African Climes

Climate change is already affecting water availability, quality, quantity, access and security. Rising greenhouse concentrations are raising atmospheric temperatures and a hotter atmosphere has a higher capacity to absorb moisture. High temperatures result to increased evapotranspiration and this has two effects. First is that it dries up the areas over which water is evaporating, and it results to heavy rainstorms when this water distills as rain over other areas. Droughts and floods are common effects of climate change and they are predicted to increase globally as we surely inch towards the 1.5 degrees mark above preindustrial times. What this means is that water security - the state of having good quality water in abundance over short or long term durations - is directly impacted. Water security is needed in both natural ecosystems and the human world. Water quality is also determined by climate change as floodwaters can easily be contaminated by waste, poisoning fresh water so...

Water is essential for life. To start with, every person on the planet (about 8 billion of us) need drinking water to survive. Climate change, population growth and economic development are increasingly putting pressure on freshwater supply from which drinking water is obtained. Supplies are finite and climate change is changing the availability, access and quality of drinking water. Normally, a large portion of human society relies on rainfall which recharges lakes and rivers (surface water) and aquifers (groundwater), as well as glaciers and snow which provide water in hot months. Climate change has altered the entire water cycle. Higher temperatures mean more water is removed from the earth’s surface through evapotranspiration. A warmer atmosphere absorbs more water vapour while more moisture in the air increases its ability to hold heat and on and on it goes. When this vapour cools it distills as heavy and sudden rain. Lack of enough drinking water caused by droughts, heatwaves...

I saw a tweet the other day, which led to an article about how climate change induced shrinkage of Lake Chad has worsened the humanitarian crisis in the area.   T oday’s post is about climate change and security. In what ways does climate change interact with security issues? What are the security impacts of a sustained change in otherwise normal weather conditions?  C limate change has been said to be a threat multiplier. A threat multiplier is something that amplifies or makes a certain threat worse. It makes an already bad situation worse. It can act as a catalyst. E xtreme weather events worsen life conditions because they directly destroy livelihoods, property, and infrastructure. They negatively affect basic human needs. In  Puerto Rico power was knocked out in the entire country by Hurricane Maria. So much loss and destruction was occasioned by the hurricane that Puerto Rico has to build everything from scratch. This will  require a lot of re...