to droughts, but the communities no longer understand the patterns of the seasons with the increasing frequency of drought conditions, and are struggling to adapt accordingly. Therefore in times of scarcity the Ethiopian tribes have followed the water into Kenya, and inter-tribal encounters that have ensued have caused the increase of conflict; the Turkana tribe are notorious for their extreme violence, attacking and killing anyone they find trespassing (Yale Environment 360 2010).

Lake Turkana, Kenya (Source: EVWind)

Another case of regional violence took place in Nigeria in 2014 between Fulani herdsmen – the largest semi-nomadic group in the world – and Tiv/Agatu farmers over grazing areas and water access (Gleick 2015). Military intervention was required to quell the fighting, and the conflict resulted in over 1,200 deaths. Rising temperatures and drought in Nigeria are forcing the Fulani herdsmen to roam further south and so they are increasingly clashing with the farming communities that they encounter. Furthermore, ethnic tensions between the Muslim Fulani herdsmen and Christian agricultural communities intensify the conflict (Adams 2016). Such conflicts have had knock-on effects on Nigeria’s national development by discouraging foreign investment and thwarting trade (Mikailu 2016).

A Fulani herdsman, Nigeria (Source: BBC)

What potential solutions are there to preventing regional conflicts?

Once again, we come back to the importance of good governance. There is a close link between inadequate law enforcement of resource allocation, and the incidence of conflict, in countries with weak governance (Adano and Daudi 2012). Therefore, governments need to be more proactive in providing clear regulations for water resource use and enforcing them effectively (Balch 2014). Ideally, when creating these regulations, civil society stakeholders should be involved in the decision-making process, as local society groups often have a better understanding of the facts on the ground than politicians. When communities feel that they have been given a voice, it’s more likely that peaceful negotiations can take place between societal groups. Additionally, stakeholder participation creates a sense of ownership over the outcomes, making the policies easier to enforce (Adano and Daudi 2012).

In situations when the actions of national governments alone are not good enough, international intervention is required, whether through negotiations or the provision of aid to communities lacking food. However it is important that the response is appropriate in serving the needs of the recipients. For example, in response to the case of the Omo River and Lake Turkana dispute, the international community sent food aid; surely this generous contribution would hugely benefit those suffering food shortages. But what food did they send? Maize, which requires water to cook: highly impractical for a community desperately lacking water.

Moreover, alongside a humanitarian response, a long-term development approach to tackle the problems of drought faced by local communities is essential to prevent conflict, such as through investment in drought-resilient crops or water-harvesting technologies (Yale Environment 360 2010).

Overall, to effectively and lastingly prevent regional disputes, local communities need to feel that they are being listened to and are provided with truly beneficial solutions.

Water wars?

Water has been nicknamed ‘blue gold’ and ‘oil of the 21^st century’ which emphasises its ever-increasing rarity and the growing recognition of its importance. However, unlike oil, water has no substitute, which makes it all the more valuable – particularly since its essential not only for day-to-day survival but for sustaining manufacturing and energy generation (Engelke and Sticklor 2015).

Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General, stated in his Millennium Report that climate change ‘may increase social and political tensions in unpredictable but potentially dangerous ways’ (Annan 2000: 44). So far we have seen that many African regions face a future of increasing variability in rainfall patterns and prolonged droughts, and these climatic effects, combined with growing populations and a desire for development, create a situation of growing demand for a declining water supply. Therefore it seems inevitable that one way Annan’s warning will unfold is through conflicts over water resources across Africa: so-called ‘water wars’ (Gleick 1993). These conflicts can occur at different scales, such as localised regional clashes at the village level, intra-national disputes, and transboundary international disagreements (Gleick 1993); this blog post will specifically explore transboundary disputes.

Countries can be fiercely protective of their water supplies, particularly if they support industries that are sustaining the economy, and debates over water are often emotionally charged (Ashton 2002). Africa is considered particularly vulnerable to a rise in conflicts due to its unstable political history and past wars over ethnic tensions and natural resources (Adano and Daudi 2012). A legacy of African colonialism is that national borders were assigned arbitrarily, creating a situation where large water bodies are shared between a number of countries: 90% of Africa’s freshwater resources are found in rivers and lakes shared between at least two countries (Goulden et al. 2009). This results in frequent struggles over access to water supplies, and tensions are especially high when upstream river users exploit water resources without consideration for the downstream users (Ashton 2002).

One site of transboundary water tensions is the Nile, which flows through eight North African arid countries, and is predicted to have a reduced flow in the second half of the century due to less rainfall and higher evaporation rates (Beyene et al. 2010). It provides 97% of Egypt’s water supply, but upstream use of the Nile leaves Egypt in a vulnerable position. Egypt believes it has historic rights to the Nile and has tried to cement this through treaties in 1929 and 1959 that ensure it has access to 87% of the river flow as well as the power to reject proposed upstream projects. However, in 2010, other Nile Basin countries signed a deal allowing them to bypass Egypt’s approval (The Guardian 2015).

The Nile River Basin (Source: World Bank)

To put this defiance into practice, Ethiopia is currently constructing the Grand Renaissance dam across the Blue Nile, which has caused huge tensions with Egypt, as Egypt has claimed that the dam will severely lower the level of the Nile and reduce Egypt’s water supply by over 10bn kilolitres. In a fiery speech in 2013, the Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi vowed to ‘defend each drop of Nile water with our blood’ – a clearly violent discourse (Kingsley 2013).

Another example of a transboundary water conflict is the case of the Muene River, which spans Mozambique and Zimbabwe. A dumpsite adjacent to the Zimbabwean stretch of the river releases chemicals into the water body, and this has caused cholera outbreaks and the death of the fish population downstream at the Chicamba dam in Mozambique. Climate change has increased the persistence of drought in the region, and the ongoing drought has worsened the issue as lower river levels mean a higher concentration of pollutants in the available water. These issues are often left unresolved because there is an inefficient governance framework to effectively deal with the problem – if the issue is reported to the South African Development Community (SADC) secretariat, the most the SADC will do is recommend that the damaging activity should stop, but this is not enforced (Kings 2016).

Chicamba dam, Mozambique (Source: Hydrokast)

However, the notion of an increase in ‘water wars’ has been thought of by many as simplistic, because in reality countries agree to cooperate through agreements and treaties, rather than resorting to violence (Niasse 2005). There is also a risk that claims of climate conflicts promote ‘climate reductionism’ and relinquishes governments of their responsibility to prevent these problems (Kuo 2016).

So what role can governments play?

Transboundary water conflicts can be bypassed with greater cooperation between water users through the creation of frameworks and agreements, such as the 1991 Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, which includes principles of ‘equitable utilisation’ and the ‘prevention of significant harm to other states’ to ensure that no country benefits at the expense of another user (Gleick 1993). In addition, collaboration between nations is beneficial, whether this is to explore techniques on how water can be managed more sustainably, or to share climatic and hydrological data to increase transparency (Niasse 2005).

Furthermore, political stability makes transboundary water wars less likely; you only need to look to the Danube basin in Europe to see how 19 countries have been able to peacefully share the water resource due to their stable democratic governments (Chang 2013). Of course, other factors play a role, such as having access to funding and knowledge for more advanced water management technologies which is limited in many African nations, but a stable government is a necessity.

Increased water stress does have the potential to trigger more international disputes – but it can also provide an opportunity for greater unity, by forcing countries to work together to achieve maximum benefits for all. This was the case with the Lake Chad Basin: issues over water management actually boosted cooperation between Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon (Adams 2016). The ultimate goal, as Ashton (2002) wrote so neatly, is for water management strategies to ‘be guided by the values of sustainability, equity, mutual cooperation, and the attainment of optimal benefit for society’.