THE REAL WATER CRISIS

A serious multi-year drought in parts of South Africa’s Northern and Eastern Cape provinces has seen a number of small towns threatened by total water supply failures and livestock farmers facing financial ruin.

In other parts of the country, heatwave conditions and the late onset of rains have caused local supply failures. Although the dams that supply most of the main urban areas are still at reasonable levels, there are growing fears that the country may be witnessing the start of a major drought.

Cape Town’s experience of extreme ‘Day Zero’ supply restrictions only adds to these fears. Weather forecasters seem unable to make reliable predictions more than a few weeks in advance. And there are nagging concerns about the government’s ability to identify and address emerging problems.

Drought

In Cape Town, water managers thought they could avoid building new infrastructure to supply a growing population by encouraging everyone to use less water. A major drought proved them wrong. During October’s heatwaves in Gauteng province, water ran dry as local reservoirs were emptied by residents who felt the need to use extra water for their gardens – and municipalities failed to enforce restrictions.

In Adelaide, Eastern Cape, where there has been a critical supply failure, one local councillor was reported to have commented that ‘the Adelaide Dam was at one per cent before local authorities woke up’. Even then, there was little they could do because funding was not available. The problems in Adelaide are repeated daily in towns and villages across the country as municipalities seek to expand the distribution of water without first ensuring that there’s enough supply or putting in place measures to control excessive use. Too often, poor planning and management is revealed when drought strikes, as is currently happening.

Forecast

If there was more certainty about future weather, there might be less concern. But this is not the case. At the end of September, South African Weather Service forecasters said while summer rains would be late and October very dry, November would almost definitely see good rains. And so far so good, the rains in Gauteng started on schedule on November 1. But South Africans shouldn’t expect that forecasting success to continue. It’s unusual for a seasonal forecast to be so confident.

Moving into 2020, predictions are becoming more uncertain again. Indeed, at the end of September, the South African Weather Service warned that some international forecast models suggest that South Africa may be moving into a (dry) El Niño rainfall phase.

The combination of forecast uncertainties and problems on the ground offer politicians an easy opportunity to blame climate change and uncertainty to explain failures in their areas of responsibility.

South Africa’s rainfall has always been variable and unpredictable. This remains one of the larger risks to rain-fed agriculture. Reliable supplies can be provided to urban and industrial water users - and irrigation farmers - if storage infrastructure is built with enough capacity to cope with regular dry periods. But that infrastructure has to be managed with a watchful eye on the ever-changing climate.
If the infrastructure needed is not developed when needed, problems will arise.

And if water is drawn without restraint during a dry period, shortages will be the likely outcome. It is easy to blame climate change for water problems. Yet it is by no means certain that climate change will dramatically reduce water supplies. Rising temperatures is one trend that forecasters confidently and correctly predict. But it’s not certain what that temperature increase will do to water availability.

The different challenges faced in different places may look like a single crisis. But the fact is that the underlying problems are often not the same. There’s no single prescription and each locality must understand and address its own particular circumstances. What is clear is that South Africa is not yet confronting an absolute water shortage.

But the extent of public panic suggests a disturbing level of ignorance about how water is made available and what needs to be done to ensure adequate and reliable supplies. The key to this water security is for government and citizens to understand and manage what the country has.

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