In this post, I will be exploring the various environmental challenges facing the River Nile. Due to the amount of detail necessary for a comprehensive overview of this issue, the post will be split into two separate entries, with the background information and context being provided here.   Figure 1: Geographic overview of the Nile River system. The Nile River is the longest river in the world, crossing 6,600 kilometres from south to north Africa ( Said 1993 ). The source of the Nile begins in the rivers that flow into Lake Victoria (which is located in modern-day Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania), and empties into the Mediterranean Sea more than 4,100 miles to the north ( Said 1993 ). The Nile flows through a total of 11 African countries and approximately 400 million people are dependent on the Nile River basin ( NGS, 2019 ). This is largely because most of these countries have an economy focused on agriculture, so are dependent on the water supply and irrigation coming from the N...

 The IPCC reports on climate change have continually recognised the outer edges of the Sahara Desert in West and Northern Africa as susceptible to significant environmental change due to persistent temperature increases. Rising temperatures have resulted in Saharan water systems being altered at a frightening rate and the effects are observable through a precipitously changing environment. The rate of desertification in North African countries such as Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia is increasing, transitory waterways are drying up more rapidly and most notably, oases are disappearing ( IPPC, 2014 ). Figure 1:   Annual observed temperature & precipitation changes from the 20th-21st century across Africa ( source ) . Morocco has seen a wide scale warming trend throughout the 21 st century, corresponding with some areas of lower-than-average precipitation. The IPCC calculates that since the 1960s, a temperature increase of 1° C has been observed throughout the entire count...

The Tana River Basin in Kenya covers approximately 17,000 km ²  and is home to 5.3 million people ( DW 2018 ). The basin encompasses Mount Kenya and the Aberdare highlands with elevations ranging from 4,500m at Mount Kenya to about 400m above sea level in the east of the catchment ( Marshall 2011 ). The rainfall patterns in the basin have changed drastically over recent decades and have become more sporadic with more torrential rains of high intensity. This particularly true for the Upper Tana River Basin in Kenya and is exemplified by the disastrous May 2018 flash floods when the highest rainfall in 50 years hit the area. These floods caused extensive damage to the village communities with 100 dead and almost 300,000 people displaced from their homes ( DW 2018 ). Much of the damage was also visible through scarring on the local landscape as a result of large mudslides. The Tana River basin is characterized by relatively fertile soils as it is derived from volcanic parent materia...