Water resilience crucial – De Lille

IT WILL take at least three years for the City to deal with the impact of climate change and the drought, says mayor Patricia de Lille.

Welcoming delegates to Adaptation Futures 2018, the world’s leading conference on climate change adaptation at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, De Lille said the City had learnt many lessons when it came to climate change adaptation.

“When we talk about climate change, what we have learnt in the City of Cape Town is that what really matters and how you respond to climate change, are the actions that you are taking.

“You have to walk the talk. It’s no use complaining about the impact of climate change, immediate action is what is needed foremost,” she said.

“One thing that I can tell you we have learnt in terms of adaptation is that we had to reduce our water demand and usage.

“In January 2016 as a collective, the City of Cape Town used over 1.1 billion litres of water per day. As we speak today, in 2018, we have been able to bring down that water consumption to just over 500 million litres of water per day. So the opportunity out of the drought, I believe, is that Cape Town will emerge as one of the most water-resilient cities in the world because of how we had to adapt and how we had to mitigate all of the challenges.”

She said South Africa in February launched a successful global water-fund model, which seeks to introduce a public-private partnership in innovation financing to conserve watersheds and water resources. – African News Agency (ANA)