Addis Ababa/Nairobi,
25 November 2010 -The major challenges facing
Africa's water resources have been laid
out in striking clarity in a new atlas compiled
by the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP). The Africa Water Atlas uses hundreds
of 'before and after' shots, detailed new
maps and satellite images from 53 countries
to show the problems facing Africa's water
supplies, such as the drying of Lake Chad
and the erosion of the Nile Delta, as well
as new, successful methods of conserving
water.
Some of the most arresting
images in the Atlas, which was launched
during Africa Water Week in Addis Ababa,
include green clouds of eroded soil and
agricultural run-off in Uganda, pollution
from oil spills in Nigeria and a 3km segment
of the Nile Delta that has been lost to
erosion.
Research carried out
for the Atlas shows that the amount of water
available per person in Africa is declining.
At present, only 26 of the continent's 53
countries are on track to attain the water-provision
target of the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) to reduce by half the proportion
of the population without sustainable access
to drinking water by 2015.
Furthermore, only nine
African countries (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia,
Libya, Rwanda, Botswana, Angola, South Africa
and Egypt) are expected to attain the MDG
target of reducing by half the proportion
of the population without sustainable access
to basic sanitation by 2015.
But in addition to these
water challenges, the Atlas maps out new
solutions and success stories from across
the continent. It contains the first detailed
mapping of how rainwater conservation is
improving food security in drought-prone
regions. Images also reveal how irrigation
projects in Kenya, Senegal and Sudan are
helping to improve food security.
The Atlas, compiled
by UNEP at the request of the African Ministers'
Council on Water (AMCOW) shows how the challenges
of water scarcity in Africa are compounded
by high population growth, socioeconomic
and climate change impacts and, in some
cases, policy choices.
Prepared in cooperation
with the African Union, European Union,
US Department of State and United States
Geological Survey, the 326-page atlas gathers
information about the role of water in Africa's
economies and development, health, food
security, transboundary cooperation, capacity
building and environmental change in one
comprehensive and accessible volume.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General
and UNEP Executive Director, said: "The
dramatic changes sweeping Africa linked
with both positive and negative management
of this continent's vital water resources
is graphically brought home in this Atlas.
"From the dams
triggering erosion on the Nile Delta to
pollution in the Niger River Basin, the
way infrastructure development or uncontrolled
oil spills are impacting the lives and livelihoods
of people are all brought into sharp relief.
But so too are the many attempts towards
sustainable management of freshwaters -
for example the controlled releases from
dams on Chad's Logone River that are restoring
in part the natural flooding cycles leading
to the recovery of economically-important
ecosystems," he said.
"Previous atlases
in which UNEP has partnered have triggered
change including sparking government efforts
to restore the Mau forest complex in Kenya
to Lake Faguibine in Mali. I am sure that
the before and after images presented in
this Africa Water Atlas can also catalyze
both greater awareness of the challenges
and the choices and decisive, restorative
and sustainable action on the ground,"
added Mr. Steiner.
In total, the Africa
Water Atlas features over 224 maps and 104
satellite images as well as some 500 graphics
and hundreds of compelling photos. The 'before'
and 'after' photographs, some of which span
a 35-year period, offer striking snapshots
of local ecosystem transformation in several
watersheds being converted to agriculture
across the continent.
In addition to well-publicised
changes, such as the drying up of Lake Chad,
one of the Sahel's largest freshwater reservoirs,
or the declining Lake Faguibine in the Niger
River Basin and falling water levels in
Lake Victoria, the Africa Water Atlas presents
satellite images of lesser-known environmental
challenges including:
Erosion and sinking
of the Nile Delta: The Rosetta Promontory
lost over 3 km to erosion between 1968 and
2009, while the Damietta Promontory eroded
1.5 km between 1965 and 2008. Furthermore,
the delta is currently sinking under its
own weight, as new deposits of soil no longer
offset the natural effect of soil compaction.
Surface runoff from
the Entebbe area south of Kampala, Uganda
shows up as greenish clouds expanding out
into the water as eroded soil, agricultural
runoff and domestic waste runs into Lake
Victoria, degrading water quality.
In the Niger River Basin,
thousands of oil spills, totaling over three
million barrels of oil and wastewater from
oil production, are among the primary causes
of a serious decline in water quality.
Overflow from Egypt's
Lake Nasser spillway created the Toshka
lakes, which have since largely disappeared
due to evaporation and, to a lesser degree,
infiltration.
The Africa Water Atlas
also draws attention to Africa's "water
towers", which are sources for many
of Africa's transboundary rivers and contribute
immensely to the total stream flow of African
major rivers. These supply life-giving resources
and services in downstream areas such as
water for hydropower, wildlife and tourism,
small and large scale agriculture, municipalities
and ecosystem services. The Water Atlas
shows that most of these water towers, from
the Middle Atlas Range in Morocco through
to the Lesotho Highlands in Southern Africa,
are under extreme pressure as a result of
deforestation and encroachment.
Many areas of the Mau
Forest Complex, the largest of Kenya's water
towers, had already been converted to agriculture
in the 1970s. Over 100 000 ha of forest,
representing roughly one-quarter of the
Mau Complex's area, have been destroyed
since 2000. By 2009, several additional
large forest areas had been converted to
agriculture.
Africa is known to be
a global "hotspot" for water constrained,
rain-fed agriculture and climate-driven
food insecurity with about 100 million people
in Africa living in these areas. But new
research, captured in the Atlas, reveals
that there are also "hopespots"
in drought-prone environments where there
is enormous potential for expanding simple
water-harvesting techniques.
For the first time,
the wide distribution of these "hopespots"
has been overlain on a map. Images from
the Water Atlas show how the successful
harvesting of rainwater in the Horn of Africa,
particularly in Kenya, is already mitigating
the risk for farmers and helping to reduce
food insecurity in their communities.
The Atlas also highlights
positive examples of water management that
are protecting against, and even reversing,
degradation.
The damming of the Logone
River in the Lake Chad Basin in the 1970s
coincided with a period of drought that
reduced overbank flooding and disrupted
local livelihoods on the Waza Logone Floodplain.
Managed releases from the dam beginning
in the 11000s restored some of the natural
flooding, bringing improved grazing and
the return of other valuable ecosystem functions.
Sudan's massive Gezira
Irrigation Scheme, built in the early 20th
century, and other schemes such as Rahad,
New Halfa and the Kenana Sugar Plantation,
which were built in the 1960s and 1970s,
help rank Sudan second in Africa after Egypt
in terms of land under irrigation.
Along the Senegal River,
irrigation schemes beginning in the 1940s
and other large investments in the 1980s,
including the construction of the Manantali
Dam in Mali and the Diama Dam in Senegal,
have increased irrigation potential within
the Senegal Basin.
The Great Man-Made River
Project in Libya, which began roughly 30
years ago, is among the largest civil engineering
projects in the world. The project brings
water from well fields in the Sahara to
Libya's growing population. The majority
of the system's water comes from Libya's
two largest groundwater resources?the Murzuq
and Kufra groundwater basins. As much as
80 per cent of Libya's groundwater is used
for agriculture.
Main Findings and Key
Concerns
The main findings of
the Africa Water Atlas present challenges
and opportunities for Africa as the continent
strives to improve the quantity, quality
and use of its water resources. These challenges
focus on the two-sided nature of water issues
in Africa: surplus and scarcity, under developed
and over-exploited.
Overall, according to
the authors, more than 40 percent of Africa's
population lives in arid, semi-arid and
dry humid areas. The amount of water available
per person in Africa is far below the global
average and is declining. Groundwater is
falling and rainfall is also declining in
some regions. Development of water resources
is inadequate and prices to access water
are generally distorted, with water provision
highly inefficient.
After Australia, Africa
is the world's second-driest continent.
With 15 percent of the global population,
it has only 9 percent of global renewable
water resources. Water is unevenly distributed,
with Central Africa holding 50.66 percent
of the continent's total internal water
and Northern Africa only 2.99 per cent.
The groundwater resources
represent only 15 percent of total renewable
water resources, but supply about 75 percent
of Africa's population with most of its
drinking water. In all regions except central
Africa, water availability per person (4
008 m3 in 2008) is under both the African
and global averages and lower than that
of all of other world regions except Asia,
the most populous continent.
Most of the urban population
growth has taken place in peri-urban slum
neighbourhoods, overwhelming the capacity
of water supply networks and resulting in
an overall decline in piped water coverage.
Between 2005 and 2010, Africa's urban population
grew at a rate of 3.4 per cent, or 1.1 percent
more than the rural population.
Only 26 of the 53 countries
are on track to attain the MDG water-provision
target of reducing by half the proportion
of the population without sustainable access
to drinking water by 2015.
Of Africa's 53 countries,
only eight are expected to attain the target
of reducing by half the proportion of the
population without sustainable access to
basic sanitation by 2015.
Opportunities to address
the woefully inadequate access to improved
sanitation include the potential to encourage
and support simple entrepreneurial solutions
and to embark on a new drive to revolutionize
toilets so they are as desirable as mobile
phones. The number of mobile cell phone
subscribers in Africa reached 448.1 million
in 2009, representing an increase of 75
million new users since the previous year
and an impressive growth of 20 percent in
the customer base since 2008.
Data in the Africa Water
Atlas shows that the adoption of improved
sanitation, however, has grown at a much
slower rate. The vast improvements being
made in access to communications technologies
in Africa provides an example of how innovation
and entrepreneurship in sanitation technologies
could also reap economic benefits and improve
health and well-being.
Africa has 63 shared
water basins. It is a challenge to address
potential conflicts over transboundary water
resources. On the other hand, there are
already at least 94 international water
agreements in Africa to cooperatively manage
shared waters.
Water scarcity challenges
Africa's ability to ensure food security
for its population. Agriculture uses the
most water in Africa and the estimated rate
of agricultural output increase needed to
achieve food security is 3.3 percent per
annum.
Hydroelectricity supplies
32 percent of Africa's energy, but its electricity
use is the lowest in the world. Africa's
hydropower potential is under-developed.
Africa is endowed with
large and often under-utilized aquifer resources
that contain excellent quality water and
could provide water security in times of
drought. But the continent faces the challenge
of providing enough water for its people
in a time of growing demand and increased
scarcity.
Africa is one of the
most vulnerable continents to climate change
and climate variability. The continent is
already subject to important spatial and
temporal rainfall variability. Some regions
are becoming drier and floods are occurring
more regularly with severe impacts on people's
livelihoods.
Africa faces a situation
of economic water scarcity, and current
institutional, financial and human capacities
for managing water are inadequate.
Taking advantage of
the latest space technology and Earth observation
science, the Africa Water Atlas serves to
demonstrate the potential of satellite imagery
data in monitoring changes in ecosystems
and natural resources. This technology can
provide the kind of hard, evidence-based
data to support political decisions aimed
at improving management of Africa's surface
basins and aquifer resources.
Notes to Editors
The Africa Water Atlas
features over 224 maps and 104 satellite
images as well as some 500 graphics and
hundreds of compelling photos. The publication
makes a major contribution to the state
of knowledge about water in Africa by bringing
together information about water issues
in each country and summarizing the state
of their progress towards the MDG water
targets, synthesizing water issues by looking
at them from the perspective of challenges
and opportunities and providing distinctive
profiles of transboundary water basins and
country.
Individual satellite
images and other graphics can be downloaded
from
www.na.unep.net/atlas
All the materials in
the Atlas are non-copyrighted and available
for free use.
Copies of the
Africa Water Atlas can be purchased here:
'http://www.earthprint.com/productfocus.php?id=DEW/1313/NA
