African States Work To Share Nile Water

African States Work To Share Nile Water


By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
Mon Dec 25, 11:34 AM ET

ENTEBBE, Uganda - After three years of closed-door talks, nine nations are quietly edging toward a deal to jointly oversee the waters of the Nile, an agreement that has eluded lands along the great river since the days of the pharaohs.

An expected meeting of water ministers next month may produce a preliminary accord, officials say. "I hope we'll reach a very good result, but I cannot guarantee it," Egyptian negotiator Abdel Fattah Metawie said in Cairo, the likely site for the session.

Such a pact would right a colonial-era wrong that reserved the world's longest river for irrigation in Egypt and Sudan, effectively denying its waters to Uganda and other upriver countries.

Nature may be pushing political leaders toward compromise, said Gordon Mumbo of the Nile Basin Initiative, an umbrella office here for joint activities among the riverine nations.
Drought and heat have lowered the level of nearby Lake Victoria, the vast lake that spills an outlet stream northward to start the Nile's 4,000-mile meander — from this region of jungle and crocodiles to the camel-crossed deserts of Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.

"One of the greatest realizations is that the waters of the Nile of Lake Victoria are finite. They can be depleted," said Mumbo, a regional project manager. "The issue is how can people come together and best manage them today and tomorrow."

The long-term vision sees irrigated crops from central Africa feeding Egypt, for example, and Ethiopian dams supplying hydroelectric power across the region. Even millennia back, Egypt's pharaonic empire tried to push its rule south to ensure no one would block their Nile lifeline.

More at the link.
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The Nile River is regarded as the longest river on Earth (flowing for 4000 miles) with two main tributaries, the Blue Nile and the White Nile flowing apart until the meet near Khartoum in Sudan. The northern section of the river flows from Sudan into Egypt, which has depended on the waters of the Nile since ancient times when pharoahs flooded the river to provide fertile soil and in return would receive the crops grown. Nearly all of the historical sites of Ancient Egypt are also seen along the banks of the Nile River which ends in a delta that empties into the Mediterranean Sea.

The source of the Nile is considered to be Lake Victoria, which also has rivers that feed into it from Rwanda, and Tanzania. This is known as the White Nile. The Blue Nile flows over eight hundred miles to Khartoum where the Blue Nile and White Nile join to form the "Nile proper". 90% of the water of the Nile originates in Ethiopia, but only in summer, when the rains fall on the Ethiopian Plateau. Otherwise, the rivers feed it weakly.

More History of the Nile River

There has also been much heated debate throughout history as how to best maintain the waters of the Nile River in an equitable fashion.

The Nile River: Building or Stumbling Block?

Is there hope now? Well, as the article above makes clear, circumstances are such that those nations involved will have no choice, as UN experts say populations in the river basin may double by mid-century and that scenarios show global warming decreasing water flows in the Nile by up to 40 percent.

Nile Basin Initiative
The Nile Basin Initiative shares a vision that those resources can be managed without conflict. Let us hope that is a reality.

Also see my entry:

Water Levels In Lake Victoria Dropping Fast

2006-International Year Of The Desert

International Year of The Desert

Desertification, in the words of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, is one of the world’s most alarming processes of environmental degradation. The issue is often obscured, however, by a common misperception: that it’s a “natural” problem of advancing deserts in faraway developing countries. In fact, Desertification is about land degradation: the loss of the land’s biological productivity, caused by human-induced factors and climate change. It affects one third of the earth’s surface and over a billion people. Moreover, it has potentially devastating consequences in terms of social and economic costs.


Desertification and International Policy Imperative

This is information about the desertification conference held in Algiers that just ended today. I will be posting on the outcome when more information is known.

Battling The Desert In China

Main causes of drylands/deforestation

*climate change from the burning of fossil fuels causing less rainfall and over evaporation of the soil
* over population
* over grazing
* overusing groundwater
* deforestation/destroying trees
* the use of wood as domestic fuel
* growing water intensive crops (like rice)

These are all actions that can be reversed by humans taking the initiative, which will be the only course of action as this crisis worsens.

Better Farming Urged To Limit Deserts, Refugees

Better Farming Urged To Limit Deserts, Refugees

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) - Desertification could create millions of refugees unless governments promote less water-intensive farming and new jobs ranging from solar energy to eco-tourism, U.N. experts said on Thursday.

They said many of the world's drylands, home to 2 billion people and including many crop regions from Africa to Australia, were under threat of turning to dust, in part because of a global warming widely blamed on human use of fossil fuels.

"Bad policies are as much to blame for aggravating desertification as climate change," said Zafar Adeel, head of the U.N. University's Canada-based International Network on Water, Environment and Health.

About 200 experts from 25 nations will meet in Algiers on Dec. 17-19 to try to advise on new policies to slow the spread of deserts, which now cover about a quarter of the world's land surface from the Sahara to the Gobi.

Conference organiser Adeel told Reuters 10-20 percent of drylands are already degraded, affecting almost 200 million people. Some estimates say 135 million people are at risk of being driven from their homes by desertification.

"If millions of people with skills as farmers suddenly find themselves living in desertified areas ... they have no time to adapt and have to flee," Janos Bogardi, head of the U.N. University's Institute for Environment and Human Security in Bonn, told Reuters.

New policies could include helping people whose lands are at risk from erosion to plant more drought-resistant crops or turn to new activities such as eco-tourism, fish farming or production of solar energy.

CROPS, FERTILISERS

One idea was to encourage poor people in rural areas to stop traditional burning of crop residues and animal dung for fuel, shifting to wind or solar energy. Crop residues and dung could then be used as fertiliser, slowing desertification.

"We need to have innovative solutions," Adeel said, adding that governments would have to come up with more money.

Bogardi estimated the number of people driven from their homes mainly by environmental causes already exceeded the world's 20 million political refugees. It was hard to judge because there is no category of "environmental refugee".

Governments could consider investing in solar panels to let farmers sell power as an alternative livelihood in sunny, arid regions. Even parts of southern Spain were more suitable for producing solar power than for growing water-intensive crops.

Too often farmers tried to offset degradation of drylands by ever more costly irrigation rather than switching to less water-demanding activities.

"Crops transpire water. It's a very water-intensive process," Adeel said. He added that fish farming -- such as in Egypt, Pakistan or Israel -- was a way of producing food without such heavy water use.

And tourism could also earn money for people on the fringes of deserts, as long as it did not waste valuable water. "Tourists should not expect golf courses or green lawns but be happy seeing cactus gardens," Bogardi said.© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

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There needs to be a WORLDWIDE drought summit next year apart from the one mentioned in this article, in which bold and firm resolutions are set forth to help countries deal with a global drought that is now not just to be considered indigenous or sporadic.

Drought is now more pervasive, more sustained, more destructive, more costly, and more deadly than ever before. Along with the destruction of our oceans, drought is the most crucial environmental crisis we now face because it leads to lack of water and food shortages that millions of people depend on for life.

And climate change is oneof the chief causes for this desertification, along with wasteful corrupt practices regarding water management that must be changed with governments that do not take it upon themselves to push for conservation and more innovative farming management and methods being penalized for it.

And linked to that are the concerns raised in the article above surrounding bad policies regarding farming and the waste that comes from it. And as I have stated before, SOLAR energy is what will save Africa, and they need it NOW.

Other forms of irrigation include:

Drip irrigation

Irrigation in Africa:

Look at this picture from the link above. What is wrong with it?





This entry is a work in progress and more information will be added to it on an ongoing basis for the next week.

For reference:
World Water Council/Drought Preparedness

Satellites Weigh Africa's Water

Satellites Weigh Africa's Water


By Jonathan Amos Science reporter, BBC News, San Francisco

Photo above:
The Grace twins weigh the changes in the storage of water on land.

Africa has experienced a significant drying in the past three years, new satellite data reveals.
The volume of water lost from the land amounts to 334 cubic km, which is almost as much as all Africans have consumed over the period.

The data comes from Nasa spacecraft that can detect changes in gravity caused by water as it cycles between the sea, the atmosphere and the land.

Experts stress no firm conclusions should be drawn from the short study. Professor Jay Famiglietti from the University of California-Irvine said much longer times series were needed to detect real trends and any signal that might indicate a significant shift in climate. "There are natural climate variations, the natural ups and downs," he explained.

"Another big factor is human control of the water cycle - reservoir management, the storage of water on continents. "Groundwater mining leads to heavy depletions of water. Wetland drainage, river diversion projects - all of those factors contribute to these storage variations that we see and we'll be working on trying to sort those out over the next few years," he told the BBC.
More at the link.
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Water Levels In Lake Victoria Dropping Fast

Water Levels In African Lake Dropping fast

Excerpt:

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
Sat Dec 9, 1:12 PM ET

JINJA, Uganda - At Jinja pier the rusty red hull of a Lake Victoria freighter sat barely afloat in water just six feet deep — and dropping. "The scientists have to explain this," said ship's engineer Gabriel Maziku.

Across the bay, at a fish packing plant, fishermen had to wade ashore with their Nile perch in flat-bottomed boats, and heave the silvery catch up to a jetty that soon may be on dry land and out of reach entirely. Looking on, plant manager Ravee Ramanujam wondered about what's to come.

"Such a large body of water, dropping so fast," he said.

At 27,000 square miles, the size of Ireland, Victoria is the greatest of Africa's Great Lakes — the biggest freshwater body after Lake Superior. And it has dropped fast, at least six feet in the past three years, and by as much as a half-inch a day this year before November rains stabilized things.

The outflow through two hydroelectric dams at Jinja is part of the problem — a tiny part, says the Uganda government, or half the problem, say environmentalists. But much of what is happening to Victoria and other lakes across the heart of Africa is attributable to years of drought and rising temperatures, conditions that starve the lakes of inflowing water and evaporate more of the water they have.

An extreme example lies 1,500 miles northwest of here, deeper in the drought zone, where Lake Chad, once the world's sixth-largest, has shrunk to 2 percent of its 1960s size. And the African map abounds with other, less startling examples, from Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, getting half the inflow it once did, to the great Lake Tanganyika south of here, whose level dropped over five feet in five years.

"All these lakes are extremely sensitive to climate change," the U.N. Environment Program warned in a global water assessment two years ago.

Now, in a yet unpublished report obtained by The Associated Press, an international consulting firm advises the Ugandan government that supercomputer models of global-warming scenarios for Lake Victoria "raise alarming concerns" about its future and that of the Nile River, which begins its 4,100-mile northward journey here at Jinja.

The report, by U.S.-based Water Resources and Energy Management International, says rising temperatures may evaporate up to half the lake's normal inflow from rainfall and rivers, with "severe consequences for the lake and its ability to meet the region's water resources needs."

A further dramatic drop in Victoria's water levels might even turn off this spigot for the Nile, a lifeline for more than 100 million Egyptians, Sudanese and others.

"People talk about the snows of Kilimanjaro," said Aris P. Georgakakos, the study's chief author, speaking of that African mountain's melting glaciers. "We have something much bigger to worry about, and that's Lake Victoria."

Each troubled lake is a complex story.

Lake Chad's near-disappearance, for example, stems in part from overuse of its source waters for irrigation. Deforestation around Lake Victoria, shared by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, makes the area a less efficient rain "catchment" for the lake, and overfishing and pollution are damaging its $400-million-a-year fishing industry. Kenya's Rift Valley lakes, some just a few feet deep, have always fluctuated in size, even drying up with drought.

But African leaders say things are different this time, because long-term climate change may eclipse other factors.

"These cycles, when they've happened, they haven't happened under the circumstances pertaining now — the global warming, overpopulation, degradation," said Maria Mutagamba, Uganda's water and environment minister.

End of excerpt.
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Lake Victoria-Kenya

The Falling Waters Of Lake Victoria
Courtesy of NASA

Lake Victoria Project
Take a look at how the people in this region are caring for the ecosystems of the lake and involving children in this process.

UN Accuses Uganda Of Draining Lake Victoria
And now see how adults will continue to negate these good efforts:
Independent, The (London), Feb 9, 2006 by Tristan McConnell in Kampala

The United Nations has accused Uganda of draining Lake Victoria to maintain its electricity supplies, despite an impending environmental catastrophe as water levels in Africa's largest lake drop to their lowest in 80 years.

The water is three metres below its normal level, leaving the jetties where pleasure boats moor and the landing sites where fishermen sell their catch high above the water.

The falling water level is affecting 30 million people in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya whose livelihoods depend on the lake. As the waters recede silt and vegetation are encroaching on the lake and goats nibble the green shoots where fish once swam in the shallows. Sudan and Egypt, both of which rely on the river Nile, which runs out of Lake Victoria, for their water supply and for agricultural irrigation, will also be affected. In October last year the UN warned African lakes were the worst affected by climate changes.
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The need for education regarding climate change is crucial in Africa. And of course, related to that is accountability for water diverted away from people who need it. Dams only cause problems related to water flow and environmental damage, and in essence create the very gases we need to reign in to mitigate the droughts being experienced in almost 40% of this world. The people of this region need alternate ways to create electricity, such as solar power. It is IMPERATIVE in order to maintain equality in water distribution and to help ensure that levels do not go any lower.

How much more of this will have to be reported on before we get it? This is a global catastrophe in the making unless we act now in order to provide developing countries with alternate energy sources to lift pressure off of water resources! And the key to this really is overpopulation and education that seeks to address this crisis at the roots. When is the world going to tackle this on a level that truly addresses the underlying problems as a whole instead of just putting bandaids on it? And that includes the UN. We are making our planet unsustainable for human life. Shouldn't that be enough to know to move us?

Ten Years To Solve Water Crisis

Ten Years To Solve Water Crisis


Ten years to cure 'water crisis'

The plan advocates allowances for water use and meteringBritain's water systems are in crisis and the government has a decade to put things right, according to a coalition of conservation and angling groups.

They are setting out a 10-point plan to make UK water systems sustainable, including fair pricing, slashing waste and upgrading sewerage facilities.

People should have personal allowances and homes should be metered, they say. EU regulations require member nations to have plans for restoring natural watercourses in place by 2009.

The European Water Framework Directive prescribes that the ecology of rivers, lakes and wetlands should be restored by 2015.

For too long, we've taken water for granted

Fiona Reynolds, National Trust

"This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity," the coalition's report announces.

"With the Blueprint for Water we, a coalition of leading environmental organisations representing some six million people, are calling on the government to act now."

Going with the flow

It is perhaps unusual to find conservation groups such as the Wildlife Trusts, WWF and the RSPB in league with angling associations.

But on water, they find common arguments, namely that Britain should:

waste less water

keep rivers flowing and wetlands wet by barring damaging abstraction

price water fairly

stop pollutants entering watercourses and make polluters pay

upgrade sewerage and drainage systems to avoid fouling of human population centres and sensitive ecological areas

support water-friendly farming

restore and maintain rivers, wetlands and floodplains

"It's clear that adequate supplies of clean water are essential, not only for our lives but for the health of the habitats, species, landscapes and soils we depend on," said Fiona Reynolds, Director-General of the National Trust.
More at the link

Calculate your water usage here:

Water Calculator
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Are we hopefully, finally realizing just how precious our water is? We have time to fix this. We can, and we must. And those suggestions above do not just apply to Britain. ESPECIALLY in developing countries, people need EDUCATION and the tools necessary to harvest rainwater, effectively manage irrigation water, grow crops that are less water intensive that will not cause them economic hardship, and be given the truth about the effects of climate change so that they may better manage their lives to mitigate its effects such as drought, which is persistant, sustained, and deadly in areas of the world like Africa, Asia, and Australia.

This must be a global effort, and we must begin NOW. You can begin by making a personal inventory of your daily water usage and pledging to at least halve it within a year's time, making special observation of water you waste on doing things where your comsumption can effectively be minimized without jeoparding your own health and hygiene.

Do you really need to use all of that water to water a sidewalk? Or wash a car? Or fill a pool? Or "irrigate" your lawn? Become aware and become more responsible for what you use...you will not only save water and money, you WILL make a difference. And if you can, support good organizations like Water Partners International. They are doing good things to bring water to those who otherwise would not have it.

AND FIGHT PRIVITIZATION OF WATER, and please if you can help it, don't buy bottled water that costs more per gallon than gasoline when that money could go towards efforts to bring potable water to the over one BILLION people in this world who don't have it. EXPLOITATION is wasteful and it is killing people. It is time for that to end, and with the moral will, we can end it.

Thank you.