8. Concluding Thoughts

 In concluding this blog, I would to reflect back on the aim I set out for this blog in the very first post and the process of crafting each blog post since. I tried to include a variety of nuanced human-geographical perspectives that provided insight into how and why politics influences the water crisis in the Sahel. Overall, I think I have been proficient in honoring the different contexts where water scarcity manifests politically by gathering and differentiating case studies from varied Sahelian countries. My goal was to not generalize the African continent or the Sahelian region by being in depth and thorough in my analysis and research to examine closely factors on varying scales that affect water issues. 

Overall, I began by analyzing the political ramifications of managing transboundary water resources across the region and highlighted how different nationalist agendas and the failure of institutional intervention result in the uncoordinated management of the Sahelian aquifers. I expanded on this with idea with specific examples of countries making political decisions about water that advantage themselves. For example, how Nigeria’s geopolitical and economic strengths make it a hydrohegemon, allowing it to manipulate institutions and other decision-making processes to its benefit. I then go onto discuss a triangle of factors that characterizes the fight for water in the region– the divide between farmers and nomadic herdsmen within the context of climate change. Water security is tied to the conflict between these two groups as they fight for resources that are increasingly scarce due to climate change. I conclude that efforts to mitigate water scarcity must address this local political dynamic and target climate change adaptation strategies hand in hand. In light of Black History Month, I tried to unpack colonial legacies from decades of French colonial rule that still shape the water crisis and also point to the need to decolonize the academic literature on development in the Sahel itself. I examine how urban politics is exacerbating WASH situations in the Sahel for the worse and the importance of community-based sanitation approaches in the future. Finally, I put a spotlight on how water security affects regional and international politics by influencing terrorism and international security– an alarming trend that looks to persist in the Sahel. 

I do feel I was limited by the lack of updated literature on water issues in the Sahel which has hindered the flow within my blog posts as I jump between ‘nuggets’ of analysis and information. Furthermore, my blog collectively does not provide much rich insight and go into specific depth on any political trends pertinent to the Sahel that has come up in recent years– I definitely anticipated unpacking deeper realizations abotu hydropolitics particular to this region. For example, I was trying to frame the blog post on WASH in the context of the Sahel’s dramatic population growth, hoping to explore how urbanization dynamics would promote or hinder the incidence of sanitation practices. Unfortunately, there was a gap in the literature about WASH in specific urban Sahelian locations and few have conducted relevant field research, unlike in countries liek Kenya and Uganda who have in comparison an abundance. Overall, my biggest neglect was piecing a very holistic picture of hydropolitics in the Sahel to the degree that I was aiming for. This blog also would have been more organized had I differentiated the scale of hydropolitics more. Meaning, emphasizing when I was referring to political decisions that impacted water scarcity on either a community, local, national, or regional scale. If I had more research and information to pull from, it would have been beneficial to explore how politics on different scales affected each other as well.

 

Thank you for reading!!! :)