Navigating a drought crisis in South Africa, Part II

In January 2018, the city of Cape Town was facing a drought crisis which threatened to place 3.7 million people on less than 25 litres per person per day. In this week's blog, we will find out how the city avoided such a major water crisis. 

The Politics of Water returns, and this week brings the second half of our Cape Town study. Last week's edition focused upon the governmental shortcomings which led the city to the crisis it faced in the summer of 2017/2018, and this week we will be studying the methods employed to navigate the city away from day zero and set into place a 'water culture' of sustainability for the city. 

Credit: Newsela 2018

As one of the African continent's most developed cities, one of the challenges of the drought for the political management was trying to change the attitude of the region towards water. As described by the Cape Town mayor, "Water has traditionally been seen as a free (or cheap), plentiful natural resource. Pipes were leaking, taps often left running, suburban swimming pools filled (and toilets flushed) with drinking water." This points to a need for policy makers to work on both infrastructural but also cultural challenges of the resource management. 

Infrastructural Changes 

The municipal and national government responded by pumping funding into Cape Town. The first place infrastructure development was focused was on increasing its existing inefficiencies. This began with increasing the city's recycling of waste water, which pre-drought stood at only 5% (Seigel 2018), as well as reviewing the water tariff system of the region, where 25 litres per person is 'free', but citizens pay a 20r monthly subscription for the service. However, this was brought under formal review by the provincial government as it was seen to lead to 'excessive' water use. Next, the government turned to the water consumption of agriculture, monitoring farmers' use of water via Fruit Look - a satellite monitoring software. This aimed to trim losses of water through excessive irrigation, but also look at minimising nutrient runoff into water deposits in close proximity to farmland in order to increase accessible freshwater supplies. 

Furthermore, investment was focused into building de-salinisation plants to the North-West of the city and a groundwater regeneration program, which between December 2017 and May 2018 were modelled to provide between 130 and 400 million litres to relieve the water stress (FT 2018). These were part of the long term restructuring plan backed by the national government. One of the key issues behind the water crisis had been the overlapping jurisdictions of provincial, municipal and national governments, so it was now crucial to averting day zero that they were all working towards a mutual set of objectives. 

The city government also began drilling looking desperately for groundwater reserves, drilling at a reported 222 sites within 7 months. They passed emergency water permits which waived environmental protection legislation, enabling them to drill without the usual due diligence checks assigned to wild areas (Earther 2018). This is, according to the governmental management plan, a short term solution to the drought, with managed aquifer recharge (MAR) infrastructure the supposed replacement. Time will tell if the infrastructural changes will reduce the cities exposure, but the legislative changes regarding personal usage were of greater pertinence to averting the 2018 crisis. 

Personal water use restrictions 

The pressing issue facing policy makers was reducing Cape Town's water use from 900 million litres per day to below 500. 

This meant some fairly extreme restrictions on water use (labelled 'level 6b'), which included: 

• A limit of 50 litres/person/day - that's the same amount as 2 minute shower.
• A city wide goal of 450 million litres/day, a 50% reduction from August 2017 levels. 
• Extensive tariffs on business which used an excess to their allocated requirement, of up to 39,000r, measured on a monthly basis. 

These sanctions and guidelines helped to shift the businesses and residents of cape town towards a more conservative usage of water, radically reducing their usage to 550 million litres per day by the end of April 2018 (Muller 2018). By August 2018, these restrictions were lifted to level 5, allowing 87 litres per person per day, and are in sight to be further reduced by the end of the year. Whilst some residents did not abide by the guidelines, the majority did, and this action of the commons (in reference to the Introduction blog) helped avert the crisis, as well as some much needed clarity in the policy makers. This led to a replenishment of the city's water stores, returning to 56% from the crisis 38% and a forecasted wet winter to help replenish groundwater stores. 

Conclusions 

So, last week we learnt about how haphazard management and ignoring of long term threats led the city into a drought crisis. Yet the story of how Cape town averted the crisis comes more from the citizens of cape town than it does a political body or agenda. By stressing the need for citizens to reduce water usage and change their personal attitude to water use, the politicians of Cape Town started a push to avoid day zero which seemed to redeem an extraordinarily high level of buy-in from residents. My interpretation of this would once again hint to the tragedy of the commons - this second blog simply shows that it was more an issue of attitude and political management than any climatic force, and when the commons worked towards a mutual goal or reducing their usage, the hydrological crisis appeared to be more political than climatic.