Water stress opens floodgate for natural resource literacy
BEYOND the clamour around who is to blame; conflicting scenario descriptions of Day Zero and its predicted date; individual and community responses and helpful tips, the drought – now officially the worst on record – has done us all some good.
1. It has heightened public awareness of the reality of climate change impacts. The “debate” idea pushed by those attached to or invested in the old order of doing things should have been firmly put to bed by now. The new normal concept can’t be limited to water only either; fires, migration, health, economy and security are patently part of the picture and a holistic response is required.
2. It is remarkable that even at Davos, the cool and well-watered Swiss meeting site of the World Economic Forum where talk is usually about economics and free trade, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi started the week by telling the 2 500 strong audience that climate change was the greatest threat to civilisation.
He was followed by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa who said: “Climate change is a reality. We’re facing a real total disaster in Cape Town which is going to affect 4 million people.”
Meanwhile, other water stressed cities like Los Angeles in the US, São Paulo in Brazil and Singapore, consider who will be next.
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which South Africa signed up for in 2015, come into 3D perspective. Read them at www. undp.org/content/undp/en/home/ sustainable-development-goals.
3. Realising that leaders can do only so much, communities have started working co-operatively and innovatively together. There are domestic street and faith-based responses, workplace plans and frail-support initiatives.
As people work together, mesh talents and grow trust, more dots are joined, giving issues of sustainability and co-operative solutions new meaning and practical application direction.
4.There has been a rapid water literacy and numeracy upgrade. People are interested. It is important to know that 25 litres of water weighs 25kg, where it goes if you have to flush it, what a catchment is and what happens in it.
5. Talking of flushing, the drought has foregrounded the long-standing, but politically constrained, topic of the need to move away from waterborne sewage. Sufficient water meant the more affluent could afford this luxury. Scarcity means we all need to make appropriate, technically sound plans which should see the saving of at least 30 million litres of water a day. Add to this modifications in all the other waste-water pursuits and the savings become enormous.
A few years ago, controversial water academic and activist Anthony Turton said South Africa did not have the dilution capacity for all its pollution. That’s even truer today. By addressing the problem as Plan A we start mitigating the degradation of rivers, wetlands, estuaries and oceans as well.
6. The government’s ability to plan realistically and respond to emergency situations is being tested and subjected to scrutiny. Not satisfied with glib answers or spin-doctoring, the public is interrogating the reasoning and planning in a way that demonstrates deeper understanding of and engagement with issues.
Can you flush with seawater? Are 200 water points sufficient for 3 million people? Is salt-water intrusion into our groundwater likely? These are some of the questions being posed to politicians and officials, who are also being swept along on a steep learning curve.
7. Practical responses to the drought, such as organising a rain tank, bending the ball-valve arm down in your toilet cistern to reduce the flush volume and fitting aerators to tap nozzles have been a big boost for self-sufficiency and resilience thinking that is pollinating other areas of life, including energy, waste reduction, transport efficiency and food security.
The empowerment that goes with positive feedback from such efforts means a trend towards less externalisation of our needs and responsibilities and a greater sense of pride in solving problems.
8. The drought is a timely reminder of the absolute need to decouple growth from resource exploitation and environmental degradation. People’s ability to halve their water consumption in a year, and then do more, shows what is possible.
Cape Town’s fossil fuel-based energy footprint is still way too high. Can that be as dramatically reduced? Could the plastic waste stream from single-use packaging become a trickle? Is it feasible to so increase marine protected areas and compliance and change consumer behaviour so effectively that we pull back from Day Zero on the fishing front too?
9. This kind of circular thinking has also put the spotlight on the essential need for waste-water recycling. Cape Town will be joining other major cities in making this part of the new normal. The benefits are significant: less effluent to the sea; less pollution into rivers; greater water security; tighter control on commercial and industrial outflows; more training and jobs for water technicians and greater understanding of groundwater recharge implications.
10. Queues at natural springs and seeps around the Cape Town testify to the, possibly unspoken, appreciation of ecosystem services from wetlands, rivers, the ocean, springs and aquifers and the need to protect these from pollution and overuse.
You can wash in the sea, relax in the shade of riverine vegetation and strip nutrients from your grey water with the help of a homeplanted wetland. Kikuyu grass is giving way to indigenous plants and local hack groups taking out black wattle and Port Jackson are water heroes.
Before we get carried away with the idea of the drought being the best thing ever we must note the increase in the sales of bottled water and the filling of pools by commercial firms are practices that promote the idea of commodifying a common good and pitch the haves against the have-nots.
Dowling is a Western Cape member of the Wildlife and Environmental Society of South Africa.