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Beneath Africa, Survey Finds 'Huge' Water Reserves

Posted by timothy on from the first-the-moon-now-this dept.

gambit3 writes with this news, carried by the BBC: "Scientists say the notoriously dry continent of Africa is sitting on a vast reservoir of groundwater. They argue that the total volume of water in aquifers underground is 100 times the amount found on the surface. Across Africa more than 300 million people are said not to have access to safe drinking water. Freshwater rivers and lakes are subject to seasonal floods and droughts that can limit their availability for people and for agriculture. At present only 5% of arable land is irrigated."

16 of 292 comments (clear)

  1. Oh no by andrew3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    More resources means people will think they can make more people. Which, of course, will be worse in the long run since underground water never lasts forever, and it will be a larger population to starve.

    What Africa needs is education, not more water to be exported to other countries.

    1. Re:Oh no by gweihir · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Indeed. As long as the people there do not understand what their problems are, they will not get out of their current situation. Education is the only way to achieve that. "Gifts" from the west only result in laziness, which is one primary enemy of education. Most people are only willing to learn if there is no alternative. Sad but true.

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      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    2. Re:Oh no by tsa · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Most people in Africa have enough to eat. Africa is an enormous continent with many different landscapes and people. What Africa needs is leaders who actually care for their people, so they can exploit the land better and be educated.

      --

      -- Cheers!

    3. Re:Oh no by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wow, and you are accusing /them/ of being racist.

      My girlfriend is Chinese. Never been to the west, doesn't speak English, in every way a normal Chinese person. She and none of the other Chinese people I know think that way.

      I would also point out that Western companies do the same thing when it profits them. Capitalism is amoral.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. It is also a FINITE supply. by WolphFang · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is also a FINITE supply.... not a true fix for water shortage problem long-term...

    --
    leather-dog muksihs
    Blog: @muksihs
  3. So how long will it last? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't care how much good that water might do today: I want to know how long it'll last if a billion people start sucking it up. Aquifers replenish, but only very slowly. Even the scientists behind the research are stressing that industrial-scale drilling will exaust the supply eventually.

    1. Re:So how long will it last? by symbolset · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yeah, I haven't ever been to Africa either.

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      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    2. Re:So how long will it last? by Nursie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There's no inherent reason that industrial-scale drilling has to be allowed to exhaust the supply

      Pffft. Silly rabbit. The inherent reason is humans. Someone with an interest in industrial scale wasting of water will pay the right people just enough to get them out of the way, and start depleting it as fast as they can, for as much or as little profit as they can make from it.

    3. Re:So how long will it last? by Grayhand · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The point though is legitimate because the population has exploded with most people living not much different than they did a hundred years ago. Everyone shares this naive belief that all we need to do is feed the hungry people. Feeding them without education gives you two hungry people instead of one. Every documentary I've ever seen showing starving single mothers in Africa they ask how many kids they have and it turns out they are trying to raise 6 or 8 kids on $2 or less a day. It's impossible so most starve. The only sure cure for out of control fertility rates is education and improved lifestyles. Where are the lowest fertility rates in the world? Japan, the US and most of Europe where they have strong economies. The exception being religious groups that insist the members have as many kids as possible. Conditions weren't that different in this country a 100+ years ago except we had the resources to feed them. Send them drills and water pumps as well as condoms and tell the Pope to go fuck himself since they aren't willing to help feed the people his and the church's policies help create. If we've been exceeding the Earth's resources since the early 80s every one born since then will eventually have to find some place else to live. It's not opinion if the numbers are right it's a fact. The only real solution in the long run is that there are fewer people using the resources. If we don't fix the problem nature will do it herself. Fewer kids born or mass starvation, which is crueler?

  4. Greening of Africa by symbolset · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Global warming is likely to lead to a de-desertification of Africa anyway, as increasing equatorial heat increases the absorption of water by the air over the Atlantic. But it's still Africa.

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    Help stamp out iliturcy.
  5. Re:Oh yes by Barsteward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think the opposite is true. Infant mortality is high in these areas so they have more children in the hope some survive. When there is food, medicine, better sanitation etc, they breed less because there is less chance of the infants dying.

    --
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  6. No they don't by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You see this bullshit all the time from people who never took more than BIO 100 and presume that humans work like bacteria. Turns out, they don't. The proof of that is first world nations. They all have at most low population growth, and many have neutral or negative population growth. The "human bacteria" theory says they should be the prime places for a massive booming population. There's abundance in everything and IMR is low so population should explode... But it doesn't.

    Turns out when you solve the basic needs, when people have more than a subsistence living, when they don't have to worry about a bunch of their offspring dying, they stop having so many kids.

    The way to control population is not to try and starve people of resources. You might notice that is the situation now and yet there's high birth rate. The way to control is to get people better lives. Sufficient food, clean water, medical care, shelter, etc and then the population growth is tamed.

    This isn't a "Well we hope humans work like this," theory, it is how things HAVE worked. It is the reason there was no massive boom and crash in the US, Europe, Japan, and so on. Population growth has slowed, leveled off, or even inverted in all the places that have the most abundant resources.

    The strategy of "Just let the brown people die," is not only extremely callous, it is also counter productive to getting a stable population level.

    1. Re:No they don't by turing_m · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You see this bullshit all the time from people who never took more than BIO 100 and presume that humans work like bacteria. Turns out, they don't. The proof of that is first world nations. They all have at most low population growth, and many have neutral or negative population growth. The "human bacteria" theory says they should be the prime places for a massive booming population. There's abundance in everything and IMR is low so population should explode... But it doesn't.

      I'd be a bit more circumspect about my ability to judge the long term growth rates of humans just two generations after the introduction of the contraceptive pill and Roe vs Wade. It's like the equivalent of spraying some dilute poison in the petri dish that most but not every bacterium is affected by and thinking that the long term growth rates can be predicted by the growth rates of that bacteria in a few hours.

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    2. Re:No they don't by siddesu · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You have it the wrong way around. The argument isn't biological in nature, it deals with economics. People are not bacteria in a petri dish. They can think about the future and plan according to the means that are available to them. Children are the only investment available to many peoples in the poorest parts in the world, since they receive little care, but tend to take care of their parents. In the West, children bear a huge opportunity cost, as they need to be taken care of, but don't contribute directly to the well-being of their parents as much as the offspring in poorer nation.

      This is why there is a lot more demand for contraceptives and abortions in the West, and that is why methods for birth control were developed in the first place.

    3. Re:No they don't by ceoyoyo · · Score: 5, Informative

      We had effective contraception and abortion LONG before the 60s. There is a long history of resource rich societies NOT breeding as much as would be expected from a simple resource utilization model.

  7. Actually underground reservoirs can be "finite" by perpenso · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Exactly. When you pump water out of the ground it's gone forever.

    Underground reservoirs are not necessarily refilled by the next rain. Read up on such reservoirs found in North America. They were filled over many thousands of years and significantly drained by agriculture related drilling and pumping in decades. Every year agriculture has to drill deeper and deeper to find water.

    It gets consumed, evaporates, and then it never rains again.

    Of course it rains, the problem is that it does not necessarily rain where the water was harvested. Harvesting deep water reservoirs does not somehow change the fact that a region is a desert or arid region with little rainfall.