The relationship between rainfall and human density and its implications for future water stress in sub-Saharan Africa

David le Blanc and Romain Perez

Working Papers from United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs

Abstract: This paper uses Geographic Information System (GIS) data on population density, rainfall and climate change scenarios in order to identify areas that will be subject to increased water stress due to insufficient precipitation to support their projected population levels in 2050. Density increases across the continent should lead to a significant increase in the extent of water stressed zones, especially around the Sahel belt and in Eastern Africa. Changes in rainfall, the pattern of which remains inherently uncertain today, could mitigate or compound those effects. Consequences of unsustainably high local densities such as migrations are bound to become more prevalent.

Keywords: climate change; rainfall; climate modeling; demographic growth; migrations; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q25 Q54 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2007-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-env and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.un.org/esa/desa/papers/2007/wp57_2007.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The relationship between rainfall and human density and its implications for future water stress in Sub-Saharan Africa (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:une:wpaper:57

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Aimee Gao ().