The Future of Water Scarcity

Knowing that water scarcity is a problem in most areas of Africa I am going to focus on how water scarcity is going to be influenced by climate change in the future. This is very relevant as climate change will most likely have a big impact on water scarcity in Africa. 

Therefore I have looked at a study by Simon N. Gosling and Nigel W. Arnell called ‚A global assessment of the impact of climate change on water scarcity‘. 

As the title indicates they did a research paper on how water scarcity is going to develop in relation to climate change. To model this the Water Crowding Index (WCI) and the Water Stress Index (WSI) were used in combination with patterns from 21 Global Climate Models (GCMs). With this data they tried to calculate how water scarcity might increase in some areas. Moreover they also measured the annual runoff to detect a decrease in water scarcity. 

They also stated that the research is most likely not too accurate as it is very hard to predict these issues very precisely. Additionally using different GCMs and the two different Water Indexes it shows that even these results vary from each other and can therefore not present accurate results. The paper is just supposed to give a guideline on how issues might look like in the future and present a possible development of water scarcity if climate change continues as predicted. 

Looking at water scarcity it is also important to consider that just by the increase of the world population water scarcity will naturally increase as there is less water available per person. The estimations are that by 2050 3.1 and 4.3 billion people will affected by water scarcity whereas the present-day population exposed to water scarcity is approximately 1.6 and 2.4 billion. The ranges are a result of using different measures of water scarcity as mentioned above.

The results are very different than I expected. They estimate a decrease in water scarcity in most parts of the world caused by a probable increase in runoff. In south and east Asia, especially, the predictions show the highest increase in water scarcity. 

However looking at our example, Africa, the results show a general increase in water scarcity but  it differs a lot regarding different parts of Africa.

The results of this study have been visualized in world maps as well as in diagrams. The maps are based on a combination of different GCMs but the diagrams are based on the A1B socio-economic scenario only. 

Looking at the maps they show a huge increase in water scarcity in northern Africa (f.e. Morocco, Algeria, Mali) whereas in south west Africa (Namibia) they estimate a slight increase in water scarcity. However for the area of Ethiopia and Sudan they even propose a decrease in water scarcity. 

This might be explained with a change of the general climate system following a shift of existing wind systems as well as ocean circulations. 

Looking at the diagrams that present the predicted change in water supply it looks like northern Africa shows the highest increase in water scarcity of all. East Africa also shows a fairly high increase as well as west Africa. Southern Africa is estimated to just have a little increase whereas central Africa shows a slight decrease in water scarcity which could almost been seen as consistent. 

This study can be seen as an indicator on how things might develop and what issues might be relevant in the future. Moreover it shows once more that climate change is a global issue as it affects all areas of the world. Focusing on Africa we can see that the already existing water scarcity is mostly going to increase. This will have a very negative impact on the African population considering that they are struggling with water availability already. It could lead to an even bigger water crisis in Africa followed by deaths. All of this is of course depending on how it is going to be dealt with and whether other parts of the world might be willing to recognize this issue as a global one as that awareness will lead to a system of global solutions which are desperately needed if you look at the estimations of this study.