{"id":6418,"date":"2019-11-07T08:10:01","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T05:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6418"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:40","slug":"south-africas-real-water-crisis-not-understanding-whats-needed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/11\/07\/south-africas-real-water-crisis-not-understanding-whats-needed\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa\u2019s Real Water Crisis: Not Understanding What\u2019s Needed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>By Mike Muller<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A serious multi-year drought in parts of South\nAfrica\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2019\/10\/south-africas-worst-drought-years-affects-farmers-191029043210778.html\">Northern<\/a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.heraldlive.co.za\/news\/2019-10-30-eastern-cape-declares-drought-disaster\/\">Eastern\nCape<\/a>&nbsp;provinces has seen a number of small towns threatened by total\nwater supply failures and livestock farmers facing financial ruin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In other parts of the country, heatwave conditions and the\nlate onset of rains have caused local supply failures. Although the dams that\nsupply most of the main urban areas are still at reasonable levels, there are\ngrowing fears that the country may be witnessing the start of a major drought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cape Town\u2019s experience of extreme&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/day-zero-is-meant-to-cut-cape-towns-water-use-what-is-it-and-is-it-working-92055\">\u201cDay\nZero\u201d<\/a>&nbsp;supply restrictions only adds to these fears. Weather\nforecasters seem unable to make reliable predictions more than a few weeks in\nadvance. And there are nagging concerns about the government\u2019s ability to\nidentify and address emerging problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Unhelpfully, there\u2019s no single water problem and the issues\nconfronted vary widely from place to place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Cape Town, water managers thought they could avoid\nbuilding new infrastructure to supply a growing population by encouraging\neveryone to use less water. A major&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/global-warming-has-already-raised-the-risk-of-more-severe-droughts-in-cape-town-107625\">drought<\/a>&nbsp;proved\nthem wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During October\u2019s heatwaves in Gauteng province, water ran\ndry as local reservoirs were emptied by residents who felt the need to use\nextra water for their gardens \u2013 and municipalities failed to enforce\nrestrictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/south-africas-real-water-crisis-not-understanding-whats-needed-126361\">Read\nmore\u2026<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Mike Muller A serious multi-year drought in parts of South Africa\u2019s&nbsp;Northern&nbsp;and&nbsp;Eastern Cape&nbsp;provinces has seen a number of small towns threatened by total water supply failures and livestock farmers facing&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}