City looks at green solutions
THE southern African region faces increased uncertainty and vulnerability with its water supply and is still emerging from one of the worst droughts in many years.
This is according to Water and Sanitation Minister, Gugile Nkwinti, who spoke during a session at the Water Institute of Southern Africa’s (Wisa) biennial conference and exhibition at the Cape Town International Convention Centre yesterday.
He said there was a need to build resilience into every aspect of thinking and planning, as the environment was constantly evolving.
“We live in a country that is the 30th driest in the world; a country where water and sanitation services were previously used to promote inequality.
“We need to face up to these inequalities where they exist and, in South Africa in particular, robustly deal with the more than 3 million people who do not have access to a safe and reliable water supply, the 14.1 million people who do not have access to safe sanitation and, furthermore, deal with the very low level of reliability of services (64%) as a result of ageing infrastructure and poor operations and maintenance.”
Nkwinti added: “While an emphasis is placed on Southern African case studies and research, international examples applicable to the southern African context are welcome.”
This year’s Wisa theme of “Breaking barriers, connecting ideas” seeks to not only address the past, but also existing and future water resource challenges by promoting collaboration, co-operation and integration.
“This supports the objective to create the perfect opportunity for people in the water sector to network with sector partners, to create new partnerships as well as strengthen existing ones and work together to achieve a common goal of sustainable water resources and water services provision.
“We are looking forward to hearing more about new and emerging concepts in our industry, especially the naturebased solutions that will help us to manage water more sustainably,” Nkwinti said.
Over 250 companies are part of the conference exhibition, and a further 25 local water-wise companies will be exhibiting tomorrow in partnership with the City’s 110% Green initiative.
Wisa 2018 local organising committee chairperson, Natasia van Binsbergen, said it has been 55 years since the first water-related conference was held in South Africa.
“The need for a forum for the discussion of issues relevant to water was as pertinent then as it is today. In South Africa, this has been brought home to us in recent years as climate change has heightened our water insecurity. Cape Town has been in the news as it faced the very real possibility of running out of this precious and limited resource.”
Deputy Mayor of the City, Ian Neilson, said that, with the recent good rainfall in June, the City has seen a steady increase in dam levels, but was by no means out of the woods yet.
“We have no way of predicting with certainty that this good rainfall will persist into July and August, and so we must all continue to keep our water consumption as low as possible for a while longer.
“Rainfall variation over recent years is greater than anything we have experienced in the past 100 years,” he said.