Why Water Security is a driver of change in Africa.
“We need to find new ways of investing in infrastructure and ways to run it better in water infrastructure.” Dr. Greg Mills, Director of The Brenthurst Foundation, Johannesburg.
Climate change is severely affecting the availability of water and its quality. Therefore it represents a direct challenge to health.
As the global climate changes, climate-related security risks are making existing political, social, and economic challenges even more complex. The 240 million people who live in the Horn of Africa are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, such as droughts and floods.
Water and health security have progressively been challenged primarily by pollution, waste, toxins and climate-change-related hazards and disasters. Water scarcity can lead to or exacerbate already existing civil unrest, Water scarcity can diminish agricultural production and reduce food security, and it can shrink agricultural production and reduce food security, worsen the spread of disease and can undermine economic development.
According to the United Nations, over the last century global water use has been increasing at twice the rate of world population growth. It is estimated that by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population may be facing water shortages.
Political fragility and transnational complexities make water governance a matter of regional high-level politics as well as geopolitical tensions in Africa. In short, sustainable water governance is critical for achieving resilient peace.
Across the globe, populations face the challenge of growing water scarcity. More than one-fifth of the world’s population -1.6 billion people live in areas that are suffering from water scarcity of some type.
In a new report published by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Jan Eliasson, former Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, stresses that in the Horn of Africa, although it is tempting to consider the management and development of water, agriculture, economy, and infrastructure as largely technical, this would “underestimate the highly political nature and strategic infrastructure.” He emphasise.
As a strategic resource for countries, water security is essential for the well-being of the population. However, it is a growing concern in Africa, and the current COVID-19 pandemic is an additional challenge for the area.
Simply put, without water there is no food. Global food and nutritional security require resilient agricultural systems, which, in turn, depend on reliable and sustainable supplies of freshwater, whether from rainfall or irrigation. It is an often-neglected dependency, and one that threatens to undermine our ability to meet our future food needs and maintain the ecosystems upon which all life depends.
#let’s conserve water. Let’s make Africa better.
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