Student Number : 0218517V - MSc dissertation - School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies - Faculty of Science / Rapid population growth, combined with an expanding economy and tourist industry has lead to a water resource crisis in the United Arab Emirates. The water crisis includes serious difficulties in meeting basic needs, particularly in the agricultural sector, which is a dominating water consumer in the country. All economic sectors are finding it increasingly difficult meeting their water needs, which is primarily manifested by the natural scarcity of water recourses, depletion of groundwater, low efficiency of water use and low coverage of water and sanitation services. This dissertation presents a vision for a comprehensive Earth Information System that goes beyond the limited collection of, say, meteorological data, but seeks to create a national database of past, present and future data of the many related earth system components of both natural and human origin, all of which play a role in defining the hydrologic cycle, and ultimately, the state of water resources. This system is being motivated by the fact that most of the water resource assessments in the UAE cannot take advantage of such datasets because the data are either not collected, too fragmented, or are not part of a national archive that is accessible to the research community and the general public. This system will be developed at the highest level of the national government, through the Office of His Highness the President and the office of the Department of Water Resource Studies which will seek to provide improved water resource assessment using modern database and analytical methods, that will support the development of better studies and new, modern institutional networks and authorities.

An existing simulation model of the Weber Basin (GRES Model) was used as a basis for creating an equivalent model on the Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) system. The GRES Model was developed by the Utah Division of Water Resources (UDWR) and simulates the historical water allocation from 1950 to 2006. Using the GRES Model and additional information obtained from UDWR staff, two different WEAP models were created. The two models differed only in how water is transmitted to the service areas. End-of-month reservoir storage and other outputs from the GRES Model were compared to the two WEAP models. The two models turn out to be almost equal. The simplest version of the two WEAP models was selected and named the WEAP Weber Basin Model. The WEAP Weber Basin Model is basically a historical simulation of water allocation in the Weber Basin and shows that the storage level in most reservoirs, except Causey, does not reach the buffer zone. This result indicates the historical water security of the basin and also the security in the foreseable future. The WEAP Weber Basin Model was also modified. Two scenarios consider demand growth (i) with, and (ii) without applying water conservation. These modifications were applied to one of the service areas which serves purely municipal and indusrial demands. The inflow to the system was populated by randomly reshuffling the historical flows. This is assuming that the historical flows will repeat in a random order in the future. Hence the inflows to the streams in 2006 were assigned the historical inflows of 1968 and so on. The result from the WEAP Weber Basin Model without conservation (with growth) shows that most of the reservoirs, with the exception of Pinveview and Willard Reservoirs, do begin to draw from the buffer zone towards the end of the simulation period. Different storage carryover policies tested show that the reliability of the system decreases while its resilience increases when more and more of the water in the buffer zone is carried over between time steps. Applying conservation seems to reduce the shortages created when different storage carryover policies were implemented compred to the model that did not apply conservation.

Magister Artium (Development Studies) - MA(DVS) / Climate change has induced a number of environmental issues that have affected people's lives beyond the scope of ecology; these effects have touched on the social, cultural and economic dimensions of life as well. In light of this, migration has increasingly been used as a climate adaptation strategy particularly in rural areas. This has not only changed migration patterns, it has also reconstructed the gender dynamics within the migration discourse through the ‘feminization of migration.’ Hence it has become important to analyse, understand and unpack the various ways in which women experience climate change and climate-induced migration, and how this has affected their lives. Additionally, women's position as active agents in climate migration and knowledge production has increasingly been acknowledged in climate and migration discourse This study focused on the effects of climate change on female migration patterns in Goromonzi District, Zimbabwe; and took place in Hiya village. The main research question aimed to find out if using migration as an adaptation strategy to climate change had positively changed the lives of women in rural Zimbabwe? With a focus on Hiya village in Goromonzi, Zimbabwe the research question was answered through identifying migration push factors for women, climate resistant livelihoods and the benefits of migration in light of climate induced environmental disasters. A mixed methods research approach was used however the research is largely qualitative.

Thesis (MPA.) -- University of Limpopo, 2019 / Polokwane Municipality is currently experiencing water shortages, which is affecting households and industries’ which is used to remove faeces and transport them to the sewage plant through sewer networks, as the system is waterborne. This research study aims at determining the status of faecal sludge management with the aim of developing a faecal sludge management projection plan for the City of Polokwane. The plan will enable the city to understand the current and future levels of faecal sludge production and it will also highlight the water demand for faecal sludge disposal. As a result of this plan, the appropriate systems, which can be used for faecal sludge production, can be managed better and there will be relief in the current non-coping sewage plants in the municipality. The sewage plants are not coping with the amount of faecal sludge due to the growing population and the fact that the infrastructure was built before South Africa’s 1994 democratic dispensation. The empirical enquiry was conducted through the use of the interview guide and the purposive sampling strategy in order to obtain an in-depth context of the subject being studied. The study has noted that the Seshego and Polokwane Sewage Plants are receiving more sewage than they were built for. The only plant that is still within its capacity is the Mankweng Sewage Plant. Currently, the municipality does not have alternative plan to re-use water in the yards. It is also not planning to develop any other form of faecal sludge management to transport faeces from the toilets to the sewage plants despite the use of clean water. It is questionable as to whether the cleaned water or effluent released from the sewage to the environment meet the required standards. In Polokwane, the released effluent does not go back to the people directly but it is used to recharge 37 boreholes, which are used to supply water to the people. The other challenge in Polokwane Municipality, especially in Mankweng, is the petrol stations, hospitals, and abattoirs whose effluents are creating a problem to the water treatment plants. Therefore, there is a need to have a pre-treatment plants for hospitals and filling stations. Key Words: Sanitation, faeces, faecal sludge, sewage plants and water borne.

What makes a community sustainable? Is it the effective management of local environmental resources? Or meeting the social, economic and health needs of its population? For the five UBC researchers in the following pages, the answer is unequivocally both. From tackling water scarcity to environmental health and planning, these researchers are individually working to ensure local communities are equipped with the necessary knowledge to remain sustainable for generations to come.