Privatise water supply

Wits water expert Craig Sheridan writes that solving the country’s water crisis depends on “politicians who listen to technical advice and engineers who understand social dynamics” (The drought crisis in Cape Town is a good opportunity to practise humility, March 27).

However, the water shortage is not so much technical and social as economic. It is about supply and demand, and the private sector is best placed to meet that challenge.

Take the example of oil, of which nearly 100-million barrels are produced every day. The world has never run out of oil, despite dire warnings for more than 100 years by various “experts”. There is no great mystery to this: when known oil reserves start to drop, private companies go out and find more of it, in places no one thought of looking before and using technology that never existed before. The oil price fluctuates accordingly, keeping supply and demand in balance.

Given the abundance of water on the planet in the form of rain, snow, seas, rivers and underground aquifers, it is a scandal that it should be in short supply.

Politics has a lot to do with it. Virtually all of the world’s water is in the hands of governments and municipalities. They have good intentions, but they do not have the capital, technological expertise or commercial incentives to keep the water flowing. Using less water is not the answer; producing more is.

The only sustainable solution to the global water crisis is to open the resource up to competition, market pricing and the power of technology. Thereafter, you can safely bet that it will never run out.

Robert Gentle Honeydew