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Welcome!

Hi there! My name is Briony and I’m a 3rd Year Environmental Geoscience student at UCL- welcome to my blog centring around the theme of water and environmental change in Africa. I plan to utilise this blog to discuss how environmental change, on a local and continental scale, is influencing the hydrological cycle of Africa and, subsequently, its population. I aim to make posts discussing the science involved in the climate system, historical and contemporary issues that environmental change has brought across the continent and specific case studies.

The Earth’s climate is by nature a dynamic and ever-altering system. Communities around the world have successfully been adapting to environmental change for generations, however, the timescale on which the current climate crisis is occurring no longer makes adaption as easy. The reason why discussing these changes is so vital, and why I’ve chosen environmental change as the theme for this blog, is that it impacts every aspect of human life.

The list of ways that environmental change, and specifically it’s impacts on water, affect society is endless: population, land use, public health, and social inequality are just a few factors involved. Africa is set to undergo drastic environmental change as an impact of the climate crisis, which not only makes it interesting to examine from a scientific perspective but as a home to over a billion people, makes it vital to understand and begin to mitigate the societal impacts.

My next post will feature a summary of some of the key concepts I’m going to be throwing around on this blog so keep your eyes peeled and I’ll see you next time!

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Popular posts from this blog

The Final Blog

  The ways in which environmental change has impacted and will further impact water in Africa are far too great to be contained within this blog and there are countless other examples I could have included. Environmental change is not going anywhere. The pressure and legislation simply isn’t there to prevent us from exceeding the 1.5 o C temperature rise that the Paris agreement sought to keep us under. There will continue to be a global, environmental response to the increasing temperature, but management is key to mitigating its impact on human populations. The majority of African countries are often quoted as having a high vulnerability and low adaptability to climate change. However, I’d argue that many African people have been successfully adapting to changing environmental conditions for millennia, with incredibly complex agricultural systems, pastoral and hydrological systems driven by the seasonal variability in rainfall. The African Climate Report in 2005 discussed how ...

COP27: Looking For Positives.

Managing the effects of climate change on the hydrological cycle has come up a few times in this blog and we’ve discussed both community-led, grassroots initiatives as well as transnational management schemes. One of the largest global discussions of climate change and policy is COP which held its 27 th meeting (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt in November of this year. There were hopes that the decision to hold the meeting in Africa would indicate a discussion focused on the climate injustice faced by African nations and other low-income countries, who are generally the least responsible for climate change but experience its largest impacts. UCL professors and lecturers Richard Taylor, Mark Maslin, Priti Parikh and Simon Chin-Yee were in attendance at COP27 and wrote this article which describes COP27 as a failure and is more than worth a read for a broader explanation of the shortcomings at this COP. Though I agree majorly with the article and believe the discussions at COP27 l...

Lake Chad: Assessing Current Management Strategies.

To be truly effective, water management should be conducted considering the basin as a whole. Changes made in one part of the system will have huge impacts on the immediate upstream and downstream areas, but effects will be felt basin-wide. However, it is so often the case, and Lake Chad is no exception, that a river basin is divided amongst different authorities and management decisions are not made holistically. In an effort to tackle this and make water management decisions for Lake Chad on a regional scale, the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) was formed in 1964, joining together the states of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and Chad (and more recently the Central Africa Republic and Libya). Many of their past and ongoing projects have a broad focus on strengthening the resilience of the basin system but at the core of their activities is the aim to increase socio-economic security and reduce conflict for the 38 million who live in the basin. However, the LCBC is not recognised as a ...