{"id":6677,"date":"2019-11-20T08:18:12","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T05:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6677"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:41","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:41","slug":"not-all-droughts-are-the-same-heres-whats-different-about-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/11\/20\/not-all-droughts-are-the-same-heres-whats-different-about-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Not All Droughts Are The Same: Here\u2019s What\u2019s Different About Them"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Mike Muller<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a growing concern in South Africa about what\u2019s being portrayed as \u201ca national drought disaster<\/a>\u201d. There have been\u00a0anxious suggestions<\/a>\u00a0that drought could see many cities and towns facing their \u201cDay Zero<\/a>\u201d. This happened during the water crisis in Cape Town as fears mounted that the taps would run dry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concerns were reinforced when it was announced<\/a> that\nthe tunnels that bring water from the Lesotho Highlands Water Scheme to the\ncountry\u2019s economic hub, Gauteng, would be shut for a few months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From a technical perspective, the threat has been\nexaggerated. In summer rainfall areas, there has been a slow start to the rainy\nseason. And while dam levels are lower than they were last year, they\u2019re not\nyet at critical levels. An analysis<\/a> of\nthe critical Integrated Vaal River System found that there was no need for\nwater restrictions this summer. The system supplies Gauteng and the surrounds,\nincluding large users such as Sasol, an integrated energy and chemical company,\nand many of the power stations that belong to the country\u2019s electricity public\nutility, Eskom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The panicked reaction suggests though that many people don\u2019t\nfully understand South Africa\u2019s climate, or how it affects the way the\ncountry\u2019s water supply systems work. In particular, there\u2019s limited recognition\nof the different types of drought and how they affect different sectors of\nsociety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, dry periods can devastate agriculture without\nnecessarily affecting water supplies to cities and industries. Plants in fields\nand livestock grazing on natural pasture depend on moisture in the top layers\nof the soil. Cities and towns either have large reserves of water in dams or\ntap it from aquifers, which are effectively underground reservoirs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would be wrong to suggest that there are no drought\nproblems in the country at present. Parts of the Northern<\/a>, Western<\/a> and Eastern\nCape<\/a> are officially in drought conditions. This means that officials\nacknowledge that the prolonged dry conditions are now seriously threatening\nfarming activities. And many farmers are battling to stay in business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But across South Africa\u2019s 1.2 million sq kilometres, there\nare also areas where rainfall has been well below average for a year or more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read\nmore\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mike Muller There\u2019s a growing concern in South Africa about what\u2019s being portrayed as \u201ca national drought disaster\u201d. There have been\u00a0anxious suggestions\u00a0that drought could see many cities and towns…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6678,"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-6677","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\/6677","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=6677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}