Time to design a new water future

I WRITE this from the 2017 International Water Association (IWA) Water and Development Congress in Argentina, where 2 000 delegates from 30 countries have gathered.

There is consensus that, globally, water security is declining. This is backed up by barometers such as the Global Risk Register compiled annually by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

A water crisis has consistently been one of the top five risks to the global economy in recent times.

This will come as no surprise to South Africans, who have been subjected to the worst El Niño event in more than 20 years. The country’s recovery has been at best sluggish with miserly post-drought rainfall patterns resulting in the City of Cape Town introducing extreme water rationing as it reached its highest level of water stress.

While the City of Cape Town represents an extreme, many South African cities and towns are one poor rainfall season away from this scenario.

Is this the new normal? There is a sufficiency of research, including an examination of the past 100 years of rainfall data, to support the theory that southern Africa’s foreseeable future will be characterised by lower-than-average precipitation with longer drought episodes. Even more worrying is the change in the rainfall modality to shorter, more intense episodes prone to flooding events.

This not only heralds the continued water availability conundrum, but is also a severe threat to the existing infrastructure platforms, such as roads. The country’s transport infrastructure was designed for a different rainfall pattern within a season. Potholes are not only a function of poor maintenance, but also of roads designed to manage and tolerate different, more moderate, rainfall. Two critical questions emerge: First, are we trying to fix a 21st century problem with 20th century technology and 19th century operating rules? We continue to obsess about surface freshwater solutions when we have available to us some of the best technologies to treat wastewater and saline waters (either seawater or brackish and polluted inland sources) as “new” water sources – or, as the Singaporeans call them, “new taps”. We have remarkable science that enables safe, hygienic sanitation using less than half-a-litre of water per flush, less than a 20th of the current standard. This enables up to a 30% water saving for every household.

Second, when are we going to act decisively? This is the weiji moment. We are explicitly clear regarding the wei, or danger, associated with this new normal. We need to spend more effort on the strategy to realise the ji, or opportunity associated with crisis. We have the possibility of turning our fortunes, a chance to completely redefine the water management paradigm by the industrialisation of water and sanitation in South Africa as envisioned in the 2017 Industrial Policy Action Plan.

We are well positioned to develop a water private sector that has the potential to set up a manufacturing base and supply chain producing goods and services to empower water and sanitation services – solutions that can enable a 100% assurance of supply… and enhance inclusive economic growth.

● Naidoo is chief executive of the Water Research Commission and a member of the National Council on Innovation. He writes in his personal capacity.