The changing water cycle: Freshwater in the Congo

Abstract

Climate change in Africa is manifesting itself in the distribution and quantities of freshwater which are becoming serious security issues. Central Africa, particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with its abundant water, is caught in the middle of strategies to curb future effects of droughts, water scarcity and flooding across Africa. This article reviewed the current status of water and related biodiversity in DRC using a political economy, biological data and available social knowledge. Freshwaters hold the potentials to significantly contribute to the economy of DRC. However, fish stocks in some stretches of the Congo River are fished at intensities that exceed their productivity potential; water depths are decreasing in some others. Sources of the freshwaters of the Congo Basin cross borders of many countries but proper transboundary management plans to support cross‐border sustainable management of freshwaters are lacking. Stakeholders do not own freshwater sustainable management plans; growing populations and the drying up of large portions of Africa make that freshwater of the Congo, rather than being a uniting factor of the region, instead a security threat that Congo River Basin countries need to care about immediately. Caution should prevail in ways in which the freshwaters of the Congo Basin are exploited. Particularly, lack of in‐depth ecological knowledge about the biology and the mechanics of the Congo Basin's freshwaters call for careful scrutiny of the idea to export the freshwaters of Congo to refill the Lake Chad Basin as suggested by some politicians, since this could lead to an unprecedented ecological cataclysm. This article is categorized under: Water and Life > Conservation, Management, and Awareness Science of Water > Water Extremes Engineering Water > Planning Water

A long-term monthly surface water storage dataset for the Congo basin from 1992 to 2015

“…This large basin hosts the Earth's second-largest expanse of tropical forest, covering about 45% of its area and the world's largest tropical peat carbon storage (~28% of the total tropical peat carbon). The vast resources of the basin support the livelihoods of 80% of the riparian population (Verhegghen et al, 2012, Inogwabini, 2020 135 White et al, 2021;Crezee et al, 2022). The Congo River flows over 4 700 km from its source in the southeastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to the Atlantic Ocean and its drainage area spans over nine countries, Central Africa Republic, Cameroon, Republic of the Congo, Angola, DRC, Zambia, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi.…”

Water Resources in Africa under Global Change: Monitoring Surface Waters from Space

“…In rapidly growing African economies, increasing demands for freshwater supply to sustain population growth and the needs of the agriculture and industrial sectors (Haddeland et al 2014 ; Mehran et al 2017 ) now pose significant threats to water resources. Environmental alterations such as land use practices, groundwater stress and deforestation, along with political conflicts, transboundary rivers, inadequate infrastructure and low adaptive capacity in many regions, make the African population particularly vulnerable to hydro-climatic variability and to any future changes in the water cycle (Inogwabini 2020 ; Anderson et al 2021 ).…”

Improving Representation of Tropical Wetland Methane Emissions With CYGNSS Inundation Maps

“…However, accurately representing the wetland response to interannual variations in precipitation and temperature is the first step to properly characterize the effects that climate change will have on these ecosystems. In addition, the increasing pressure that many tropical ecosystems are facing from both land use change and climate change‐induced increases in rainfall variability is likely to lead to a global reduction in wetland extent in the long run (Dixon et al., 2016; Inogwabini, 2020; Junk, 2002). This would in turn drive a decrease in methane emissions.…”