Ideas flow as water-challenged cities work to avert Day Zero

Cape Town’s successful avoidance of Day Zero, following a serious water crisis in recent years, was held up as a shining example by more than 130 global experts who convened at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) this week.

Cape Town is one of 12 major cities of the world regarded as ‘most likely to run out of drinking water’ – the W12 – along with São Paulo, Bangalore, Beijing, Cairo, Jakarta, Moscow, Istanbul, Mexico City, London, Tokyo and Miami.

Administrators from these cities met with scientific, policy and non-profit organisation leaders to develop a W12 framework – a road map of what they and their partners need to do to effectively deal with the crisis of water shortages globally.

This initial mini-conference is a pre-cursor to the W12 Congress that will take place in May, also in Cape Town.

Water, a resource without substitute

Minister of Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation Lindiwe Sisulu met with stakeholders ahead of this week’s conference, to discuss how they could help the ministry to secure funding via public-private partnerships to implement South Africa’s National Water and Sanitation Master Plan.

International funding requirements hold that this be managed by local banks and insurers. Sisulu says a key objective of the master plan is to structure the department to make it fit for purpose and able to eliminate wastage and any loss due to corruption and mismanagement of resources.

Sisulu tweeted the following on Wednesday:

Water is everybody’s business and is a resource without substitute.

— Lindiwe Sisulu (@LindiweSisuluSA) January 29, 2020

Key interventions outlined by task teams at this week’s conference include:

• To use and learn from the experiences of seriously water-challenged cities such as Cape Town to guide future thinking;
• To collaborate in the ongoing challenge of sustaining water security, with stakeholders from government, civil society, non-governmental organisations and business coming together; and
• To change the way water is currently managed to mitigate the dangers of compromised supply in the future.

Need for improved water literacy

Speaking at a press briefing at the One and Only Hotel in Cape Town, civil society representative Reverend Rachel Noah said climate change should be included in the national school curriculum as a matter of urgency.

This sentiment was echoed by Professor Jenny Day, a freshwater ecologist and chair of Cape Town’s Protected Areas Advisory Committee. “Two useful projects to look at going forward include improving water literacy – at school level through the curriculum, and for larger society via social media and citizen action projects – as well as water governance,” said Day.

“We need closer examination of the decision processes around who gets what water, when and how.

“The flow of water is a right but currently it flows towards power, and that needs to change.”

Dr Gregg Brill, deputy director of the Green Economy Programme within the Western Cape Department of Economic Development and Tourism, said government and business need to mainstream innovation as far as possible and build circular economies around water.

“Government, businesses, the agricultural industry, society – we all need to work together to embed a value system that drives collective decision-making based on trust and transparency, fairness, collaboration and integrity,” he said.

“The global water crisis means that we all need to step back and start reconsidering the economic, social and ecological value of water.”

WATCH: 5 Key water lessons, by Jessica Fell of the Future Water Institute at UCT

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