Navigating a drought crisis in South Africa, Part I

In January 2018, Cape Town was faced with a drought which threatened the water supplies of 3.7 million people. In this blog we examine the causes of the crisis, which are well beyond a simple lack of rainfall.

Hello and welcome back to The Politics of Water!

We’re back and as promised discussing a fascinating incident of African Hydropolitics. This edition and next we will be examining the drought crisis of Cape Town from 2015-2018, and looking at what we can learn from such an event. 

Many things come to mind when one hears drought crisis: global warming, harsh climates and a seemingly unavoidable act of God. However, in this blog we will learn how much of the drought crisis, which nearly left a city of 3.7 million people with no flowing water, was more associated with political events than climatic. 

The iconic cityscape of Cape Town (Credits Milnerton Golf Course 2018)

Cape Town's Water Management

Cape Town is monitored by an extensive team of hydrologists, running real time models which incorporate the whole surrounding basin and modelled precipitation scenarios. Not being a tropical climate at the best of times, a large population such as this - with demands of around 900 million litres per day - requires prudent management. Cape Town is fed by a series of Dams built between 1980 and 2009 (Muller 2018), which supply the main water networks of the Western Cape. These are monitored as part of the basin modelling of the Western Cape Water Supply System (WCWSS), which is designed to monitor and adapt water policy for the region to conserve resources. As listed in the Muller (2018) paper, 'Cape Town's Drought: Don't blame climate change', the hydrologists had long been informing the government of an increased exposure to a drought cycle, due to the inadequate policy regarding per capita water use and a dam network which was still overly reliant upon precipitation for recharge, in the eyes of the WCWSS.

However, this was largely ignored. Primarily because of heavy rainfall in the winters preceding the drought. IN 2014, the city’s main reservoirs were 97% full – this seemingly perfect level of supply meant the concerns of WCWSS hydrologists were all but mothballed by policy makers. The municipal government for the Western Cape had a sizeable 680 million rand (£36.4m) budget for water infrastructure development in the region, yet spent these funds elsewhere to Cape Town, presenting the full reserves as evidence management in the city was adequate (Western Cape Gov. 2018). This was the major failing of the government, which coincided with a rarely seen multi-year drought. 

Now, this leads us on to a recurring theme of this blog and something which will persist to cause issues amongst the hydro political case studies we look at – Short sighted management which ignores long term threats commonly equates to poor management.

As we discussed in the previous blog, Introduction, when communal resources are managed effectively, scarcity is often avoidable by actions of the commons. However, when long term conservation and the words of experts are ignored for short term policies and populism, a tragedy of the commons type scenario can prevail, and this is similar to what happened in Cape Town. 

The Drought

In 2015, a drought ensued – cutting reservoir supplies by 26%, followed by an 11% fall in 2016, and then a further 22% in 2017. In the space of 3 years the 97% full reservoirs of 2014 had become 38% full and management were caught somewhat asleep at the wheel (Wolski 2018). Water policy on usage was minimal in the first few years and was becoming increasingly drastic and accelerated by the time of the crisis in 2017. 

Capetonians face extreme water use limits in the event of day zero (Credits AIDC 2018)

So why did the Western Cape government not act sooner? Enter another recurring hydro political theme – long term strategies which tackle non visible issues are rarely politically popular.We can *hopefully* all agree that democracy is a wonderful thing, but regular public elections do have some downsides. One of which is that politicians (particularly in poorer countries) have to be seen to be using tight budgets for projects and policies popular with voters – building expensive infrastructure and implementing water usage limits when reservoirs were 97% full was unlikely to gain political traction. Thus, the concerns of the hydrologists from the WCWSS about supply vulnerability were not addressed until the problem was deemed to be of a serious enough nature – in the form of a drought crisis for 3.7 million people.

Mike Muller’s 2018 paper, which much of this blog sources, is aptly titled “Cape Town’s drought: don’t blame climate change” and this title has led me to ask, how much of the hydrological crisis we see in Africa are attributed disproportionately to climatic events, rather than to poor political management? This is a question we’ll be looking at in a later edition of the blog, so stay tuned!

By 2018, reservoirs were down to 48 billion litres from their 480 billion maximum capacity (Financial Times) and the city was fast approaching what was referred to as ‘day zero’. This means when water supply of the city would be cut to 25 litres per person - for context in the US in 2017 the average was 337 litres per person per day. Yes, you read correctly, 337 – i.e. if day zero was realised, forecasted to arrive before the end of the year in May 2017, then the 3.7 million residents of Cape Town would be living on one toilet flush worth of water. 

This was a crisis of seemingly great magnitude, caused by a combination of a harsh climatic event but more so a lack of long term foresight by the city’s management. So how did they avert this crisis? Next week we will look at the methods employed by the politicians in charge of the city to reduce water usage and save the city’ supply. We will also look at the legacy of the drought going forward, and how this can be applied to other African government’s water policy. 

Thanks for reading, and see you next edition of The Politics of Water!