Mental flexibility equals fluidity

Earlier in 2018, Cape Town was told it would make history by April 16. On that date, dubbed Day Zero, it was expected to become the world’s first major city to run out of water because of an extended drought. More than 1-million households would face extreme rationing or no water at all as reservoirs went dry.

But then the date was pushed back to June 4. And last week, Day Zero was set for July 9. It was not rain that helped delay the threatened cutoff. Rather, the people of Cape Town have cut their water consumption by more than half in a collective effort to share a valuable resource. The residents’ regard for each other went up and with it the amount of available water. The city still has far to go to adjust its supply and demand of water. Yet its ability so far to manage the crisis might serve as a model for other drought-stricken regions.

Worldwide, water availability is in decline as populations rise and people move to cities. This is forcing a new focus on ingenuity and co-operation to ensure supplies. The hard part is achieving a change of thinking that recognises a common problem that requires shared solutions. A mental flexibility must match the fluidity of water.

This point was made in a 2016 book Water is for Fighting Over and Other Myths about Water by John Fleck, who warns against the “myths of conflict” over water that lead to legal and political stalemates and deny people’s adaptive capacity. “The most pervasive of the myths is that we are ‘about to run out of water’, ” he writes. This fear only creates a dangerous feedback loop. It also ignores history. “Again and again we have seen city and farm communities adapt and continue to grow and prosper without using more water, often, in fact, using less,” he writes.

The key is to first build up the social capital in a watershed — the bonds that bring people together for an understanding of the resources and each other’s needs. The physical capital, such as rain-water barrels or a new diversion of water flows, then can follow. Boston, February 22