PROTECT OUR VITAL WATER RESOURCES
THE global community is celebrating World Water Day on Friday, March 22.
Central to the global message is that there is one Earth with limited natural resources which are not expanding, while populations and businesses are growing faster, helped by technological advancement.
This year’s World Water Day Theme is “Water for All”. The message is about encouraging people and businesses to be aware and take action against threats to our environment that in many cases are caused by our unsustainable activities, such as deforestation, river pollution through irresponsible mining, excessive use of pesticides, fertilisers, dilapidating urban waste water purification infrastructure, and many more.
Water is worth even more than fuel per litre: no water, no life!
Citizens, business and the government have an obligation to carefully manage water as the country tries to achieve aspirations carried in the Sustainable Development Goals: 2030, Africa Agenda 2063, and our own National Development Plan: 2030.
Our water resources face ever-increasing levels of pollution. In fact, research reports point to water crisis conditions! Tap water in South Africa used to be rated among the best in the world, but that has changed.
World Economic Forum Risk 2019 once again listed water in the top 10 risks. Both rivers and estuaries are seriously affected, well beyond 80%; bad news to any job creation efforts, be it through the Green or Blue economies.
About 61% of South Africa’s land is moderately to highly degraded, posing a serious threat to food security and facilitating soil erosion that leads to dam siltation, rendering them useless infrastructure.
Water resources and land are intricately connected; what happens on land is mirrored in our rivers, dams, wetlands and estuaries.
Businesses such as agriculture and tourism depend on a water supply of acceptable quality
Businesses such as agriculture and tourism depend on a water supply of acceptable quantity and quality.
It is important to understand that healthy natural ecosystems and landscapes can help rivers to selfpurify.
Wetlands are well known for purifying water that flows through them, thereby improving water quality and sustaining long-term flows downstream, even during droughts!
Communities, particularly those in rural areas where the majority of people rely on untreated raw water for their livelihood, incur the costs of poor water quality.
Research has already demonstrated that rehabilitating a 125-hectare wetland at R1.7 million can purify miningpolluted water and save on purification costs, thereby adding more than R130m to revenue.
It is for this reason that businesses need to look at investing in the environment as a risk-mitigating measure, and to partner with the government and society in managing the environment.
Citizens, in partnership with business, must adopt and monitor stretches of wetlands, rivers, dams and estuaries closer to their places of residence.
We must act now before it is too late to prevent further degradation of our water resources.