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Showing posts from December, 2019

Closing Thoughts

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Thanks and much appreciation to everyone who has read my blog. I thoroughly enjoyed this assignment. I have never written a blog before and I found it to be very different experience from writing more formal essays. This blog has given me creative freedom to discuss areas in which I am interested. Further, it has given me a chance to cover a wide range of topics regarding water and food in Africa, instead of just one or two topics. Although I initially had a difficult time deciding where to start and what topics I wanted to discuss, as I read more articles and did more research, the next blog post idea just started coming to me. In the future, I would love to further explore the topic of water and food in Africa, as well as learn more about different issues regarding water, such as sanitation or politics.
 
 If you are interested in learning more about topics regarding Water and Development in Africa, I highly encourage you check out my other classmates' blogs. A list of them can...

Gapminder

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If you are interested in learning more about how countries in Africa compare to others around the world, check out the website  Gapminder . This website allows you to play around with different variables on the x-axis and y-axis, such as income, life expectancy, and total water withdrawal. You can choose particular countries and see how different variables for these specific countries have changed over the past 100 to 200 years. There also are many water features you can play with, such as agricultural water withdrawal, total water withdrawal, and desalinated water produced. I encourage you to play around with this website. Let me know what you think! Gapminder:  https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$chart-type=bubbles Figure 1: Example of what you might find on Gapminder

UNFCCC COP

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I am taking a quick break from my regular water and food blog posts to highlight the UNFCCC COP25 that is happening in early December. In March 2019, Africa Climate Week (ACW) took place in Accra, Ghana. People from around the world gathered to discuss climate goals in and around Africa. Some of these included Nationally Determined Contributions set by Africa in last year’s United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP). Additionally, climate change solutions and new technological innovations were showcased. This educated people about the different technologies that exist and sought to inspire people to increase innovation. Africa as a whole has extremely low greenhouse gas emissions, yet they are still taking climate action initiatives to minimize their carbon footprint ( UNFCCC ). Africa Climate Week was a follow up to COP 24 in Poland 2018, and will lead the way for COP 25 in Spain 2019. Many groups were in attendance, such as...