LITMIR.BIZ

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      An additional reason for the lack of meteorological interest may have been the relatively stable rainfall regime from year to year. This is in contrast to conditions in the expansive semi‐arid regions of Africa, where meteorological literature was published on causes of droughts and interannual variability.

      Meteorological interest in the Congo exploded with the launch of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) meteorological satellite in 1997. Data from TRMM showed that the Congo Basin was the site of the world's most intense thunderstorms. Later satellites showed it to be a lightning hot spot as well. At the same time the satellite products demonstrated the importance of large‐scale systems, mesoscale convective complexes, in bringing rainfall to the Congo and these are linked to large‐scale meteorology.

Unfortunately, at the time the interest in the meteorology of the Congo grew, the in‐situ data sets became scarce. For example, while hundreds of rainfall stations existed through the 1960s, by the 1990s only a handful were operative. This is a serious limitation on meteorological studies in the region because most satellite rainfall products are adjusted with gauge data. Where gauge data are scarce, such as in the central Congo Basin, satellite rainfall estimates of year‐to‐year rainfall variability are not reliable and there is tremendous diversity between the various satellite rainfall data sets for the region (Nicholson et al., 2019). Therefore, the expansion of ground‐based measurements in the region is of critical importance.

      1.3.3. Comments from Jean‐Marie Kileshye Onema

       How can research help to build capacity for water resource management in the Congo Basin?

      Limited publications on the Congo basin exist to date (Alsdorf, et al., 2016) especially when compared with large basins like the Zambezi, the Limpopo, the Okavango, and the Orange‐Senqu in the region of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC, Hughes et al., 2015). The accessibility is further hampered by a language barrier as most of the peer‐reviewed journals are produced in English. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Angola that represent 72% of the basin area are Francophone and Lusophone and publications in these respective languages are not always readily available to other researchers across the globe. The Congo Basin has limited primary data and few observed hydrological phenomena have been investigated in situ. Most of the basin is ungauged.

      The Congo Basin, although holding the potential to unlock the water crisis for Africa, has had scant knowledge management and outreach initiatives of water research that could draw attention of the international community. No dedicated conferences on the Congo Basin have been organized systematically except for marginal initiatives like the recent AGU Chapman Conference that was dedicated to the basin. The Congo Basin over the past five decades has been characterized by unstable socioeconomic environments in most of the riparian countries. The DRC and Angola, representing 72% of the basin surface area, experienced civil unrest that could not allow long‐term research projects. Limited local human and institutional capacity for water resource management and development explains to some extent the reduced scientific productions.

      The past two decades have seen a new type of local researcher as a result regional capacity building initiatives like WaterNet (Jonker et al., 2012; Kileshye Onema et al., 2020). On the one hand, this has resulted in a steady increase in the number of graduates from the riparian countries producing more outputs from primary measurements (Trigg & Tshimanga, 2020). On the other hand, the basin still suffers from the lack of hydro‐meteorological data to validate the bulk of scientific publications on the Congo where proxy measurements from remote sensing have been used to characterize hydrological processes. Recent initiatives like the SO‐Hybam Environmental Observatory (see www.so‐hybam.org), the SADC Hydrological Cycle Observation Systems (SADC‐HYCOS), or the Congo River users Hydraulic and Morphology (CRuHM) projects are trying to install data collection platforms, data loggers, and other automated instruments for flow measurement. These constitute good starting points toward addressing the challenge of observed data within the basin provided they are sustained overtime. The partnerships with institutions from the North in the production of this monograph goes in the same direction. With new institutions being established like the Congo Basin Water Resources Research Center (CRREBaC), it is imperative for the community of scientists to join some of the global discourses like the one from the International Association of Hydrological sciences on the twenty‐three unsolved problems in hydrology (Blöschl et al., 2019). The Congo Basin scientific productions could contribute toward questions related to water phenomena, processes, and estimations, as well as methods. This will be possible and sustained only through strengthening of local human and institutional capacity especially in the face of climate change (Wehn et al., 2021), rapid population growth, and water centric socioeconomic development.

      1.3.4. Comments from Raymond Lumbuenamo

       What are ways in which researchers and the World Bank can work together to help each other toward our mutual goals?

      Till now, most of the research done on the Congo Basin has been in the confines of traditional forest, climate, and water sectors. It’s only now that recent developments in water scarcity in the northern and southern parts of the continent, especially the tragedy unfolding in the Lake Chad Basin, are gradually shifting the interest toward issues such as forest‐climate and water linkages.

      Studies suggest that the Congo Basin is the source of precipitation for a number of other sink regions. It is also hinted that as much as 75–95% of rainfall is recycled within the Congo Basin, (Brinkman, 1983) and that the loss of the Congo Basin rainforest may decrease rainfall by 42%. (Belle et al., 2015). Under this scenario, lower forest cover will not only result in greater carbon emissions, less water retention, further drying, and thus fire risks, but it will also have serious impacts on ecosystem services, including the loss of sequestered forest carbon and associated atmospheric feedbacks.

This underscores the need for the forest‐climate‐water nexus research to become mainstream in the Congo Basin as pressure mounts to allow multiple interbasin water transfers, which may have disastrous consequences on the forest cover and exacerbate climate change impacts on rainfall patterns and on hydrology not only in the Congo Basin but across Africa if not well managed. To date, key information gaps and scientific uncertainties hinder our ability to predict events and emphasize the need for a coordinated research effort.

      Climate change is a threat to the core mission of the World Bank Group (WBG): to end extreme poverty and increase shared prosperity in a sustainable way. Current weather extremes are already affecting millions of people, putting food and water security at risk, and threatening agricultural supply chains and many coastal cities.

      In order to meet these challenges, the World Bank is currently positioning itself to lead the global effort on climate change. It is working to launch its Climate Change Action Plan 2.0 aimed at supporting systematic climate action at the country level. The World Bank recognizes that the climate challenge can only be met through collective action and partnerships. The Action Plan will strengthen partnerships, engage in focused global advocacy, develop and share knowledge and solutions, and align internal processes to support staff and partners in implementation. It will work with others to benefit from what they do best, and ensure synergies across actors active in the field.

      A collaboration with researchers will help build capacity, produce the needed data to inform policies, and help decision makers to tackle the thorny interbasin water transfer issue and climate change consequences by creating shared, piloted, and implemented new and innovative solution packages to meet the challenges, especially those that contribute to the regional/global debate on climate, water, and development.

1.4. ESTABLISHING A NEW ERA FOR CONGO RESEARCH

      During the first half of the twentieth century, the Congo enjoyed international attention, including the 1951 Hollywood movie, “The African Queen,” filmed on tributaries of the Congo River, which won the legendary Humphrey Bogart his only Academy Award for Best Actor. Unfortunately, a variety of

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