Water and Environmental Change

My previous post discussed the variability of precipitation and the effects of climate change causing an increase in the frequency and intensity of floods and droughts. To put the social impacts of this into perspective I will use Kenya, which is no stranger to floods and droughts having experienced both annually since the start of the millennium ( UNICEF, 2017 ),  as an example.  Agriculture is key to the Kenya's economy as it provides a large fraction of the GDP ( Marshall, 2011 ).  W ith a population of  47 million  (C ensus , 2019  ),  over half  work in agriculture and are therefore dependent on the climate - particularly with regards to rain-fed agriculture ( Murphy et al, 2017 ). Water scarcity is  a problem in Kenya, it  results from extreme weather, contaminated water sources, and increasing demand due to population growth  ( Marshall, 2011 ). This  negatively contributes to a whole host of socio-economic factors such ...

Reflecting upon the mind map from my post on variability in Africa, I wish to delve deeper into precipitation in Africa in terms of current variability and projected changes. Exploring the physical dynamics and characteristics of water sources allows the our relationship with water and the challenges that are often encountered to be understood.  Rainfall in Africa appears to have a latitudinal symmetry, with the greatest rainfall occurring in Central Africa which reduces as you move both north and south of the equator. This spatial  variation also occurs seasonally  as well which   has often been explained by the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) ( Ziegler et al, 2013) . The ITCZ forms at a region of low pressure near the equator where ascending Hadley cells meet resulting in rainfall in the tropics  (Suzuki, 2011) . The convergence of these trade winds happens seasonally, spreading over different areas at different times of the year (Barry, 2009) . It must...

I believe it is vital to understand the connection between water, environmental change and social factors such as those mentioned in the Doughnut of Social and Planetary Boundaries   (Raworth, 2017)   to gain a wholistic understanding of key development issues and the problems facing the planet in order for sustainable solutions to be implemented.  Considering my post on variability in Africa, I wanted to add further depth regarding the connection between environmental change such as climate change and social factors such as health. SDG 3 is to ensure good health and wellbeing for all and climate change can threatens to make achieving this goal even more difficult. In order to explain why I wanted to share the video below created by the World Health Organisation  which highlights the effects of climate change on Africa and its implications on health among other social factors such as food security.   Water is essential to human health and as seen in ...