With such
a high demand for water yet limited resources in Africa, inevitably conflicts
can occur over rights to TBAs. Wolf (1999) interestingly points out that claims
for water rights are usually founded upon hydrography (where the groundwater in
the aquifer originates from and what area of the aquifer is under a country's
territory), and chronology (for how long a country has been using the water).
The most
obvious problem associated with TBAs, is that of the upstream-downstream flow
of groundwater. If countries upstream are extracting large quantities of
groundwater, this can affect countries downstream who now have a lower amount
of water available to them. An example of this is the North-West Sahara aquifer
(Scheumann and Alker, 2009).
Another
problem that can occur is when the recharge area of an aquifer is beneath one
country, and it's flow and discharge area lies beneath another country. To add
another dimension to this, the use of the land above the recharging part of the
aquifer can have a significant impact on the aquifer's recharging abilities
(Scheumann and Alker, 2009). It therefore becomes something of a conundrum as
one country may well want to engage in deforestation of the land above the
aquifer and put the land to productive use, and in doing so they will directly
affect their neighbouring country's access to groundwater from that aquifer.
The last
problem I'll talk about today is human intervention relating to the use of
reservoirs. One key thing which must be noted is that groundwater is often
related to surface water. In this case, the use of reservoirs has decreased the
river's inflow and thus, diminished the aquifer's recharging conditions. This
can have detrimental effects on a number of countries who seek to extract
groundwater from the TBA. Furthermore, Scheumann and Alker (2009) also argue
that decreasing precipitation is also contributing to low levels of groundwater
compared to previous years - a likely effect of climate change.
References:
Scheumann, W. and Alker, M. (2009). Cooperation on
Africa's transboundary aquifers— conceptual
ideas. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 54(4), pp.793-802.
Wolf, A. (1999). Criteria for equitable allocations:
the heart of international water conflict. Natural
Resources Forum, 23(1), pp.3-30.
The blog remains rather shallow and you have yet to immerse yourself well within the literature in this thematic area. The posts are few - just 3 when at least 6 would be expected. The blogs also engage rather briefly and superficially with the literature. I strongly encourage you to focus over the last few weeks of term on making much more detailed and informed blogs based on the peer-reviewed literature and news or stories in the popular media. Also try to promote some exchanges on your blog perhaps by encouraging some classmates to comment on your blog and you return the favour.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great blog! Really well thought out. I especially like the direction you’ve taken with transboundary aquifers and the problems associated with them. The blog has developed well with great use of academic literature which really supports your arguments.
ReplyDeleteYou’ve begun to discuss the problems of transboundary aquifers. I’d like to see maybe some of the solutions that are being used to solve these problems. Better still, it might be really useful to give a real life example of a transboundary aquifer to add more colour to the picture!
Will definitely continue to read your blog and I look forward to seeing how it progresses!