Water and Environmental Change

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 be noted that the ITCZ

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 the video, an increase in the inte

As mentioned in my introductory post, there are differing human and environmental conditions across the continent of Africa. The variability of these conditions often influence or are influenced by water presence. I thought it would be interesting to get a better picture of the variability within Africa so I created a visual mind map:  Variability in Africa, a Mind Map  (Click on the map to see it in more detail) Citations:  A leman et al, 2016 ;  Almazroui et al, 2020 ;   Cartwright, 2015 ;    MacDonald et al, 2012 ;   Masih et al, 2014 ;   United Nations, 2015;  United Nations Environment Programme, 2010 For me, this mind map is a great way to picture how varied the continent is and also reminds me of how much needs to be considered when discussing environmental change and water in Africa. I also noticed how interconnected each branch is, for instance  the presence of a particular biome is influenced by precipitation and water availability which in turn can be influenced by physical

Hello and Welcome! In this blog I will be exploring the relationship between water and environmental change with a focus on the African continent. I believe that we humans are intrinsically linked to the physical environment and that our development as a species is reliant on this connection.  Water, especially freshwater, is now being shaped by humans more than ever before and the time we live in now is more increasingly being recognised as  'the age of humans'- the  Anthropocene .  A concept that puts the relationship between humans and the environment into perspective is The Doughnut of Social and Planetary Boundaries, developed by   Kate Raworth(2017) . This framework combines both the Earth's planetary boundaries  ( Rockstrom et al., 2009 )  and the  UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs ) .  The SDGs are the global standard that is to be achieved when looking at development, they outline the targets that need to be met to ensure the wellbeing of the planet and its