Skip to main content

Is it possible to effectively manage transboundary aquifers?

Hello! Today’s post will look at the cooperation on Africa’s transboundary groundwater resources and aquifers. 

‘Many of Africa’s groundwater resources are stored in approximately 40 transboundary aquifer systems’ (Scheumann & Alker, 2009).  Groundwater resources in the past may have been conventionally only used for minimal water use but as the demand for water increases the need for better transboundary aquifer management also increases (Altchenko and Villholth, 2013). There is also increasing shortages and changing quality seen in surface water, thus many turn to groundwater resources to keep up with demands from a rapidly growing population and to keep the agricultural sector afloat in Africa. However, this has led to the over-pumping of these aquifers which mean possibilities of some countries not having enough water available for themselves and risks of conflicts arising between these transboundary countries (Hayton and Utton, 1989). 


Locals in Africa measuring vibrations from handpumps to work out the depth of groundwater

Scheumann and Alker (2009) in their paper explain that cooperation on Africa’s rivers and lakes that cross through several borders are more well-managed than on Africa’s transboundary aquifer systems, which says a lot since with the example of the Nile Basin in my previous blogposts we have seen how cooperation on that transboundary river basin has created its own share of problems. The added negative impact of trying to share out and manage groundwater resources is that the risk of overexploitation and over-extraction are not easily realised in groundwater resources as they are on surface water resources. The nature of trying to cooperate and manage groundwater resources also means that there are many complicated issues and uncertainties associated with time lags of recharge areas, the different characteristics of discharge and flow and the quality of water being affected by pollution (Scheumann and Alker, 2009). Further, it wasn’t until 2004 when the first transboundary aquifer in Africa was identified and mapped, before that knowledge on where these transboundary aquifers were located was very limited (Altchenko and Villholth, 2013). This of course made the management of such groundwater aquifers even more difficult, but with a better sense of where these aquifers are located today, it should not be as difficult to manage such resources now. However, even if governments are now equipped with better planning and monitoring systems, there are other problems such as the impossible nature to accurately measure the amount of water each country is utilising and if it the right amount in terms of avoiding over-exploitation (Scheumann and Alker, 2009). 

It’s vital that aquifers, rivers and lakes in Africa are all effectively managed not only to guarantee water security for all those that need it but also for the long-term sustainable development as a continent (Altchenko and Villholth, 2013). However, the question remains whether it is ever possible for Africa to reach a stage where it can effectively manage and cooperate on groundwater resources. Groundwater aquifers just constrained within one country has challenges itself in terms of extraction and overexploitation, groundwater aquifers that transcend several borders makes these challenges even more difficult to overcome. There’s also an issue to consider on who should be responsible for the management of such groundwater resources, again the politics surrounding such issues can be much disputed, but the best approach is one that is a blended mix of both top down and bottom-up approaches. Governments and institutions will need to make an effort and leverage their resources to provide countries with information on the mapping of aquifers and monitoring systems equally, and then allow local participatory development schemes to manage and find a solution amongst themselves, with stakeholders overseeing this (Altchenko and Villholth, 2013).  Of course we cannot rely on hydropolitics being universally same across all transboundary countries in Africa, and will need to accept that the relationships between each country vary, and this will first need to be considered before coming to a solution that works for all (Giordano et al, 2003). 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cooperation in the Eastern Nile Basin ‘beyond the river’

As my last blog post discussed the political grievances between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), this post will look further into how political cooperation between the Eastern Nile countries may not be as clear cut as first imagined.  In fact, economic cooperation between Ethiopia and Sudan, despite their failure to find common ground on water cooperation has been thriving in the last 10 years (Tawfik, 2019) . With the backdrop of the signing of the Declaration of Principles (DoP) on the GERD in 2015, there was renewed hope among everyone in the 3 Eastern Nile countries that cooperation on not just water, but all other resources rooted in the water sector such as food, energy and trade would be progressive too (Tawfik, 2019). However, is it possible for that to happen when even the fundamental resource that is contained in the other resources, water, is so difficult to come to an agreement on itself?  Rawia Tawfik in her article explains
2 comments
Read more

Introduction into Water and Politics in Africa

  Welcome to my Blog! The theme I have chosen to base my blog posts around are water and politics. The supply of water wherever in the world is almost certainly entangled in some sort of political issues and conflict. In order for there to be consistency and stability in water and the availability of it, there has to be political stability as well. The two, it could be argued are dependent on each other in order to function sustainably. In Africa, across the 900 million inhabitants the continent is home to, the issue of water availability and access is a persistent problem in some countries. Problems in the past and presently range from the well-known dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the well-provisioned development of water from the River Nile, to local political issues in Port Harcourt in Nigeria. Transboundary issues over water resources, whether this is surface water or even groundwater are one of the biggest causes of conflict in Africa.  The continent of Africa heavily rel
2 comments
Read more

Day Zero - new normal for governments in Africa?

‘Day Zero’ and the possibility of it taking place was bound to bring up many questions, some of which remain unanswered. However, the main question will be why such an event was so close to taking place and what must be done so the possibility of it actually happening in the future can be avoided.  Since droughts ravaged the country a woman in Cape Town has started collecting rainwater to fill her swimming pool rather than relying on the state's water supply It’s easy to blame climate change for environmental consequences such as droughts and the reality of regular outbreaks of water crisis. However, in the case of 'Day Zero' climate change was not entirely to blame and it was actually the failure of local officials and the government as a whole for refusing to take responsibility to plan and mitigate for such droughts when the resources for doing so was widely available. This short film by the Cape Town Drought Response Learning Initiative highlights how this was a ‘gover
2 comments
Read more