This focus article presents the state of the West African rainforest (WARF), its role in atmospheric moisture transport to the Nile Basin, and the potential impact of its deforestation on the Nile Basin's water regime, as well as options for improving transboundary water governance. The Nile is the longest river in the world, but delivers less water per unit area than other major rivers. Pressures from the Basin's rapidly growing population and agricultural demand risk exacerbating transboundary water conflicts. About 85% of the surface water reaching Aswan in Egypt originates from the Ethiopian Highlands which comprise less than 10% of the Nile Basin's total area (3.3 million km²). Some of the atmospheric moisture reaching the Highlands crosses over the WARF; other moisture source areas include the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The WARF adds atmospheric moisture and modifies the regional climate system. Deforestation in the WARF has the potential to alter rainfall patterns over the Ethiopian Highlands and thus flows in the Nile River, with reductions a likely outcome. Transregional governance that looks beyond basin boundaries to the sources and routes of moisture transport (the precipitationshed) has yet to be integrated into land–atmosphere and water management negotiations. To better achieve sustainable land management and water resource development in the Nile Basin, scientific and governance frameworks need to be established that include the WARF region states in the ongoing negotiations between the Nile riparian states.This article is categorized under: Engineering Water > Planning Water Human Water > Water Governance Science of Water > Water and Environmental Change

This commentary focuses on analyzing the potential of citizen science to address legitimacy issues in the knowledge base used to guide transformative governance in the context of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (henceforth SDGs). The commentary develops two interrelated arguments for better understanding the limits of what we term “traditional” Environmental Monitoring and Assessment (EMA) as well as the potential of citizen science (CS) for strengthening the legitimacy of EMA in the local implementation of SDGs. We start by arguing that there is an urgent need for a profound renewal of traditional EMA to better implement the SDGs. Then, we present CS as a democratic innovation that provides a path to EMA renewal that incorporates, develops, and extends the role of CS in data production and use by EMA. The commentary substantiates such arguments based on current approaches to CS and traditional EMA. From this starting point, we theorize the potential of CS as a democratic innovation that can repurpose EMA as a tool for the implementation of the SDGs. With a focus on the implementation of SDG15 (Life on Land) in local contexts, the commentary presents CS as a democratic innovation for legitimate transformative governance that can affect socio-ecological transitions. We see this approach as especially appropriate to analyze the implementation of SDGs in rural settings where a specific resource nexus can create conflict-laden contexts with much potential for a renewed EMA to support transformative governance towards Agenda 2030.

East Africa is highly vulnerable to climate change due to limited adaptive capacity and strong reliance on rain-fed agriculture. Ethiopia, in particular, experiences recurrent socio-economic losses from droughts and floods. This study presents a national-scale assessment of observed (1981–2010) and projected (2041–2100) changes in extreme seasonal precipitation across Ethiopia using ten ETCCDIs. High-resolution Enhancing National Climate Services (ENACTS) observations and bias-corrected outputs from a selected ensemble of CMIP6 models under SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios are used to assess historically trends and future extreme precipitation, respectively. Historical trends show increases in extreme precipitation during the Kiremt (JJAS) season, particularly over the northwestern, western, and southwestern highlands; however, most of these increases are not statistically significant. In contrast, the Belg (FMAM) season exhibits widespread declines, which are also largely not statistically significant. Future projections suggest increases in total precipitation (PRCPTOT), heavy (R10) and very heavy rainfall days (R20), very wet days (R95p) and extremely wet days (R95p), and rainfall intensity (SDII) over northwestern, western, southwestern, and parts of northeastern Ethiopia during JJAS. During FMAM, PRCPTOT is projected to increase in the northern and northwestern regions, while decreases are expected in the northeastern and southeastern regions. The Awash and Tekeze basins emerge as key hotspots of change, indicating potential seasonal shifts and an increased likelihood of extreme weather in these regions. Despite inter-model uncertainty, the results highlight the need for flexible, uncertainty-informed adaptation strategies to enhance climate resilience in Ethiopia.

Detecting the impacts of forest cover changes on hydrology is challenging given uncertainties in how changes will manifest in observed streamflow. Considering changes in the rate of change of observed streamflow (e.g., recession characteristics) may offer insights to hydrological shifts driven by forest cover change that are not seen when considering absolute changes of streamflow itself. This study assesses the impacts of forest cover changes on the storage–discharge relationships in three meso-scale watersheds in the highlands of Ethiopia based on a 30-year hydro-climatic and land cover change dataset. We analyze streamflow recessions and fitted parameters of a linear reservoir model to depict fundamental shifts in the storage–discharge relation for these watersheds. Our analysis shows that recession slopes and the total storages increase as natural forest covers decrease in the 273 km² Woshi-Dimbira and 1980 km² Upper-Didesa watersheds. The linear reservoir model storage coefficient parameter shows an increasing trend with time for the 41 km² Sokoru watershed which is afforested, indicating faster drainage and reduction in storage. Our work highlights that considering storage–discharge relationships may be useful for assessing the impacts of forest cover change on water resources in regions where land use change is active and rapid.