EARTH DAY, 2014 - ALERT - AFRICA

Where does all the water go?

Enormous amounts of water are lost every year in Africa.  For years developers in the Nile Basin have pointed fingers at the papyrus swamps in southern Sudan (the Sudd) as one of the culprits.  Now a study published by Routledge (The Nile River Basin: Water, Agriculture, Governance and Livelihoods, 2012) shows a remarkable trend.  On a per unit area basis, the large reservoirs in the arid zone of the basin lose fantastic amounts of water.  The combined loss from storage is now over 28% of the total Nile flow!  And this figure will grow as lowland countries in the Basin add 25 new dams over the coming years.    

  

The report also points out that evaporation from reservoirs is entirely non-beneficial, while water loss from natural wetlands provides important local benefits in terms of both pastoral production and biodiversity. 

They recommend that water storage be carried out in the Ethiopian Highlands where evaporation is low rather than the arid lowlands where the majority of water is now lost.  As a water-saving measure, more efficient storage is a much more urgent priority than draining papyrus swamps.

The Sudd can and should be saved, as explained in Papyrus: The Plant that Changed the World, From Ancient Egypt to Today’s Water Wars.  Due out in June from Pegasus Books (http://tinyurl.com/goodreed) by John Gaudet, Ph.D., a professional ecologist and environmental adviser, will tell us how all the above can be avoided. Watch this short video that brings much of this into perspective:  http://tinyurl.com/reedfield. 

(Info from: Awulachew, S., V. Smakhtin, D. Molden and D. Peden, 2012. The Nile River Basin: Water, Agriculture, Governance and Livelihoods.  Routledge, U.K. and N.Y.  Note: Water loss expressed as millions of cubic meters per square km).