Gapminder

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



countries_health_wealth_2016_v15
Figure 1: Example of what you might find on Gapminder

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Water in Africa

Image
In many African countries, water is mainly used for agriculture like livestock watering and cropland irrigation. Why is this important? Inconsistent and scarce water supply directly impacts the continent’s agriculture and food production. Addressing this core issue can increase self-sufficiency and result in lower food scarcity levels in Africa ( Taylor 2004 ). Water consistency is especially important in areas with irregular or low rainfall. If irrigation systems are implemented, these areas would not be as susceptible to the vagaries of the changing climate. This is especially important as the impacts of climate change become more drastic. During the El Niño years, poor climate conditions often result in significant declines in agricultural production in parts of Africa. This negatively impacts standard of living and economic growth ( Baudoin et al. 2017 ). Figure 1: Water availability by country in Africa and expected availability for 2025 ( UNEP ). Water availability...
Read more

One Approach to Water Scarcity: Day Zero

Image
In the face of extreme water scarcity, local governments established “Day Zero” as a day where strict water regulations and distribution would be imposed on its citizens. Day Zero would be implemented when dam levels dropped to 13.5%. In January 2018, Cape Town announced that it would be implementing Day Zero on its 4 million citizens on April 12, 2018 due to drought and lack of available water and rainfall ( City Lab ). As part of Day Zero, people would line up to collect a limited amount of water, roughly the amount of a two-minute shower daily per person. The idea of Day Zero made people extremely frantic and caused people to voluntarily cut back on their water consumption. When Cape Town residents’ water usage was cut by over half of the current usage ( Wolski 2018 ), Day Zero was cancelled.
 Figure 1: Cape Town is located on the southern most tip in South Africa ( Source ).  So what happened? How did Cape Town avoid this catastrophic day? 
Cancellation of Day Ze...
Read more

Africa's Wetlands and Floodplains

Image
We've lost a majority of the wetlands in our world, largely as a consequence of human actions. Wetlands are known as areas that are saturated with water, if not completely flooded. There is sometimes seasonal flooding and sometimes permanent flooding ( Ramsar Convention on Wetlands 2019 ). Different forms of wetlands exist, such as swamps, floodplains, and rivers ( Australian Government ). In sub-Saharan Africa, the majority of wetlands are floodplains and freshwater marshes, and it is approximated that 4.7 to 6% of sub-Saharan Africa is wetlands. Wetlands provide many ecosystem benefits to people living in Africa and can have both positive and negative impacts on agriculture and livestock ( Rebelo et al. 2010 ). Some of these ecosystem services include drinking water, fertile soils, grazing, aquaculture, and drought resilience ( Australian Government ). 
 Humans are a driving factor in global warming and also the degradation of our wetlands which provide many ecosystem benefits ...
Read more