Over the next couple of months, this blog will discuss the complex issues relating to transboundary water in Africa as well as explore possible solutions and management approaches. Africa’s population is rapidly expanding, thus the continents reliance on water, especially ground-water is great. Groundwater is of growing importance in Africa, as it can play a role in reducing poverty, and alleviating the stresses of rapid population growth and the threat of climate change (Scheumann and Alker 2009).
This first
post will briefly summarise and assess the article ‘Cooperation on Africa’s Transboundary aquifers- conceptual ideas’ (Scheumann
and Alker 2009). Ultimately the article argues that cooperation and management
between riparian nations is essential if the management and sustainability of transboundary
water from aquifer systems is to be a success. According to Scheumann and
Alker, understanding of transboundary aquifer systems is far less advanced than
the understanding of other transboundary water bodies such as rivers and lakes.
Despite acknowledging that
countries should be making use of existing transboundary water organisations,
more should have been discussed regarding the advantages of using already well
established political and communication networks between water sharing
countries.
Furthermore
the article focussed very heavily on the hydrogeological issues surrounding
transboundary water sharing including issues of defining boundaries of
groundwater resources. The importance of any political or economic difficulties
in sharing a transboundary aquifer system was
overlooked.
Overall, I
did mainly agree with the article, especially that each
transboundary aquifer system should be studied independently in order to assess
the impacts and possible management strategies and that aquifer systems should not
be placed into the 6 model types categorised by (Eckstein and Eckstein 2005). This
is because each aquifer system is located in its own setting with its own
unique circumstance and is influenced by different hydrogeological and
anthropogenic factors.
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