No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Some systems perspectives on demand management during Cape Town's 2015-2018 water crisis Some systems perspectives on demand management during Cape Town's 2015-2018 water crisis
Abstract
Cape Town recently suffered severe water shortages triggered by a multi-year drought. These shortages were aggravated by reliance on demand management to balance supply and demand in the rapidly growing city. This article considers the interaction between the supply-side planning system and the less systematic approach used to plan and manage what is characterized as the demand-side system. Political priorities and preferences as well as perceptions of and attitudes towards risk influenced demand forecasts and development decisions. The experience illustrates the importance of a more systematic approach to demand forecasting to reduce the risk of supply failures.
... The severity of the drought presented new challenges to the existing management and governance capacity to ensure equitable and sustainable water service delivery. The city's water supply infrastructure and demand management practice were unprepared for the 'rare and severe' event of three consecutive years of below average rainfall (Wolski, 2018;Muller, 2019). Despite a potential total storage volume of about 900,000 Ml of water (enough water for around a year and a half of normal usage, after taking evaporation into account), Cape Town's reservoirs fell from 97% full in 2014 to less than 20% in May 2018 (Ouweneel et al., 2020;Cole et al., 2021). ...
... Poor communication in the early stages of the drought (Hellberg, 2020) and a lack of trust in the administration contributed to a near-panic situation at the threat of 'Day Zero' as dams almost ran dry in the first half of 2018 (Enqvist and Ziervogel, 2019;Simpson et al., 2020c). 'Day Zero' was avoided largely through public response, water demand management and the 2018 winter rains (Sorensen, 2017;Booysen et al., 2019a;Muller, 2019;Rodina, 2019b;Matikinca et al., 2020). At a household level, responses to the drought showed everyday residents can display unprecedented degrees of resilience (Sorensen, 2017), including behavioural and attitudinal shifts and technological innovation across the full socioeconomic spectrum (Ouweneel et al., 2020). ...
... The effect of communication at different stages in the drought highlights how critical information needs to be provided in a format and language that empowers people to act appropriately and collaboratively (Muller, 2019;Rodina, 2019b;Rodina, 2019a). Getting political decisions made in a timely fashion and with public support is a long-standing challenge for managers of urban water supplies (Muller, 2017;Muller, 2019). ...
... The severity of the drought presented new challenges to the existing management and governance capacity to ensure equitable and sustainable water service delivery. The city's water supply infrastructure and demand management practice were unprepared for the 'rare and severe' event of three consecutive years of below average rainfall (Wolski, 2018;Muller, 2019). Despite a potential total storage volume of about 900,000 Ml of water (enough water for around a year and a half of normal usage, after taking evaporation into account), Cape Town's reservoirs fell from 97% full in 2014 to less than 20% in May 2018 (Ouweneel et al., 2020;Cole et al., 2021). ...
... Poor communication in the early stages of the drought (Hellberg, 2020) and a lack of trust in the administration contributed to a near-panic situation at the threat of 'Day Zero' as dams almost ran dry in the first half of 2018 (Enqvist and Ziervogel, 2019;Simpson et al., 2020c). 'Day Zero' was avoided largely through public response, water demand management and the 2018 winter rains (Sorensen, 2017;Booysen et al., 2019a;Muller, 2019;Rodina, 2019b;Matikinca et al., 2020). At a household level, responses to the drought showed everyday residents can display unprecedented degrees of resilience (Sorensen, 2017), including behavioural and attitudinal shifts and technological innovation across the full socioeconomic spectrum (Ouweneel et al., 2020). ...
... The effect of communication at different stages in the drought highlights how critical information needs to be provided in a format and language that empowers people to act appropriately and collaboratively (Muller, 2019;Rodina, 2019b;Rodina, 2019a). Getting political decisions made in a timely fashion and with public support is a long-standing challenge for managers of urban water supplies (Muller, 2017;Muller, 2019). ...
Birkmann, J., E. Liwenga, R. Pandey, E. Boyd, R. Djalante, F. Gemenne, W. Leal Filho, P.F. Pinho, L. Stringer, and D. Wrathall, et al. 2022. Poverty, Livelihoods and Sustainable Development. In: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, M. Tignor, E.S. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Craig, S. Langsdorf, S. Löschke, V. Möller, A. Okem, B. Rama (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press. In Press. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/
... Changing rainfall patterns, declines in precipitation and runoff, and increased evapotranspiration rates attributable to climate change are the most likely physical drivers of future water scarcity in Africa (Gan et al., 2016;Markonis et al., 2021), a situation that will be exacerbated by human drivers like population increase (Ahmadalipour et al., 2019). But we know in Africa total amounts of water can mask variabilities in access and utility as water scarcity is determined by more than just physical amounts of bulk water, but also broader developmental dimensions such as governance, institutions, gender equality, poverty, security, education, and health (Asmall et al., 2021;Muller, 2019;Muller, 2020;Stringer et al., 2021). Further, climate change does not only affect the hydrological cycle, but it has also direct and indirect impacts on these societal drivers of water scarcity (Haughey et al., 2019;Hurlbert et al., 2019;Smith et al., 2019;K. ...
... Given such contextual exposures and vulnerabilities, water scarcity in Africa needs to be understood within broader social and developmental contexts. Further, a lack of effective water delivery, especially under shock or stress conditions (Simpson, 2019;Simpson et al., 2019b;Simpson et al., 2020a;Simpson et al., 2020b), has led scholars to indicate management and governance failures as a leading causes of water scarcity (Muller, 2019;Rugemalila and Gibbs, 2015). ...
... The burden of water scarcity is felt hardest by the primary water collector in rural and urban contexts (Grasham et al., 2019). For such reasons, water scarcity responses need to go beyond supply, technological, planning and management imperatives (Muller, 2019;Scheba and Millington, 2019;Vanham et al., 2018) to also consider their social capital, institutional, livelihoods and wellbeing dimensions (Nhamo and Agyepong, 2019;Ouweneel et al., 2020;Petrie, 2017;Simpson et al., 2020a;Simpson et al., 2019c;Ziolkowska, 2016). ...
Water scarcity is a global challenge, yet existing responses are failing to cope with current shocks and stressors, including those attributable to climate change. In sub-Saharan Africa, the impacts of water scarcity threaten livelihoods and wellbeing across the continent and are driving a broad range of adaptive responses. This paper describes trends of water scarcity for Africa and outlines climate impacts on key water-related sectors on food systems, cities, livelihoods and wellbeing, conflict and security, economies, and ecosystems. It then uses systematic review methods, including the Global Adaptation Mapping Initiative, to analyse 240 articles and identify adaptation characteristics of planned and autonomous responses to water scarcity across Africa. The most common impact drivers responded to are drought and participation variability. The most frequently identified actors responding to water scarcity include individuals or households (32%), local government (15%) and national government (15%), while the most common types of response are behavioural and cultural (30%), technological and infrastructural (27%), ecosystem-based (25%) and institutional (18%). Most planned responses target low-income communities (31%), women (20%), and indigenous communities (13%), but very few studies target migrants, ethnic minorities or those living with disabilities. There is a lack of coordination of planned adaptation at scale across all relevant sectors and regions, and lack of legal and institutional frameworks for their operation. Most responses to water scarcity are coping and autonomous responses that showed only minor adjustments to business-as-usual water practices, suggesting limited adaptation depth. Maladaptation is associated with one or more dimension of responses in almost 20% of articles. Coordinating institutional responses, carefully planned technologies, planning for projected climate risks including extension of climate services and increased climate change literacy, and integrating indigenous knowledge will help to address identified challenges of water scarcity towards more adaptive responses across Africa.
... They dropped to such low levels in early 2018 that Cape Town was at risk of becoming the first major city worldwide to face a "Day Zero" when the municipal piped system would essentially stop delivering water to homes and businesses. To curb demand, the local municipality implemented a variety of demand-side management tools (Booysen et al., 2019;Brick et al., 2018;Brühl & Visser, 2021;Muller, 2019;Parks et al., 2019;Sinclair-Smith & Winter, 2019;Taing et al., 2019). Households faced increasingly stringent controls on water usage, forbidding watering gardens or pools in earlier stages and restricting residents to 50 L of water per person per day by February 2018. ...
... At the same time, the City increased its efforts to raise water conservation awareness and to inform the public about the severity of the drought (Booysen et al., 2019;Sinclair-Smith et al., 2018;Ziervogel, 2018). All interventions combined led to a more than 50% decrease in consumption in less than three years (Brühl & Visser, 2021;Muller, 2019). Decomposing the marginal impacts of each type of demand-side policy in a causal framework is very difficult given that the various policies overlapped temporally and spatially and likely had lagged effects that would confound event-type analyses. ...
We calculate the first distributional statistics for municipal water use with 14.9 million monthly billing records for a half million households in Cape Town, South Africa, from 2014 to 2018. These years span a historic drought and a multi‐faceted package of conservation programs that achieved a 50% citywide drop in consumption. We find that the top 10% of households consumed 31% of water before the drought, with the Gini coefficient showing clear seasonal peaks driven by outdoor water use. Matching billing records to fine‐grained census data from 2011, we find that the correlation between income and water use in the winter was 0.08 but rose to 0.36 during outdoor watering seasons. This correlation declines before switching signs by the end of the drought. The city's increasing block tariff implied that the top 10% of users generate 50%–60% of utility revenues. Although before the drought these top users were more likely to be high income, the composition of top water users changed during the drought. Average income of top users during the drought was 35% lower than the average income of top users before the drought. Our results suggest that Cape Town's policy of providing a free allowance of 10.5 kL (m³) per month to qualify indigent households helped protect many, but not all, from multiple steep tariff increases.
... The academic and policy literature on the California drought tends to focus on the statelevel response, particularly the various EOs implemented by then-Governor Jerry Brown and the implementation and enforcement of these orders through the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) and Department of Water Resources (DWR), and generally discusses urban water districts' actions as they emerged under the auspices of these state agencies(Lund et al. 2018;Maggioni 2015;Pérez-Urdiales and Baerenklau 2020;Tortajada et al. 2017). Perspectives on the Western Cape drought typically center city-level action in referencing "Cape Town's Day Zero water crisis," with then-Mayor Patricia de Lille, then-Deputy Mayor Ian Nielsen, and other highlevel municipal figures as the primary faces of the response(Bischoff-Mattson et al. 2020;Brick, De Martino, and Visser 2018;Joubert and Ziervogel 2019;Muller 2018;Parks et al. 2019;Shepherd 2019;Ziervogel 2019). The basic logic underlying these respective scales of focus is that while California includes several major urban areas with diverse water use dynamics, Cape ...
Recent severe droughts in California, USA and the Western Cape Province, South Africa attracted global attention as water scarcity challenged cities, rural communities, agricultural industries, and ecosystems in varied ways. Governments responded to these conditions by setting and ultimately achieving water conservation targets, and scholarship evaluating the causes and consequences of both droughts from diverse perspectives emerged. This study extends existing scholarship by comparing drought responses in terms of their effects on water (in)justice, or social inequality as evinced in relationships to water access networks. In so doing, I explain how and why the drought responses materialized and manifested in widened inequalities, using information from previous research on the droughts and drought responses, policy documents, and interviews with key informants in each region about their perspectives on the droughts and the ensuing policy responses. I analyzed these data using mechanism-based process tracing methods. In both cases, causal mechanisms linking government responses to widened inequalities include what I identify as values-reinforcement mechanisms and strategic communication mechanisms. The common presence of these mechanisms reveals the resilience of dominant social values and constructions, even in response to socio-environmental challenges. The particular importance of interlinked policy- and household-level decisions around groundwater resources during drought events also emerged through comparative analysis of the cases. To conclude, I suggest practical implications based on these insights and areas for future research, highlighting droughts as consequential policy sites for advancing social and environmental justice.
... The causes, symptoms, and oversights can be mapped onto the diagnostic process of Section 2.2. Muller (2020) argues that there was overreliance on demand management to balance supply and demand in the rapidly growing city. This argument suggests an insufficient physical examination, an underappreciation of the physical characteristics of the area, namely the capacity of the water storage infrastructure. ...
Drought management is currently informed by a variety of approaches, mostly responding to drought crisis when it happens. Toward more effective and integrated drought management, we introduce a conceptual drought diagnosis framework inspired by diagnostic concepts from the field of medicine. This framework comprises five steps: 1. Initial diagnostic assessment; 2. Diagnostic testing; 3. Consultation; 4. Communication of the diagnosis; and 5. Treatment and prognosis. To illustrate the need for the proposed approach, four case studies of recently drought‐affected regions were selected: the city of Cape Town, the state of California, the Northeast region of Brazil, and the Horn of Africa. Contrasting elements for these cases include the geographic extent and political boundaries, climate, socio‐economics, and the relevance of different water resources (e.g., rainfall, reservoirs, and aquifers). For each case, we identified documented practices and policies and reflected on them in terms of drought misdiagnosis or incomplete diagnosis that have aggravated socio‐economic and environmental drought impacts. A common example is the preference for technical solutions (e.g., installing infrastructure to augment water supply), rather than measures that reduce vulnerability. Analysis of these four drought case studies confirmed the anticipated need for a comprehensive approach to drought diagnosis for more successful treatment and prevention of drought. Using an analogy with medical science can be helpful toward comprehensively diagnosing droughts for a variety of contexts and assessing the effectiveness of proposed interventions. This framework can help drought managers to be more proactive in enabling drought‐affected regions to become more drought resilient in the future.
... Otto et al. [44] concluded that human-induced climate change tripled the likelihood of the 2015-2018 drought. The extreme, multi-year low winter rainfall was the primary driver of the 2015-2018 Cape Town drought, but management of the WCWSS also contributed to the water stress [45]. ...
Disaster planning for slow-onset city-wide shocks will be become increasingly necessary, particularly as cities face increasingly severe climate hazards. This paper provides unique insight into the disaster planning and management that was undertaken by the City of Cape Town government in response to its most severe hydrological drought on record. It describes how risk was understood and why decisions were made on key elements of the plan, including trigger points, risk prioritisation and mitigation, and the location and design of points of distribution of water rations for the public. Reflecting upon the authors’ experience and interviews with senior City officials who worked on the drought disaster planning and response, the paper extracts five key lessons learnt that have since been applied during the COVID-19 pandemic: (i) the need for cross-functional planning and response skills, (ii) the need for integrated, up-to-date and scale-appropriate data; (iii) the importance of scenario-based simulations, communication and rapid costing to enable the rapid scaling-up of a response; (iv) the value of being able to use outsourced expert capacity effectively; and (v) the application of previously used disaster management and planning experience to build resilience in cities. These lessons, captured in a visual framework, help reflect on capabilities required for responding to future city-scale disasters. The paper provides an informative case study for other cities and risk managers, and will be particularly useful for global South contexts that face drought and other slow-onset disasters, most recently illustrated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
... Integrated Water Management (IWM) is crucial to address water insecurity caused by either drought or floods (Cameron andKatzschner, 2017, Allan et al., 2013). Specific strategies included subnational financing (Ding et al., 2019, Cameron andKatzschner, 2017), demand management through subsidies, rates and taxes (Ouweneel et al., 2020, Simpson et al., 2019b, and sustainable water technologies , Simpson et al., 2019a, Muller, 2019, Nhamo and Agyepong, 2019. Although IWM had medium feasibility along economic and social dimensions, it showed low feasibility for most African cities due to technical and institutional restrictions. ...
Considering the feasibility and effectiveness of adaptation options is essential for guiding responses to climate change that reduce risk. Here, we assessed the feasibility of adaptation options for the African context. Using the Global Adaptation Mapping Initiative, a stocktake of adaptation-related responses to climate change from the peer-reviewed literature in 2013–2020, we found 827 records of adaptation actions in Africa. We categorised and evaluated 24 adaptation options and for each option, six dimensions of feasibility were considered: economic, environmental, social, institutional, technological, and evidence of effectiveness. Over half (51%) of all adaptation actions were reported in the food sector where sustainable water management was the most reported option. The fewest actions were reported for cities (5%). The majority of actions (53%) were recorded in just 6 countries: Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria and South Africa. Encouragingly, effectiveness was assessed as medium or high for 95% of adaptation options. However, no options had high feasibility on any other dimension. Technological and institutional factors present major barriers to implementation. Crop management, sustainable water management, sustainable agricultural practices, agroforestry, livelihood diversification, ecosystem governance and planning, health governance and planning, infrastructure and built environment, all had moderate feasibility across three or more dimensions. Human migration has low feasibility but high potential for risk reduction. Major knowledge gaps exist for environmental feasibility, for assessing adaptation limits at increasing levels of climate hazard, for economic trade-offs and synergies, and for Central and Northern Africa. Our results highlight sectors where enablers for adaptation can be increased. Future assessments can apply the method established here to extend findings to other national and local levels.
... The viewpoints discuss systems perspectives on demand management during the Cape Town water crisis of 2015-2018 (Muller, 2019); how the well-known Orange County Water District in California has managed to obtain wide acceptance for potable water reuse (Markus & Torres, 2020); and Nestle's strategies for water conservation (Galli & Vousvouras, 2020). ...
Regional cities are having their unique water security challenges due to regional urban water contexts, regional socio-economic structure, and climate conditions. Regional urban community’s perceptions of water usage are expected to be different from the communities in large metropolitan cities. The city of Townsville is the largest regional city in the northern tropical region of the state of Queensland in Australia, and it is known to have its unique dry tropic climate condition. The city faced a water crisis due to a prolonged drought in 2013–2018. As part of this research, at first, a literature review was conducted to understand what water demand management (WDM) tools worked well during urban water crisis in different parts of the world. This paper then investigates how residential water usage changed with the changes in drought measures in the city of Townsville in the last decade. A minimum per capita residential water requirement is established for the study region to benchmark the effects of tools implemented in the region. The paper investigates the WDM policies implemented in the city of Townsville including when the policies were applied and the impacts and efficacy of these policies before water crisis, during water crisis and after water crisis. The most effective WDM tools identified are water restrictions, public awareness raising and education programmes. The impacts of water restriction policies and the perceptions of local water professionals on their success elements are also studied. The results are compared and the reasons behind the findings are investigated.
Water supply is a crucial concern for planners across all countries, especially in rural communities. This paper proposes a multidimensional approach to examining the effective criteria for water supply projects in rural areas of Iran. The study compares alternative methods of project implementation and employs three multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods: analytical hierarchy process (AHP), Fuzzy-AHP, and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) to prioritize criteria, sub-criteria, and alternatives. The results indicate that, among the five options analyzed, diverting water from the river and constructing temporary storage dams are the highest priorities, while pipeline branching to the nearby city or village is given the lowest priority. The study reveals that environmental and economic criteria are more critical than social-security and technical-management criteria, while negative environmental impacts and the possibility of risk-taking by subversive agents are the most important among the 14 sub-criteria studied.
HIGHLIGHTS
The most important criteria and sub-criteria in the implementation of rural water supply (RWS) projects are prioritized.;
The fuzzy framework and TOPSIS techniques are integrated into the AHP approach to dissect different RWS choices.;
The results indicate the great importance of environmental and economic criteria.;
Technical-management and social-security criteria play a secondary role.;
The Jalna district in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra State, India, represents the south-eastern Deccan Volcanic Province. The district falls under the drought-prone areas programme zone of low rainfall and receives <750 mm annual precipitation from the southwest monsoon. The region has experienced severe droughts for the last couple of decades, which have adversely affected the groundwater levels and yielded potentiality of Deccan Trap basaltic aquifers. As a result, the groundwater resources in the area are under severe stress. Aquifer-wise groundwater management is one of the best solutions to overcome water demand. Keeping this in view, the aquifer-wise groundwater management plan, considering the demand and supply management, is formulated for the Jalna district. As supply-side management, a total of 198 percolation tanks and 565 check dams are proposed, which will augment additional groundwater resources to the tune of 56.55 MCM. At the same time, as a part of demand-side management, micro-irrigation techniques in 14 km2 areas of the district have been recommended, saving a total of 7.08 MCM water. Adopting this plan will store 186.53 MCM volume of groundwater and bring an additional 286.97 km2 land area under assured groundwater irrigation by constructing 11,188 dug wells and 1242 borewells. Proposed plan targets maintaining the stage of groundwater development up to 60% to sustain the assured irrigation and protect the groundwater resources of the Jalna district area for future generations.
The sustainable management of water resources is required to avoid water scarcity becoming widespread. This article explores the potential application of a social-ecological framework, used predominantly in the fields of ecology and conservation, as a tool to improve the sustainability and resilience of water resources. The “red-loop green-loop” (RL-GL) model has previously been used to map both sustainable and unsustainable social-ecological feedbacks between ecosystems and their communities in countries such as Sweden and Jamaica. In this article, we demonstrate the novel application of the RL-GL framework to water resources management using the 2017/18 Cape Town water crisis as an example. We used the framework to analyse the social-ecological dynamics of pre-crisis and planned contingency scenarios.
We found that the water resources management system was almost solely reliant on a single, non-ecosystem form of infrastructure, the provincial dam system. As a prolonged drought impacted this key water resource, resilience to resource collapse was shown to be low and a missing feedback between the water resource and the Cape Town community was highlighted. The collapse of water resources (“Day Zero”) was averted through a combination of government and community group led measures, incorporating both local ecosystem (green-loop) and non-local ecosystem (red-loop) forms of water resource management, and increased rainfall returning to the area. Additional disaster management plans proposed by the municipality included the tighter integration of red and green-loop water management approaches, which acted to foster a stronger connection between the Cape Town community and their water resources.
We advocate the wider development and application of the RL-GL model, theoretically and empirically, to investigate missing feedbacks between water resources and their communities.
Climate change has led to several extreme weather events across the world. One such weather extreme is drought. Drought phenomenon has been increasing in both frequency and intensity globally of late. To this end, there has been growing concern about the impact droughts have and will have on the tourist destinations in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. In this study, which employs a mixed-methods approach utilising primary, archival and secondary data, we examine the impact of the 2015–2018 drought episodes on the tourism industry in the Western Cape as well as the industry's response. These drought episodes famously led to the Day Zero phenomenon, a situation that could have resulted in taps running dry at some point. The study found that the drought led to a severe decline in tourist arrivals at the major tourist attractions in the Western Cape province as well as a decline in tourist spending and hotel occupancy. This resulted in a loss of potential revenue and jobs. The province had been experiencing a decline in rainfall that drastically affected water supplies; a trend likely to recur in the future. During and after the drought, the tourism industry adopted several measures aimed at augmenting and saving water, thereby easing the sector's water demand. We recommend that the tourism sector and the Western Cape province build on the successes and lessons learnt during the Day Zero campaign to prepare for the future. This would allow the province to address Sustainable Development Goal 6, focusing on water and sanitation as a part of embracing responsible and sustainable tourism. Hence, continuous research, innovation and investment in the water-smart industry is a must for Cape Town and the Western Cape province.
The drought that drew the world's attention to Cape Town in early 2018 was the worst on record, threatening to cut off household taps for 4 million people. Even before the drought, the city's relation to water was complex; South Africa still struggles with the legacy of racial inequality including its implications for water justice. Spatial and economic segregation of people initiated when Europeans first settled in the Cape culminated during the apartheid era 1948–1994. It forcibly moved hundreds of thousands of “colored” and “black” Capetonians to inferior housing in low‐lying areas prone to flooding and with limited access to water, sanitation, and other services. Post‐1994 policies have aimed to promote water justice for all citizens, but municipalities have struggled with implementation especially in rapidly growing informal settlements. During the recent drought, the City of Cape Town ramped up its program for water demand management, including pressure reduction, leak repairs, and public awareness‐raising campaigns. However, poor communication and a lack of trust contributed to a near‐panic situation at the threat of “Day Zero” as dams almost ran dry in the first half of 2018. Saved by winter rains, Cape Town is now exploring additional water sources and developing a new Water Strategy. Taken together, the City's experiences demonstrate that sustainable water governance needs to acknowledge the interrelated threats of drought and flooding, and the range of impacts these threats as well as the City's responses have on a population still defined by extreme inequality.
This article is categorized under: Engineering Water > Planning Water
Human Water > Water Governance
Science of Water > Water Extremes
This paper focuses on the ways in which activism is undermined in the water and sanitation wars in South Africa. The paper extends previous work that has focused on the politics of water and sanitation in South Africa and is based on an analysis of talk between activists and stakeholders in a television debate. It attempts to make two arguments. First, activists who disrupt powerful discourses of active citizenship struggle to highlight water and sanitation injustices without their actions being individualised and party politicised. Second, in an attempt to claim a space for new social movements, activists paradoxically draw on common sense accounts of race, class, geography, dignity and democracy that may limit activism. The implications for water and sanitation activism and future research are discussed.
In South Africa, the level of water service is symbolic of class; those who have taps, baths and flush toilets are socially and geographically divided from those who walk to collect water of dubious quality in a bucket. Even those who move into formal housing with piped water are in for a shock. As a water scarce country, further threatened by climate change, South Africa needs demandside and conservation strategies. However, poor households are the main target of city-led water conservation and water-demand management strategies, which are often experienced as punitive and unjust. They are heavy-handed debt-recovery strategies in disguise. Technical interventions are favoured over more nuanced social responses, eroding the already dysfunctional relationship between citizens and local government. This presentation describes the experience of people living on the wrong side of Cape Town’s water policies. Through action research, Cape Town-based NGO Environmental Monitoring Group and its civil society partners are exploring possibilities for re-imagining water demand management with people and water at the centre, and engaging with local government and decision makers to find just, humane solutions. The advantages include reducing inequality, supporting participatory democracy, building responsible citizenry, ensuring water for all, saving water and building resilience to climate change.
People, politics and poor planning are behind most urban water shortages, argues Mike Muller. People, politics and poor planning are behind most urban water shortages, argues Mike Muller.
Although it is now widely acknowledged that urban water systems (UWSs) are complex socio-technical systems and that a shift towards a socio-technical approach is critical in achieving sustainable urban water management, still, more often than not, UWSs are designed using a segmented modelling approach. As such, either the analysis focuses on the description of the purely technical sub-system, without explicitly taking into account the system's dynamic socio-economic processes, or a more interdisciplinary approach is followed, but delivered through relatively coarse models, which often fail to provide a thorough representation of the urban water cycle and hence cannot deliver accurate estimations of the hydrosystem's responses. In this work we propose an integrated modelling approach for the study of the complete socio-technical UWS that also takes into account socio-economic and climatic variability. We have developed an integrated model, which is used to investigate the diffusion of household water conservation technologies and its effects on the UWS, under different socio-economic and climatic scenarios. The integrated model is formed by coupling a System Dynamics model that simulates the water technology adoption process, and the Urban Water Optioneering Tool (UWOT) for the detailed simulation of the urban water cycle. The model and approach are tested and demonstrated in an urban redevelopment area in Athens, Greece under different socio-economic scenarios and policy interventions. It is suggested that the proposed approach can establish quantifiable links between socio-economic change and UWS responses and therefore assist decision makers in designing more effective and resilient long-term strategies for water conservation.
We investigate the effect of introducing a fiscally neutral increasing block rate water budget price structure on residential water demand. We estimate that demand was reduced by around 17%, although the reduction was achieved gradually over more than three years. As intermediate steps we derive estimates of price and income elasticities that rely only on longitudinal variability. We investigate how different subpopulations responded to the pricing change and find evidence that marginal, rather than average, prices may be driving consumption. We also derive alternative rate structures that might have been implemented, and assess their estimated demand effects. © 2014 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.
In a semiarid and drought-prone region, Spain has managed successfully for more than 50 years to increase water supply to meet ever-increasing demands through the construction of publicly funded hydraulic infrastructures. Inter-basin water transfers are the most expensive, controversial and complex supply-side tool used. Deteriorated freshwater ecosystems, disappearance of the free services and recreational opportunities aquatic ecosystems provide to society, and loss of development opportunities for upstream communities are some unintended consequences of this supply-side approach. Over the past decade this situation has become increasingly unstable, due to the scarcity of new supply augmentation alternatives, changes at the political level (EU environmental legislation, new political power in upstream regions) and the appearance of new stakeholders at the decision making table, with their concerns and resulting conflicts. As a result, ongoing water planning efforts are being delayed by competing demands over available resources and interregional conflicts, indicating the end of an era and demanding a shift from a competitive "using water" to "sharing water" risk- and trade-off governance approach.
The South African government's policy decision in 2001 to provide a basic amount of water free of charge to all citizens has been controversial. Traditional policy advice was that all water should be paid for, even if some costs were subsidized. A review of the implementation of the new policy suggests that the flexible approach adopted ensured wide applicability, although it has been criticized for defects of both exclusion and inclusion. However, it has helped not only to achieve social equity but also has supported the broader objectives of conservation and environmental sustainability. The political legitimacy conferred by the approach has enabled water supply organizations to recover their costs and achieve the economic objective of financial sustainability. South Africa's experience with free basic water thus demonstrates that addressing social and environmental dimensions together with economic dimensions can lead to more effective and sustainable policy.
The Sterkfontein Dam, South Africa’s third largest dam by volume, is an important component of the Vaal River system, which supports the water security of a socially and economically important inland region of the country. The design, construction, and four decades of operation of the dam provides a useful illustration of the role of storage in general and dams in particular; the contribution of system management approaches to water security; the place of interbasin transfers in such systems management approaches; and how the water-energy nexus may function in practice. There have been substantial changes in the wider socioeconomic context over the past 50 years, particularly in relation to the national energy system, and the region experienced a severe drought in 2016. The operation of the Sterkfontein Dam provides some insights into how one component of a system can help to manage drought impacts, how this operation may have to be adapted to address the emerging challenges posed by changing contexts, and some limitations and risks that may arise. At a larger scale, the case also provides an unusual example of substantial innovation during implementation and raises questions about the supportive institutional context that enabled these innovations to be made. Finally, the case also demonstrates how practice can influence policy, both in subsequent South African water policy development as well as the global polices developed at the 1977 United Nations (UN) Water Conference in Mar del Plata, Argentina.
It is understandable that an easy method to obtain estimates of residential water demand is often used. These estimates are also extended to calculate peak demand and sewer flow, and impact an authority's water and sewer infrastructure budget and finally its expenditure. Guideline curves are presented in this paper that can be used to estimate annual average residential water demand based on stand size. The measured water consumption and stand size of more than 600 000 single residential stands were obtained. Treasury databases for Cape Town, Ekurhuleni, George, Midrand, Randfontein and Tshwane were analysed in detail and the results compared to similar work in Windhoek. The large number of records made it possible to conduct statistical analyses and to investigate the distribution of data for stand size intervals of 100 m 2. The water demand of similar sized stands in townships and suburbs could be compared. A strong relationship exists between the average annual water demand and stand size. The authors note that a model based on stand size has limited application only when better methods are not available.
This paper reviews the literature on urban water demand forecasting published from 2000 to 2010 to identify methods and models useful for specific water utility decision making problems. Results show that although a wide variety of methods and models have attracted attention, applications of these models differ, depending on the forecast variable, its periodicity and the forecast horizon. Whereas artificial neural networks are more likely to be used for short-term forecasting, econometric models, coupled with simulation or scenario-based forecasting, tend to be used for long-term strategic decisions. Much more attention needs to be given to probabilistic forecasting methods if utilities are to make decisions that reflect the level of uncertainty in future demand forecasts.
Australia's Millennium Drought transformed how Melbourne, a city of 4 million people, secures and uses its water resources. By thriving in the face of drought, Melbourne's example provides valuable lessons for other major metropolitan areas around the world-in particular, those located in the southwest region of the U.S.-that face long-term reductions and increased variability in their water supply.
The (Uni)city of Cape Town, a city of more than three million people, is prosperous by African standards (with a gross geographic product of approximately R94 billion in 2001). It is endowed with quality infrastructures, but with very young institutions. Its creation in December 2000, elected by universal suffrage, was to meet two objectives: dismantling of the apparatus of the segregationbased apartheid system and reforming local authorities in order to turn these into tools for the transformation of urban society. More generally, the stated aim of the reform was to combine economic development and urban "integration" at local level. Urban integration was understood to include the objectives of equality and inclusiveness. However, local authorities are faced with enormous challenges. The legal abolition of apartheid has revealed the extent of socio-economic differences ~ which had previously been hidden by racial segregation 2 and, in particular, the exacerbation of these differences due to the combined impact of demographic growth (3.2 percent per year), mainly concentrated in the townships, and changes in the structure of the local economy. Cape Town has maintained a significant manufacturing industry (28 percent of its total urban value added in 1996), however it is commerce and finance which are currently experiencing the strongest growth, partly driven by a boom in tourism and leisure activities. These sectors require a well-trained workforce and are helping to reconstitute a socio-economic elite of relatively high-earners. However, the clothing and textile sector, which was once the manufacturing flagship of the city, is experiencing major problems which have resulted in serious job losses among poorly-qualified workers (mainly coloured women) and has contributed to the increase in overall unemployment and the growth in the informal economy (Cape Metropolitan Council, 1999; Wilkinson, 2000). These demographic-economic trends exacerbate the inequalities in social and spatial distribution of income (Mosdell and Bayat, 2001:6), and
Sophisticated stochastic optimization and simulation methods to assist with the management of large water resource systems in South Africa were developed and rigorously applied during the last decade. Acceptance today is not only due to the sound theory underpinning the methodology and the successes achieved with respect to improved resource utility, but also because of efforts to communicate findings to decision makers and interested and affected parties. Credibility was further enhanced by a number of practical applications where decisions based on information provided by the models led to substantial cost-savings.The paper gives an introductory perspective of water resource systems modelling in South Africa. Concepts of yield, together with probabilistic approaches to assess the yield characteristics of water resource systems, are described. Reference is made to different practical applications of the methodology.
- Draftbudget
- Cct
DraftBudget.pdf
CCT. (2019b, February 21). Chairperson report, Subcouncil 24, Agenda item no. 24SUB 4/2/2019. Retrieved
from http://www.capetown.gov.za/councilonline/_layouts/OpenDocument/OpenDocument.aspx?
DocumentId=14827f95-06b0-4f8a-8d19-fef34a319720&OpeningMeetingItem=1 20190422
Second national water resource strategy. Pretoria: Department of Water Affairs
- Dwa
DWA. (2013c). Second national water resource strategy. Pretoria: Department of Water Affairs.
DWA. (2015). No drop metro municipality audit report. Department of Water Affairs. Retrieved from
http://www.dwa.gov.za/Projects/WUE/Documents/ND%20Metro%20Audit%20Report%202015-09-28%20final%20(002).pdf
Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Water (R.P.34/1970)
Government of South Africa. (1970). Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Water (R.P.34/1970).
Pretoria: Government Printer.
Government of South Africa. (1997). Water Services Act, no. 108 of 1997.
Government of South Africa. (1998). National Water Act, Act no 36 of 1998.
Cape Town: Where we’ve been and where we want to go
- G Kaiser
- N Mcleod
Kaiser, G., & McLeod, N. (2018, October). Cape Town: Where we've been and where we want to go.
Civil Engineering.
No shortage of planning
- Limberg
Limberg. (2017, April 24). No shortage of planning. (Letter to) Business Day. Retrieved from https://
www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/letters/2017-04-24-letter-no-shortage-of-planning/
Why intermittent supplies are no answer to cities hit by drought. , International Water Association
- R Mckenzie
Mckenzie, R. (2018, September). Why intermittent supplies are no answer to cities hit by drought.
The Source, International Water Association. Retrieved from https://www.thesourcemagazine.org/
why-intermittent-supplies-are-no-answer-to-cities-hit-by-drought/
RP3028: RP 3035: Modelling uptake of water conservation and efficiency measures in Sydney. Low Carbon Living CRC Cooperative Research Centres program
- M Moglia
- S Cook
- S Tapsuwan
Moglia, M., Cook, S., & Tapsuwan, S. (2018). RP3028: RP 3035: Modelling uptake of water conservation
and efficiency measures in Sydney. Low Carbon Living CRC Cooperative Research Centres program,
an Australian Government initiative.
and subsequent correspondence 'No shortage of planning
- M Muller
Muller, M. (2017). Taps are running dry -And we are all to blame (op-ed). Business Day,
Johannesburg, 19 April 2017 and subsequent correspondence 'No shortage of planning', 24
Administered prices study on economic inputs -water sector. National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) Fund for Research into Industrial Development
New York Times. (2018). Dangerously low on water, Cape Town now faces 'Day Zero'. Retrieved from
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/30/world/africa/cape-town-day-zero.html
NEDLAC. (2007). Administered prices study on economic inputs -water sector. National Economic
Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) Fund for Research into Industrial Development,
Growth and Equity (FRIDGE). Pretoria: NEDLAC/HSRC.
NPC. (2012). National development plan. Pretoria: National Planning Commission.
Long-term water demand in the Western Cape metropolitan region 1990-2020. Bellville: Institute for Futures Research
- P H Spies
- L Barriage
Spies, P. H., & Barriage, L. (1991). Long-term water demand in the Western Cape metropolitan region
1990-2020. Bellville: Institute for Futures Research.
Strategic planning for water resources in South Africa
- J Van Rooyen
- P Van Niekerk
- D Versfeld
Van Rooyen, J., Van Niekerk, P., & Versfeld, D. (2009). Strategic planning for water resources in South
Africa. Civil Engineering= Siviele Ingenieurswese, 2009(v17i5), 5-8.
Water security towards a values-based approach: global agenda council on water security
- Wef
WEF. (2014). Water security towards a values-based approach: global agenda council on water
security. World Economic Forum.
How severe is Cape Town's 'Day Zero' drought? Significance
- P Wolski
Wolski, P. (2018). How severe is Cape Town's 'Day Zero' drought? Significance, 15(2), 24-27.
doi:10.1111/sign.2018.15.issue-2
Water services development plan 2007/08: Executive summary. Cape Town: City of Cape Town
- Cct
CCT. (2007). Water services development plan 2007/08: Executive summary. Cape Town: City of Cape
Town.
City of Cape Town: 2019/20 draft budget
- Cct
CCT. (2019a, March 28). City of Cape Town: 2019/20 draft budget. Retrieved from http://resource.
capetown.gov.za/documentcentre/Documents/Financial%20documents/AnnA_2019-20_
Cape Town water strategy (Our shared water future) draft for comment, city of Cape Town
- Cct
CCT. (2019c). Cape Town water strategy (Our shared water future) draft for comment, city of Cape
Town. Retrieved from https://www.capetown.gov.za/City-Connect/Have-your-say/Issues-openfor-public-comment/draft-cape-town-water-strategy
Support to the Continuation of the Water Reconciliation Strategy for the Western Cape Water Supply System: Status
- Dwaf
DWAF. (2007c). Reconciliation strategy for the Western Cape Water Supply System. Pretoria:
Department of Water and Sanitation. Retrieved from http://www.dwa.gov.za/Projects/RS_WC_
WSS/RepDoc.aspx
DWS. (2015). Support to the Continuation of the Water Reconciliation Strategy for the Western Cape
Water Supply System: Status Report October 2015. South Africa: Department of Water and
Sanitation.
Regulations: Compulsory national standards and measures to conserve water
- Dwaf
DWAF. (2001). Regulations: Compulsory national standards and measures to conserve water, Government
Notice R. 509 Gazette Number 22355. Pretoria: Department of Water Affairs and Forestry.
Overview of water conservation and demand management in the City of Cape Town: WCWSS reconciliation strategy study v4
- Dwaf
DWAF. (2007a). Western Cape water supply system: reconciliation strategy study, Summary Report.
Pretoria: Department of Water Affairs and Forestry. Retrieved from http://www.dwa.gov.za/
Projects/RS_WC_WSS/Docs/Summary%20Report.pdf
DWAF. (2007b). Overview of water conservation and demand management in the City of Cape Town:
WCWSS reconciliation strategy study v4 (Report P WMA 19/000/00/0507). Pretoria: Department of
Water Affairs and Forestry.
Development of operating rules for water supply and drought management. Minutes of WCWSS Operating Forum. Moorreesburg. South Africa: Department of Water and Sanitation
- Dws
DWS. (2016, March 8). Development of operating rules for water supply and drought management.
Minutes of WCWSS Operating Forum. Moorreesburg. South Africa: Department of Water and
Sanitation.
Reconciliation strategy for the Western Cape Water Supply System
- Dws
DWS. (2019, June). Reconciliation strategy for the Western Cape Water Supply System. Retrieved
from http://www6.dwa.gov.za/RS_WC_WSS/default.aspx
Department of Water and Sanitation
- Dwa
Department of Water Affairs
- Dwa
Pretoria: Department of Water Affairs and Forestry
- Dwaf
Pretoria: Department of Water and Sanitation
- Dwaf
South Africa: Department of Water and Sanitation
- Dws
Low Carbon Living CRC Cooperative Research Centres program, an Australian Government initiative
- M Moglia
- S Cook
- S Tapsuwan
Minutes of WCWSS Operating Forum. Moorreesburg. South Africa: Department of Water and Sanitation
- Dws