Is Africa worse off than the rest of the world?

Hello!

This week I want to explore the effects of climate change on water resources and whether or not Africa is worse off than other regions in the world. Last week's post about water availability largely focused on Africa, but today I'll be looking explicitly at comparing different regions. One of the reasons I've decided to do this is the recent article from NASA that has people everywhere discussing climate change impacts, as their study indicates that Antarctic ice (in East Antarctica) is in fact growing, not shrinking. What irked me the most was the rush of climate deniers (is there a type of person worse than this to a geographer?!) jumping in to exclaim that "global warming isn't real" or that it's a hoax. This reaction exemplifies the ignorance of those who don't understand how complex climate change is, and how "global warming" is an inappropriate phrase to use to describe it. While Earth may be warming on average, the changes occurring are not equally or evenly distributed and this is what I'll be exploring.

Let's start with the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report, particularly it's chapter Climate Phenomena and their Relevance for Future Regional Climate Change. This chapter begins with an emphasis that "regional climates are the complex result of processes that vary strongly with location and so respond differently to changes in global-scale influences". The chapter explores various phenomena that could affect climate variability, such as monsoon systems and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, and specifies the modelled changes by different regions. A crucial reason why climate change does not affect each region equally is due to these phenomena, and the influencing strength of the phenomena. For example, the North Atlantic Oscillation is known to have a high influence on the Arctic region, but is not relevant as an influencing phenomena on Africa.

The report therefore states that Africa is very likely to experience warming. Within Africa they examine regions such as the Sahara, and conclude that the Sahara is very likely to remain dry. In contrast, Western Africa yielded low confidence results for drying and wetting and therefore has a more uncertain future. Additionally, the models they used had the ability to capture the effect of monsoonal behaviour and therefore have a medium confidence in projections of small delays in the rainy season with an increase at the end of the season. For Eastern Africa, there was a medium confidence in projections of little change in mean precipitation. The report shows the complexity of climate variability, even within regions, and therefore consequences could vary hugely.

Another huge factor that impacts whether Africa will be worse off in terms of meeting water demands is how vulnerable they are to change. The Climate Change Vulnerability Index for 2015 looks at the sensitivity of populations, the physical exposure of countries, and governmental capacity to adapt to climate change over the next 30 year, in order to determine vulnerability. Out of the top 10 countries at risk, 7 are in Africa. Verisk Maplecroft, creator of the index, emphasise that a unifying characteristic of the most vulnerable countries is the dependence on agriculture, which is affected by temperature, weather patterns and of course water resources.

Social factors also play a large role, particularly governance and urbanisation, which is so rapid in parts of Africa that it is outpacing public service provisions. The UN World Water Development Report 2015 emphasises that the context of Africa's water challenges is unique as not only is rainfall-dependent agriculture "the backbone of African economies", but demand for water for food, health and energy is growing due to population growth that is not seen at such high levels elsewhere in the world. The UN stress that regional cooperation of transboundary water resources, which relies on good management.

Just to demonstrate this point further, some more different maps showing water risk (based on purely physical factors) show that, as a region, Africa is no more worse off than the Middle East, or on average, North America. A report by Growing Blue (2011) indicates the many different ways to look at sustainability of water through different maps, such as Population and Regional Water Stress, or Groundwater Withdrawal as a Percentage of Recharge, or Net Virtual-Water Import Due to Trade in Industrial Goods.

To conclude, yes Africa is likely to be worse off in terms of having sustainable water, than the rest of the world. But this isn't solely due to the physical limitations of climate change, but rather the combination of climate change with socio-economic and political circumstances that already put Africa at a disadvantage. The pressure is also on Africa to develop economically in a sustainable way to prevent contributing to climate change as other nations have while developing, which could prove to be tricky in the face of extreme climate changes.