Background

Despite strong regional cooperation and coordination efforts - culminating in the ECOWAS-led regional pollutant monitoring system, WAVES, which uses a combination of remote sensing and crowd sourced data collection methods - as well as a variety of other grass roots, education-led efforts to reduce pollution and better manage water supplies (such as the use of organic agricultural practices and low-tech biological sewage treatment systems), most national governments continue to ignore or choose not to enforce pollution control measures at the national scale in 2025.  National legislation on water pollution is still sporadic, as is official support for the growing grassroots and international environmental movements.

As the prolonged economic crisis of 2009 stretched into the middle of the second decade, policymakers at the national scale placed increasing emphasis on economic development over ecological protection.  As a result, water quality continued to decline in many ECOWAS member states by the year 2025, with many negative regional consequences.  The availability of water, both absolutely and per capita, has declined overall.  This drove construction of more and more boreholes, a politically expedient solution to an increasingly pressing problem, which along with local water recycling efforts did address some of the growing need.

Unfortunately the rapid and continued expansion of West Africa’s urban populations, along with increases in consumption which accompany raising standards of living, continued to outstripped even these large infrastructure projects.  Demand for industrial and agricultural uses, in particular, continued to expand, leading to even further water scarcity.  Competition and conflict over available freshwater, both between economic sectors and, in some cases, between countries which share a common water source, became increasingly common.  There was also a growing “water gap” forming between those who could afford clean water and those who could not, causing political conflict and increased incidents of water theft and sabotage.  Thankfully, no serious regional conflicts or full scale wars have yet erupted, due in part to ECOWAS’s ongoing conflict prevention efforts, but quasi-governmental and revolutionary groups continued to wage low intensity battles on the borders of many ECOWAS states.

Crisis Event

Increased demand and accelerated extraction of groundwater has resulted in a decline in groundwater levels and increased industrial and agricultural runoff continues to pollute coastal environments.  Groundwater also became contaminated in many areas - caused by both leaching of agricultural and industrial chemicals, and human and animal wastes.  In the absence of strong environmental management, water pollution, generated both by increased industrial / agricultural activity and coastal dumping, leads to higher incidences of eutrophication and the spread of water weeds, such as water hyacinth.  A series of small algae blooms off the coast of one ECOWAS country received international attention and, although no one was harmed directly, caused years of damage to that country’s tourism industry.  Microbial contamination has increased, as has the incidence of waterborne diseases, particularly in urban areas with still or stagnant water.  Some dense unplanned settlements have become so virulent, in fact, that they have been nicknamed “Sick Cities”.  Finally, reduction in land cover caused by increased agriculture and deforestation resulted in more flash flooding, run-off and erosion and, eventually, sedimentation of some minor rivers.  The resultant loss of habitat for animal and fish species has created entire dead river valleys and toxic streams, avoided by all but the most dirty industries and impoverished inhabitants.

Events came to a head in July, 2025, when six days of severe rainfall dumped nearly 24 inches of rain; almost a ¼ of the annual rainfall for the region.  The inland city of Bamakorkankry (a factitious city within one of the ECOWAS states), rose to prominence in the latter half of 2015 to become a regional logistics centre, connecting the extractive industries  to the east, with industrial processing plants on its outskirts, to be processed and carried by lorry westward towards the coast for international distribution.  Keen to ensure the city’s continued success, political leaders had signed a series of deals with regional manufacturers since 2010, leading to the creation or expansion of almost a dozen new processing plants around the city.  Industrial expansion had been mostly positive, but had also cleared the hills around the city of most of its forests and attracted even more people to the city; supporting a sizable group of squatters and slum dwellers on the outskirts of the factories kept in occasional employment.

Unbeknownst to most of the city’s inhabitants was that one of these plants, a waste processing facility which enjoyed a series of lucrative contracts from other countries in the region and from southern European solid waste brokers, had been storing vast amounts of chlorine-based chemical effluent from plastic manufacturers in a poorly sited, unsupervised location near a local drainage channel. 

As the heavy rains of July pounded the city and its surrounding hills, a series of flash floods swept through the city; eroding the fragile banks which held up the wall of the dumping compound.  The flood soon crested the banks of the canal, pouring into the storage facility around 11:30 PM on a Friday night.  The lone guard, convinced no one would notice his absence in the heavy rain, had gone home 30 minutes earlier and no one was present to sound the alarm as water filled the compound.  The water level continued to rise and the cheap wooden pallets upon which the barrels were being stored soon cracked and dissolved, sending hundreds of barrels of toxic material tumbling into the current and downstream.  By morning, over 340 barrels containing a mix of dioxin, spent chlorine and heavy metal sludge had disappeared into the flood.

The effects of the flood were soon apparent in the morning after the rain had stopped, but embarrassed plant managers took nearly 36 hours to report the spill to the authorities, fearing penalties, fines, or worse.  During this time the barrels had been swept downstream into the regional river system feeding into Lake Bombamaro, nearly 120 miles away, and had dumped most of their contents into the lake, whose impact was immediately obvious.  

And here is where things became complicated.  Lake Bombamaro had been created in 2016 as part of the country’s dam building and water storage programme.  It was named after the country’s capital, Bombamaro City, a thriving city of 6 million inhabitants nearly 70 miles downstream.  The Lake comprised the main source of both drinking water and energy generation for the entire area.  Making matters worse, the country had signed a water sharing agreement with its neighbouring country in 2018, part of the peace deal which concluded a seven year conflict with them.  This neighbouring country draws approximately 30% of their nearby capital city’s water supply from the Lake in a system of pipelines and canals, making this agreement vital for both political and public health reasons.  Lake Bombamaro also feeds a large network of agro-industrial companies growing peanuts in the region, on both sides of the border; companies upon whom over 60,000 workers depended upon for their income. 

About the same time the national authorities became aware of the spill and were thinking of what to do, the ECOWAS-wide pollutant monitoring system WAVES began to detect a massive spike in dioxin levels in the lake.  The system’s success was based on its network of crowd-sourced monitoring stations and low tech, mobile phone enabled sensors whose operators received 1 cent for every unique data point they reported to the system.  Fishermen returning to the Lake on Monday morning noticed thousands of dead fish floating amongst the flotsam and jetsam of the Lake.  Not unusual after such a storm, they didn’t take much notice until they began taking samples as part of their usual routine and noticed toxin levels over 800 times the threshold limit. 

One fisherman, eager to got more data and enjoy the potential publicity which might result from such a breaking story, rowed to the centre of the lake to take more measures.  After sending his samples and posting pictures of the devastation to the WAVES wiki and community bulletin board, he received the attention he was looking for but not in the way he expected.  The fumes from the Lake were so strong that the poor man was quickly overcome and died in his dingy, but not before phoning his relatives and a local news station to beg for help. 

News of his death spread like wildfire through-out Bombamaro City.  The open-source, community driven nature of the WAVES monitoring system; the very thing which made it so successful, meant that within hours on Monday morning the entire region was alerted to the massive dioxin levels in the Lake.  Soon every television and radio in the entire country was talking about the “Poison Lake” which threatened not only the entire city of Bombamaro City, but also the entire region’s agricultural system and the delicate peace with the neighbouring country, whose capital city also drew upon the Lake for water supply.

By 10:00 AM, panic erupted in the City.  Nearly 70% of the City’s 6 million inhabitants were dependent upon the municipal waters supply which drew from the Lake.  Radio talk shows and Internet forums were flooded with cases of dioxin poisoning as thousands fell violently ill, either through real or imagined dioxin poisoning.  Hospitals and clinics in both capital cities were overrun with people seeking diagnosis, treatment, or protection.  Wild rumours suggested that eating meat might help prevent the deadly poisoning, causing both a run markets and stores as well as a series of violent, resentful attacks in the wealthier neighbourhoods of the City, perpetrated by those too poor to afford meat but resentful of those whom they viewed safe.  Misinformation ran wild and by early afternoon on Monday, several of the City’s neighbourhoods were on fire with protests and violence. 

In a desperate effort the City’s officials shut down the municipal water supply to prevent contamination, although no one knows how many people have been poisoned already or how much of the lethal water made it to the crop supplies.  As the taps stopped running and the July temperatures begin to climb in the afternoon, tempers are at the breaking point.  The country’s neighbour is demanding that the water be turned back on, but also that the national government take responsibility for the disaster and pay reparations for any damages.  The international media has already picked up the story, fanning further hysteria, and the crisis begins to shake the region to its very core.

Response Position

As a member of the ECOWAS Futures Group, you have been called to help deal with the crisis.  Aside from the immediate, short term impacts of the poisoning, there are a variety of medium and long term issues to consider.

First, with the water supply shut down, over 14 million people face the prospect of no water by Monday night.  Yet further testing of the Lake has shown that nearly the entire Lake is toxic in varying degrees.  There is no filtration technology immediately available and time is working against you.  Clearly some solution needs to be found to get water to the millions of thirsty individuals in the region before they are pushed to the breaking point and begin to take desperate action.

Next, consider the crop supplies.  Without water from the Lake, the crops will fail and bring economic devastation to the area.  Worse, the soil on both agricultural and urban land could become saturated with the toxins, causing the need for wholesale relocation of entire industries and cities.

Finally, what about the political dimension?  The fragile peace with the neighbouring countries partially depends on the sharing of water rights from Lake Bombamaro.  If this is threatened, both countries could be plunged back into a bloody war which the countries are still recovering from.  Local political violence could also erupt as anger against the current government boils over into the expression of other, more general grievances of economic, ethnic, or religious varieties.

A solution must quickly be found to this crisis; one that deals with the all the dimensions outlined above.  It is now your task to provide recommendations to the ECOWAS policy makers about how to understand and act in this dangerous situation.