Water scarcity, especially a scarcity of freshwater, is an increasingly disconcerting international issue, especially in Africa. This problem is caused by both natural and anthropological. Scientists primarily fault humans for the trends that are currently taking place, especially in developing areas on the African continent. Population growth, buttressed by unsustainable anthropological activities such as the pollution of freshwater sources as well as environmental exploitation are often viewed as the primary culprits. Demographic shifts including an exponential population growth demands that people use more water for food, the production of commodities, sanitation, different dietary needs, and other domestic uses within the context of modernity such as hydro-energy. Combined with increasing population density, global warming, which has merely exacerbated global inequalities, has combined with technological advancements and economic resources and resulted in a dystopia. Such activities have spawned a scarcity of water in areas such as sub-Sahara Africa, which is one of the most exploited areas in which the available water is shrinking at an exponential rate. Scientists have estimated that seventeen countries in the African region will, by the year 2025, have an annual water availability of one thousand metes per year. Water scarcity indeed has become a quotidian problem that has been attributed to commencing violent reactions from populations that suffer from it due to the negative affects of water scarcity. As such, water scarcity has emerged as one of the most critical issues in the contemporary world and functions as a barometer for the forging of political relationships between the developing and the developed worlds.
Within scholarly circles, the end of the Cold War during the twentieth century from a global perspective marked the inception of the “(re)emergence of the so-called water discourse as a distinct and highly topical field of practical and scholarly concern” (du Plessis 9). Water scarcity indeed induces a level of politically and socially-motivated violence on a regular basis due to the environmental necessity of water within functioning and healthy societies (Gleditsch et al. 361). The causal nexus between interstate conflict and water scarcity underscores how water rather than oil presents the natural resource and necessity in the future that poses the greatest threat to social cohesions and threatens to tear struggling societies asunder. Ismail Seageldin, the vice president for the World Bank’s Environmentally Sustainable Development, promulgated that water rather oil would by the underlying cause for wars over the next one hundred years. The development of hydro politics has emerged as a formative feature of the national security agenda for a litany of countries including Israel, Egypt, and other countries in the Arab world. Although the field of water studies is quite expansive, exploring the field of research within the African context at the interstate level serves as a microcosm for water scarcity throughout the world.
The diffusion of water discourses has fomented the academic and intellectual curiosity of many regarding how water scarcity at the interstate level has been studied within scientific and academic epistemologies. Macro comparative studies, case studies, historical inquiries, and other forms of academic research has spawned a litany of ironic and often contrasting conclusions regarding water scarcity from theoretical and methodological perspectives. A general consensus has been reached that is relevant to any intellectual analysis of the water scarcity problem: water scarcity around the world is exponentially increasing and will have herculean effects in the near future if it is not addressed. Moreover, they had generally concluded that the notion of immanent water wars will never materialize. This conclusion however was derived from the reality that violent conflicts and armed violence have occurred at the interstate level over water in conjunction with other root causes. As such, exponentially increasing water scarcity has emerged as an independent variable that will determine certain outcomes in the future, which include but are not exclusive to cooperation, conflict, of the coexistence of both within social and political contexts. Scholarly studies have revealed how rising levels of water scarcity within national and international contexts pose the potential to spawn explosive and violent conflicts.
Climate change has largely been blamed for water scarcity within contemporary standards. Shifting patterns of rainfall have directly affected agricultural practices, which has reduced food security, decreased the amount of fish resources in lakes due to escalating temperature levels, caused paradigm shifts in diseases such as yellow fever and malaria that are vector borne, caused rising sea levels, worsened water security, and enhanced water stress in areas that are demarked by endemic and chronic poverty. Africa depends on agriculture produced by predictable rainfall patterns, which is why water scarcity directly impacts diffuse poverty levels that have cause violent disruptions and tensions over water,
According to various scholars studying water scarcity and water resource management, the management of water resources has traversed four different approaches or dominant paradigms over the past two centuries. Currently, a fifth paradigm has been deployed, according to T. Allan. These paradigms, according to Allan, are as follows: pre-modern, industrial modern, late modern or green, late modern economic, and currently, late modern institutional and political. This fifth paradigm is emblematic of the practices, policies, and discourses articulated by the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), which has emerged as a contentious departure from traditional water discourses regarding the way that water resources should be managed around the globe (Allan 11). IWRM is considered a holistic approach to water management that deploys certain practices predicated on a diffuse range of principles that addresses the fundamental resource of water in all of its stages and forms in order to best manage and sustain it for all consumers and users. According to the National Water Resources Strategy in South Africa during 2004, “Freshwater is a complex ecological system tat has a number of dimensions. Surface water, groundwater, quantity and quality are all linked in a continuous cycle-the hydrological cycle—of rainfall, runoff from the land, infiltration into the ground, and evaporation from the surface back into the atmosphere. Each component may influence the other components and each must therefore be managed” (DWAF, as cited in Noemdoe et al. 771). Different renderings of water in all of its form starkly deviate from past approaches to water management which were mainly focused on both storing and diverting surface water resources—which constituted the second paradigm discussed by era when dam building was one of the main activities within water resource management—which underscores both the institutional and political facets of water resource management and explains why practice have hitherto been “unsustainable, inefficient, and inequitable” (772).
Noemdoe et al. conducted a comprehensive case study of the rural community in South African known as Genadendal Village, which spans 4820 hectares of land in a small municipality located near Cape Town, South Africa at the foot of the Riviersonderend Mountains. Often referred to as the “valley of the grace,” Genadendal Village and its denizens mainly rely on surface water taken from a litany of nearby rivers and streets in the Baviannskloof and Riviersondered areas. While the majority of the surface water is taken from local water streams, the denizens of the rural community also retain collective access to a particular pumping allocation from the Theewaterskloof Irrigation schemata for a fixed rate per day (Noemdoe et al. 772). Considerations of the high-value, fertile, irrigable land and agricultural areas were also taken into consideration of this scientific study. The authors concluded that perceived water scarcity in the region is based on false pretenses. As such, the management of water resources in the region has gone through three sequential phases with regards to the infrastructure, institutional and social responses to the problem. A dialogue between the denizens and the stakeholders must remain in order to create a consensus at the local level with regards to how water resources are allotted and utilized within the local community (777). Such local approaches to water resources management has emerged as the primary mode of combating the problem of water scarcity in areas such as South Africa.
Scholars underscore the necessity for the masses to fully comprehend the relative notion of water scarcity in order for the problem to be adequately addressed at both the local and interstate levels. Despite popular perceptions that South Africa is barren, rural communities such as Genadendal Village are endowed with certain natural resources that remain untapped and thus contribute to the perception of water scarcity living in rural villages as well as of scholars studying the problem of global water depletion. Genadendal community has invested in various feasibility studies on water scarcity due to its chronic poverty despite the fact that it is well endowed with natural resources and a favorable economic climate within a legislative and policy environment that is not rigid (Noemdoe et al. 777). Such observations illuminate the social dimensions of the concept of water scarcity, which is gleaned from the conclusion that transcending the problem of seasonal water scarcity necessitates both political and economic interventions as much as if not more than the construction of infrastructural facilitators such as damns and other hydroelectric facilities (778). Unfortunately, scholars and stakeholders alike have rendered the issue of water scarcity as based on notions about whether there is a sufficient supply of water or not. In order for water to rectify chronic poverty in African regions, the discourse on water in Africa must change and focus on the constructive nature of water scarcity that has indeed been manufactured rather than proven. Sub-Saharan African regions lack the social capital and agency within the global community-especially at the political level—to manage water effectively.
According to various global water shortage initiatives, access to clean water vastly improves many necessary arenas in contemporary life in Africa. Education is enhanced because when students do not have to spend their days searching for and gathering water, as they have ample time to attend class and devote to studying. Access to safe and sanitary latrines also enables African girls to stay in school throughout their adolescence and teenage years. Additionally, access to safe water directly results in greater food security because there is far less crop loss. Moreover, schools retain the ability to feed its students by growing crops on student-run gardens, which greatly reduces food costs. Safe water also enhances human health because it leads to more sanitary conditions and clean hands. Time is often loss when sickness is prevalent, so the reduction of water-borne illnesses enables people to attend school and work more, which facilitates their efforts of supporting themselves and “lifting themselves out of poverty,” a notion that is in line with the self-help discourses so prevalent in the developed world today (“Global Water Shortage”). Ultimately, access to clean water breaks the cycle of poverty that has pervaded Africa for centuries, as it allows burgeoning communities to grow and thrive. The dry ecology that characterizes sub-Saharan Africa renders it naturally difficult to find and gather water. In some areas, there is merely a critical need to tap into ground water sources in order to sustain life in the region. As such, various initiatives and non-profit organizations have developed in order to assist in providing people living in those areas access to clear water who would suffer without it.
Interestingly, water discourses range in an idiosyncratic fashion according to the scholars involved in their creation. The concept of water scarcity itself has indeed emerged as a relative concept, which is underscored in the case of South Africa as one of the primary locales that faces the possibility of severe water scarcity in the near future (Noemdoe et al. 771). According to African scholars who live in South Africa, “water resources management regime has shifted from focusing almost exclusively on augmenting supply to one where ensuring access, equity, and sustainability are an integral part of the process” (771). As such, perceptions of water scarcity are critical, especially in the rural communities of South Africa because of the nexus between poverty and access to an adequate and safe water supply for drinking and food preparation.
The World Health organization (WHO) as well as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have taken great efforts to define the problem of water scarcity in Africa and the need to ensure that Africans have access to safe drinking water. Statistics gathered in 2006 revealed that although over thirty percent of nations around the globe suffered from the depletion of clean water, sub-Saharan Africa yielded the greatest number of local communities and nations that were stressed for clean water resources. Scholars approximated that over three hundred million people living in these regions were subject to water scarcity. In 2012, scholars and scientists gathered as a conference on the issues and challenges presented by water scarcity in Africa and estimated that within the next two decades, over two hundred and fifty million people living in areas marred by water scarcity will be displaced and/or forced to live in conditions that are rendered unlivable by contemporary standards (“Conference on Water Scarcity in Africa”). Developing nations such as those located in Africa in conjunction with global warming and other demographic trends have strained diplomatic relations between countries at the micro and macro levels. Countries have in the past attempted to resolve disputes over water through diplomacy and negotiation, However, many scholars point to increasing aggression and strain over access to clean water, which portends an escalation of violence at the interstate level. Indeed, Africa has historically and remains susceptible to the potential for national conflicts over water, which has been separated into four distinct regions: Volta, Nile, Niger, and Zambezi regional basis. All of these rivers run through regions and have in the parts spared various episodes of unrest and national conflicts.
Clean and safe drinking water today is scarce, as nearly one billion people who reside in the developing Third World lack access to a reliable water source. However, those living in the United States and other First World countries take clean and safe drinking water for granted, which is evident in the high rates of people purchasing water in small bottles for a lot of money. Although it sounds cliché, water forms the basis of human life, yet people around the globe continue to spend hours on end searching for it just to survive. Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the areas in which the global water shortage is the most poignant, as time is spent and lost father and searching for water, moreover, waterborne diseases have curtailed the potential and capacity of the people who live in the area, as sickness spawns adverse consequence including stunted economic development. Such unnecessary suffering yielded by water scarcity must be ended with the help of the First World immediately.
Works Cited
Allan, T. “IWRM/IWRAM: a new sanctioned discourse?” SOAS Water Issues Study Group, School of Oriental andAfrican Studies/Kings College University of London, 2003.
Du Plessis, A. “Charting the Course of Water Discourse Through the Fog of International Relations Theory,” in H. Solomon and T. Anthony, Water Wars: Enduring Myth or Impending Reality, Africa Dialogue Monograph Series No. 2 (9-34). Durban: Creda Communications, 2000. Print.
Gleditsch, N.P., Furloong, K., Hegre, H., Lacina, B., and T. Owen. “Conflicts Over Shared Rivers: Resource Scarcity or Fuzzy Boundaries?” Political Geography 25(2006): 361-382. Print..
"Global Water Shortage: Water Scarcity & The Importance of Water." The Water Project. Web. 28 Apr. 2015. http://thewaterproject.org/water_scarcity
Noemdoe, S., L. Jonker, and L.A. Swatuk. “Perceptions of Water Scarcity: The Case of Genadendal and Oustations.” Physics and Chemistry of Earth 31(2006): 771-778. Print.
