No One Wakes Up in the Morning and Thinks of Ways to Create Unsustainable Processes
No one wakes up in the morning and thinks of ways to create an unsustainable process, yet unsustainable practices exist.
I find that every time I mention sustainability, it is almost always interpreted as talking about renewable energy, which is, of course, met with resistance in this part of the world, and understandably so. For many reasons, including cost, infrastructure, and the calorific value of energy necessary to industrialize the continent, most Africans consider renewables a far-future ambition. However, the discussion on sustainability covers food and agriculture, health, infrastructure development, inequalities, the environment, and climate action, among many others.
Sustainability is not some new-age, fancy idea that is suddenly turning heads in the West. Bush-fallowing, which has been in existence for as long as we have tilled the soil, is an example of sustainable practices. Yet, it has become more and more important to consider our activities in relation to the future we are heading towards.
One less talked about aspect of sustainability is water availability. 61% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s 783 million people live without access to safe drinking water, and this ratio reduces to 19% in rural regions. It’s easy to think, “Oh, where are these numbers from? There’s literally water everywhere”, especially because the person reading this might not fit the profile of the population being described, but I’ll explain.
There is a potable water shortage. Countries like DR Congo have among the greatest water shortage challenges, with fewer than 1% of its rural population having access to on-premises water. This water shortage has an obvious ripple effect on health, the environment, and, more subtly, on sectors like education. Women and children are frequently left to bear the responsibility of gathering water, which means they miss out on important opportunities to study. Chad, where just 2% of the rural population has running water and female literacy rates are 14%, is an illustration of the relationship between water availability and educational chances.
Most of us just create alternatives; source our own water. When I was in secondary school, we called it ‘Dig-Your-Well’. We would go out to swampy areas of the forest that surrounded our school and literally dig holes to find water. In the cities, we just create our own boreholes and store water in our homes.
I recently had an interesting conversation with one of my mentors, Doyin Akinyanju, the CEO of IBILE Oil & Gas Corp., that led to a few realizations. Considering the metropolises of Nigeria, like Lagos, as an example, most buildings source their water directly from the underground water table. There is no restriction, control, or regulation on how we do this. We do it not just because we can but because we must; exploiting underground water reserves without any form of consideration for conservation. How do we account for or adjust for leaky systems, outright waste, or even pollution?
When any kind of depletable resource is harvested through uncensored access by just anybody who can harvest it, it will become a problem in the long run. It’s the same way a forest animal can be hunted to extinction. Ideally, this is mitigated through metered water distribution networks, but this is unavailable, or at least unreliable in these parts. You can think of it this way — The inefficiency of systemic power production and distribution causes private citizens to generate their own electricity individually by burning diesel, significantly adding to emissions and pollution in the environment.
Most unsustainable practices do not start intentionally but as compensation for infrastructural inefficiencies. We may not feel the pressure of the effects of water mismanagement right now, maybe not even in 10 years, but as the regional climate continues to experience change, we will tell a different tale after half a century passes.
