Climate resilience should be anchored in water security
The SA coal lobby took another punch to the nose recently when the National Water Tribunal upheld an appeal in opposition to setting aside the two water licence agreements necessary for the development of the Khanyisa coal-fired power station.
The tribunal’s ruling stated that the water-use licence application was procedurally flawed and the department of water & sanitation “had not adequately weighed up the impact of climate change on water security in the region” when assessing whether to grant a licence. This is yet another hurdle in a torturous process that has seen pricing concerns, lack of interested funders, lengthy lead times and pressure to decarbonise SA’s energy system all taking their toll on the project.
This ruling finally takes heed of the state’s “Long-Term Adaptation Scenarios” modelling, which reports that “climate change impacts on SA are likely to be felt primarily via effects on water resources”.
Current trends across Southern Africa are showing how periods of extreme drought can coincide with increased prevalence of flooding, with a net negative effect on the region’s water security. This should be of critical concern to South Africans as the department of environment, forestry & fisheries estimates that SA already exploits 98% of its available water resources.
With Covid grabbing all the headlines in 2020, many would have missed that for the second time in less than two years, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in March declared the drought crisis affecting multiple provinces a “national state of disaster”. Businesses in areas worst hit by the previous drought-induced state of disaster, such as in the Western Cape, can attest to the devastating water-related effects of climate change.
The economic effects of the drought prompted the province’s department of environmental affairs & development planning to commission an assessment of the potential effects of climate change on the regional economy. This culminated in a consolidated report outlining the economic risks and opportunities of developing climate resilience in the Western Cape.
A key takeaway from the report is that a failure to invest adequately in adapting to climate change could result in the province’s GDP contracting by more than 17% by 2040.
Effective investment in enhancing climate resilience could boost the province’s GDP by more than 15% above the noaction baseline for the period.
For the greater Cape Town region, the adaptation investment with the most bang for buck is catchment restoration. An investment of R372m would generate water gains of 50-billion litres a year within five years, compared with business as usual. That is equivalent to one-sixth of the city’s current annual consumption needs.
In other areas, the business case for climate adaptation investment is even easier to make. In the upper Olifants in Mpumalanga, coal-fired power generation accounts for 37% of water use, while nationally coal mining and power generation consume 5% and 2% of the country’s water, respectively. Given the climate outlook and the centrality of water security in any sane national economic resilience strategy, it is high time the department got with the coal and climate programme.
While redirecting state investments from coal to renewables now has a wellestablished (albeit circuitous) path, innovative businesses such as the Toronto Group have spotted the gap in ecological infrastructure investment opportunities, with its first-of-akind Forest Stewardship Council-certified charcoal manufacturing plant using biomass from alien invasive species harvested to enhance the flow of water in riparian zones in the Western Cape.
Biomass-based initiatives such as this are carbon neutral, because the carbon dioxide released during the charcoal production process is absorbed by the regrowth of the indigenous vegetation that replaces the alien species.
Elsewhere, there is a growing awareness of the viability of other biomass-based initiatives such as animal feed, biochar, composite board, crude oil replacement and furniture businesses, which while meeting market demand also deliver enhanced climate resilience outcomes.