Download Document B: Africa`s Deforestation Twice the Rate

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How are people responsible for the environmental challenges in Africa?
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Overview: Africa is beautiful continent with a large variety of animal and plant life, however due to constant neglect and
misuses of the resources Africa’s beauty is at risk. Large companies and private individuals have mistreated the land and
the rich beauty of Africa is being lost. This Mini-Q explores the question, why is the environmental of Africa in danger?.
The Documents:
Document A: UN Issues Desertification Warning
Document B: Africa’s Deforestation Twice the Rate
Document C: Nigeria: Oil Spills Drench and Sicken Delta Community
Document D: Soil Quality and Soil Productivity in Africa
Hook Exercise: Environmental Issues
Note: The environment is the area all around us and the issues are those problems that face the entire
continent of Africa.
The environment is constantly changing throughout history. Africa has undergone many different
environmental changes however during the last several centuries Africa has experienced many environmental
challenges that have reshaped the continent in alarming and dangerous ways that could impact the entire
world.
Part 1: Examine the flow chart below. Each event shows a cause and effect scenario that are direct results of
environmental issues. Then, then from the choices below, select the environmental issue that best matches
each effect.
Environmental Issues Categories:
Deforestation Desertification Water Pollution Poor Soil
1. A Large chemical company is dumping
waste into the Nile River.
A logging company cut down trees in along
the Congo River rainforest.
People living along the Nile River are getting
sick and suffering from strange illness and
heavy metal poisoning.
The Rainforests are depleted of trees and
less oxygen is being produced.
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The grass lands along the Saraha Desert are
being burn down by farmers trying to make
larger farms.
Constant use of fertilizers have destroyed
the land and make it difficult to grow crops
on the land.
The deserts increase in size as the area
around it is being destroyed.
Famine and starvation hit the land and
people are forced to move.
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How are people responsible for the environmental
challenges in Africa?
Africans face many different types of
environmental issues. Some of them are lack of
water, poor soil quality, and expanding deserts.
Much of Africa has trouble having enough
water for people to live. Parts of Africa are arid
desert, others are semi-arid, some are rolling
grassland, and still others are humid and subtropical. Countries with large river systems have
enough water for farming and for people in
villages, towns, and cities. However all countries
have the problem of increasing pollution from
factories, and animal and human waste. Some
countries have poor harvests, little grazing land for
farm animals, and even little clean water for
drinking and washing. Each year deserts claim
more and more. The tension between the needs of
a growing population and the limited supply of
water is a serious issue for most of Africa.
Nile River
Many countries in Africa do not have
enough clean water even though they have large
rivers. Egypt is a good example. The Nile River, the
longest river in the world, runs the length of Egypt.
Most Egyptians live along its banks. The river is
used for water and transportation. In recent years,
however, overpopulation and poor sanitation
regulations have made life along the Nile River
more difficult. People are concerned about the
water’s contamination with human and industrial
wastes.
Aswan High Dam
The Aswan High Dam has allowed Egypt to
have year-round irrigation, so the farmers can grow
three crops a year rather than just one. They no
longer have to depend on the annual flooding of
the Nile to bring water to their fields. The dam is
also used to generate electricity for the people of
Egypt. However, because the Nile no longer floods,
the silt (rich topsoil carried by the floodwaters) is
no longer deposited in the Egyptian fields.
Irrigation requires farmers to use chemical
fertilizers instead. Fertilizers are expensive and
contribute to the river’s pollution. Fertilizers have
caused some parts of Egypt’s farmland to develop
heavy concentrations of salt. Land that is
contaminated with salt is not suitable for growing
crops.
Niger River
The Niger River provides some relief to the
people living in the Sahel. The Niger is also a vital
transportation route. When the Niger reaches the
sea in the country of Nigeria, it broadens into what
is known as the “Oil Delta.” This area is rich in
petroleum. The silt from the river makes good soil
for planting crops, too.
The Congo River provides water to villages
and towns, water for irrigation, and a fishing
industry. It serves as a major transportation route
for those who need to go from the interior of Africa
to the Atlantic Ocean. Much of the timber from the
rainforests is transported down the river, and
people travel the river in search of work.
Water Wars
Many who study this region believe that
Africa could find itself in the midst of “water wars”
in the coming years. The Nile River runs through
Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt. All of these countries
have growing populations and growing water
needs. The Niger River supplies the dry Sahel area
before flowing into Nigeria. As more water is
drawn off upstream, less is available to the
countries farther down river. Increases in
agriculture also mean greater water needs as well.
Clean Water
Clean water is needed for basic health and
sanitation. People who are not able to have access
to clean water are at risk for many diseases. Lack of
clean water to wash with also increases the
frequency of skin and eye infections. Some people
in Africa also face the problem of water-borne
diseases spread by parasites living in standing
water.
Some countries in Africa have tried to
improve their economies by starting factories.
Some have paid little attention to the factory
wastes that are flushed into rivers and streams.
Government officials ignored environmental
problems as long as the factories made profits.
Sometimes the factory workers are harmed by the
industrial waste that pollutes local water supplies.
Background Essay Question
1. What problems do all African countries have?
2. What are conditions that caused the Nile to be polluted?
3. How does the Aswan create environmental problems?
4. Why is drinking water so important for people?
5. What can you infer are some of the issues associated with industrial waste in the drinking supply?
6. Define these terms:
Semi-arid
Sanitation
Aswan Dam
Contamination
Petroleum
Understand the Question and Pre-Bucketing
Understanding the Question
1. What is the analytical question asked by this Mini-Q?
2. What terms in the question need to be defined?
3. Rewrite the question in your own words.
Pre-Bucketing
Directions: Using clues from the Mini-Q question, suggest general analytical categories and label the buckets.
__Disforestation______ _
__Desertification___
___Poor Soil_________
___Water Pollution_____
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Document A
Source: Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/6247802.stm
Published: 2007/06/28 10:49:25 GMT
© BBC 2013
UN issues desertification warning
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6247802.stm
Tens of millions of people could be driven from their homes by encroaching deserts,
particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia, a report says.
The study by the United Nations University suggests climate change is making desertification
"the greatest environmental challenge of our times".
If action is not taken, the report warns that some 50 million people could be displaced within
the next 10 years.
The study was produced by more than 200 experts from 25 countries.
This report does not pull any punches, says BBC environment reporter Matt McGrath.
One third of the Earth's population - home to about two billion people - are potential victims of
its creeping effect, it says.
Desertification could displace
up to 50m people over the next
decade
"Desertification has emerged as an environmental crisis of global proportions, currently
affecting an estimated 100 to 200 million people, and threatening the lives and livelihoods of a
much larger number," the study said.
The overexploitation of land and unsustainable irrigation practices are making matters worse,
while climate change is also a major factor degrading the soil, it says.
People displaced by desertification put new strains on natural resources and on other societies
nearby and threaten international instability, the study adds.
"There is a chain reaction. It leads to social turmoil," said Zafaar Adeel, the study's lead author
and head of the UN University's International Network on Water, Environment and Health.
The largest area affected was probably sub-Saharan Africa, where people are moving to
northern Africa or to Europe, while the second area is the former Soviet republics in central
Asia, he added.
Tree-planting schemes may put
pressure on scarce water
resources
Source: Doyle, Alister, Environmental Correspondent OSLO OSLO | Tue Jun 10, 2008 3:27pm EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/06/10/us-africa-environment-idUSL1064180420080610
Document B
Africa's deforestation twice world rate, says atlas
A logging company's tractor sits on the side of a road that has been cut
into Congo's forest in the northern province of Equateur October 8, 2004 in
this file photo taken October 8, 2004.Africa is suffering deforestation at
twice the world rate and the continent's few glaciers are shrinking fast,
according to a U.N. atlas on Tuesday.
Credit: Reuters/David Lewis
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO | Tue Jun 10, 2008 3:27pm EDT
(Reuters) - Africa is suffering
deforestation at twice the world rate and
the continent's few glaciers are shrinking
fast, according to a U.N. atlas on
Tuesday.
Satellite pictures, often taken three decades apart, showed expanding cities, pollution, deforestation and climate change
were damaging the African environment despite glimmers of improvement in some areas.
"Africa is losing more than 4 million hectares (9.9 million acres) of forest every year -- twice the world's average
deforestation rate," according to a statement by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) about the 400-page atlas,
prepared for a meeting of African environment ministers in Johannesburg.
Four million hectares is roughly the size of Switzerland or slightly bigger than the U.S. state of Maryland.
Photographs showed recent scars in forests in countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Nigeria and
Rwanda. It said forest loss was a major concern in 35 countries in Africa.
And it showed that environmental change extended beyond the well-known shrinking of the snows on Mount Kilimanjaro
in Tanzania, Africa's highest peak at 5,895 meters (19,340 ft), or the drying up of Lake Chad.
On the Ugandan border with Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, glaciers on the Rwenzori Mountains where the
highest peak is 5,109 meters shrank by half between 1987 and 2003, it said.
For Reuters latest environment blogs click on:
blogs.reuters.com/environment/
(Editing by Janet Lawrence)
Source: Murdock, Heather Global Post June 25, 2012
06:15http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/nigeria/120624/nigeria-oilpollution-sickens-communities
Document C
Heather Murdock June 25, 2012 06:15
Nigeria: Oil spills drench and sicken delta
communities
Niger Delta residents say oil slicks and bad aid make their children continuously sick and have destroyed their
businesses.
A Nigerian tries to separate crude oil from water in a boat
at the Bodo waterways polluted by oil spills attributed to
Shell equipment failure August 11, 2011. The Bodo
community in the oil-producing Niger Delta region sued
Shell oil company in the United Kingdom, alleging that
spills in 2008 and 2009 had destroyed the environment and
ruined their livelihoods. The UN released a report this
month saying decades of oil spills in the Nigerian region of
Ogoniland may require the biggest cleanup ever
undertaken, with communities dependent upon farmers
and fishermen left ravaged. (Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty
Images)
WARRI, Nigeria— When he was a child, Tonye Emmanuel Isenah saw men in the Niger Delta who were 70 and
even 80 years old. But these days, he said, people just don’t live that long.
Isenah is now the deputy leader of the state assembly in Bayelsa State, part of Nigeria’s oil rich Niger Delta
region — a land that for decades has suffered annual devastating oil spills. Experts say the yearly spills are each
comparable to the Exxon Valdez spill. And the environmental degradation is causing the local people to become
ill and die at earlier ages.
“At the age of 45, people are beginning to have strokes,” he said. “I used to see people that lived up to 70 years
and beyond.”
Life expectancy in Nigeria now hovers above 50 years, nearly 20 years below the world average, but Isenah says
that in the Niger Delta, the life span is shorter. Isenah’s assertion that pollution in the Niger Delta is weakening
the people, is as obvious to any observer as the oil that coats the mangrove roots in the creeks.
Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer, exporting about 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, almost entirely from the
Niger Delta. It is the United States’ fifth largest oil supplier and the proceeds from sales of crude oil made up
80 percent of Nigeria’s national revenue and nearly all its foreign currency earnings.
Source: Hari Eswaran, Russell Almaraz, Paul Reich, and Pandi Zdruli 1,
1
Director, International Programs, Soil Scientist, Geographer, and Visiting Scientist, respectively. US Department of
Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service, PO Box 2890, Washington DC 20013.
Document D
Soil Quality and Soil Productivity in Africa
Introduction
More than four decades of research and development work in Africa have not resulted in the 3-5 % annual increase in
agricultural growth (Badiane and Delgado, 1995) that is necessary for most African countries to ensure sustainability of
agriculture and the promise of food security in the next decade. Sluggish or zero growth is likely because of the cumulative
effect of many factors but with strong bearings on soil productivity. Agriculture production is not merely the managing of the
biophysical resources; it is also strongly controlled by the socioeconomic milieu. The opening of national markets to world
trade has induced new stresses in the on-farm socioeconomic situation. The resource poor farmers of Africa have few options
today to enhance their agricultural productivity.
The challenge to African governments and the international community is to enhance the farmer's ability to effectively
participate in the national and global economy and a prerequisite is the improvement of the productivity of the millions of
small farms. The traditional low-input agriculture practiced by many of the farmers in the absence of replenishment of
mineral nutrients, is slowly reducing many of the soils to almost inert systems (Stoorvogel and Smaling, 1990). As many of
the soils also have low resilience, future corrective measures may be exorbitantly expensive.
The study of Oldeman et al. (1991) indicates that soils on about 5 million ha of land in Africa are degraded to a point where
their original biotic functions have been fully destroyed and resilience reduced to such a level that rehabilitation to make
them productive may be economically prohibitive. This empirical assessment based on the judgment of many persons and
often made in the absence of supporting data, points to the magnitude of the problem. With reliable resource inventories and
monitoring of the resource base, better assessments and projections can be made. Such knowledge is as important as
helping national planners and farmers to enhance their agricultural productivity.
The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the quality of the soil resource base of Africa and the risks to sustainable
agriculture and soil productivity on a continent-wide basis. Similar to other assessments, the task is fraught with difficulties
stemming from an absence of reliable databases and almost a total lack of studies evaluating the state of a nation's
resources at any time in its history.
Bucketing – Getting Ready
Bucketing
Look over the documents and organize them into your final buckets. Write labels under each
bucket and place the letters of the documents in the buckets where they belong. Plan out
either a three or four-paragraph essay and remember-your bucket labels are going to become
your body paragraphs.
Thesis Development and Road Map
On the chicken foot below, write your thesis and your road map. Your thesis is always an
opinion that answers the Mini-Q question. The road map is created from your bucket labels
and lists the topic areas you will examine in order to prove your thesis.
From Thesis to Essay Writing
Mini-Q Essay Outline Guide
Working Title
Paragraph #1
Background
Stating the question with key terms defined
Thesis and road map
Paragraph #2
Baby Thesis for bucket one
Evidence: supporting detail from documents with document citation
Argument: connecting evidence to the thesis
Paragraph #3
Baby Thesis for bucket one
Evidence: supporting detail from documents with document citation
Argument: connecting evidence to the thesis
Paragraph #4
Baby Thesis for bucket one
Evidence: supporting detail from documents with document citation
Argument: connecting evidence to the thesis
Paragraph #5
Baby Thesis for bucket one
Evidence: supporting detail from documents with document citation
Argument: connecting evidence to the thesis
Paragraph #6
Conclusion: Restatement of main idea along with possible insight