Abstract
In sub-Saharan Africa, land cover change, expansion of hydropower infrastructure, and increased flooding complicate country-level efforts to meet the Sustainable Development Goal target concerning access to safe water. The Water, Energy and Food (WEF) nexus approach recognises that addressing these complex challenges requires cross-sectoral analyses at multiple scales. Building on such an approach, our study examined the interrelationships between land cover change, dam-related flooding and access to safe water via a national-level spatial analysis with local case studies in Malawi and Ghana. Our assessment of the water–food interactions found that areas of overlap between water points and cropland increased from 2000 to 2020 for both countries at national scale, but overlap extent varied greatly depending on the land cover product used. Local-scale exploration of water point installation patterns in Zomba, Malawi confirmed this pattern, highlighting increasing non-governmental funding of borehole installation programmes. Our assessment of water–energy interactions found that flooding mediated by hydropower dams increased for the White Volta Basin in Ghana, thereby increasing inundation of groundwater points. Local-scale focus group discussions revealed flooding resulted in contaminated water sources and high risk of injury or drowning whilst fetching water. Overall, our study highlights how socio-economic drivers are bringing water points, flooding and cropland into closer proximity, requiring flood mitigation measures at water points and agro-chemical management to minimise potential water quality impacts. Given differences between land cover products, we recommend more robust integration of existing land cover products to better monitor these phenomena.
Highlights
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 sets out to achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water (United Nations Dept of Economic Social Affairs, 2020)
Given the importance of non-piped improved sources in rural Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), this study examines a subset of WEF nexus inter-connections affecting borehole and well water point safety through an assessment of spatial connections between hydropower dam-mediated flooding and land use for food production
This study aims to generate evidence on the changing spatial interactions between land use for food production, dam-mediated flooding, and domestic water points over two decades. By drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data sets, this study aimed to address a methodological gap in the WEF literature, which remains dominated by quantitative approaches (Albrecht et al, 2018)
Summary
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 sets out to achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water (United Nations Dept of Economic Social Affairs, 2020). Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remains the region facing the greatest challenge in meeting all three SDGs. Only 64.5% of its population had access to basic or safely managed water services in 2020 with only Oceania having lower service coverage (UNICEF/WHO Joint Monitoring Program, 2021). The region has particular characteristics that mediate trade-offs between these three targets It is dependent on hydropower (Falchetta et al, 2019), meaning that many tradeoffs between renewable energy and household water and food security relate to dams. This situation is further complicated by numerous transboundary catchments, with the Southern African Development Community alone having 15 such catchments (Conway et al, 2015). Agricultural land use has expanded rapidly throughout SSA, with the region’s agricultural land increasing by 57% at the expense of natural vegetation over a 25 year period (Brink and Eva, 2009), though there are pockets of agricultural land abandonment (Blair et al, 2018)
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