Water Wheel Jan-Feb 2020 | Mahlathini Development Foundation

The Water Wheel January/February 20201

CONTENTS

THE WATER WHEEL is a two-monthly

magazine on water and water research

published by the South African Water

Research Commission (WRC), a statutory

organisation established in 1971 by

Act of Parliament. Subscription is

free. Material in this publication does

not necessarily reflect the considered

opinions of the members of the WRC,

and may be copied with acknow-

ledgement of source.

Editorial Committee:

Dr Sylvester Mpandeli (Chair), Ms Khosi

Jonas, Ms Manjusha Sunil, Mr Bonani

Madikizela, Dr Mamohloding Tlhagale

and Sudhir Pillay.

Editorial offices:

Water Research Commission, Private

Bag X03, Gezina, 0031, Republic of

South Africa.

Tel (012) 761 9300. Fax (012) 331-2565.

WRC Internet address:

http://www.wrc.org.za

@WaterWheelmag

Editor: Lani van Vuuren,

E-mail: laniv@wrc.org.za;

Editorial Secretary: Dikeledi Molutsi,

E-mail: dikeledidk@wrc.org.za;

Layout: Anja van der Merwe,

E-mail: anjavdm@wrc.org.za

Marine litter has become a

global crisis, with rivers cited as

a significant contributor to the

problem. Article on page 10.

UPFRONT

WATER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

To keep the oceans clean, look towards our rivers

WATER RESOURCES

Port Elizabeth – Planning, engineering and science combine to

avoid Day Zero

WATER AND SOCIETY

Connecting to water in a dry Johannesburg

ECOLOGICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Investing in ecological infrastructure to improve drought

resilience and enhance water security

WATER RESOURCES

Water scenarios for the future: A glimpse of what is to come

WETLANDS

Nature-based solutions for the future: Securing wetlands for

water security in the Western Cape

SMALLHOLDER FARMING

Creating climate change resilient communities Part 3: A

decision support system for smallholder farmers

AT A GLANCE

New partnership hopes to boost rollout of safe sanitation

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

FLUID THOUGHTS

New water perspectives for 2020

When she addressed the Water Institute of Southern Africa (WISA)

conference, which took place in 2018 in Cape Town, Sunita Narain

of the Centre for Science and the Environment, India, made the

observation that change in weather patterns on the back of

major climatic changes can be evidenced through both droughts

and ﬂoods occurring simultaneously in the same country.

This is a phenomenon we are currently living through with the

serious ﬂood damage in some parts of the country while others

are still in the grip of extreme water scarcity.

This physical phenomenon of extreme weather, which is

rapidly deﬁning our new normal, is greatly exacerbated by the

metaphoric drought of ideas and imagination compounded

by the ﬂoods of prejudice and negativity. This is particularly

pronounced in the commentary of some regular water and

development experts that ﬁll our media spaces. A clan of Afro-

pessimists in general and South African nay-sayers. They also

happen to be of a certain gender, race and of a particular age.

One of the questions raised in response to the launch of the

Water Masterplan by Minister of Human Settlements, Water and

Sanitation, Lindiwe Sisulu was “where would the water come

from?” South Africa has the accolade of being in the world’s

top 10% of water knowledge producers on the back of a highly

productive research community of practice, so let us assist

in hydrating this drought of ideas. Accepting that the public

is aware of the plans for various surface water augmentation

schemes of dams and pipelines in process at the Department of

Water and Sanitation, let us concentrate on the other even more

attractive options.

Firstly, we have the potential of sustainable groundwater

harvesting from renewable aquifers of between 8 to 12

billion m3 (a m3 is 1 000 litres) annually. Our current use is only

between 2 and 4 billion m3 depending on the season. Core

to the sustainability of this resource is frequent and regular

replenishment. Groundwater also trumps surface water storage

as it is largely immune from the evaporation index. A great

example is the Atlantis aquifer outside Cape Town, which is

being replenished with a combination of stormwater and treated

wastewater. Its current potential for supply is 15-20 million litres

a day.

A further unexploited resource is seawater along the coast and

brackish and polluted waters inland. The traditional barrier to

entry of energy demand has been largely solved by technological

advancement and renewable energy options, and costs will

depend on economies of scale on the one hand and the

planning model on the other. Desalination investments could

easily decrease the current strain on surface water systems by at

least 10%. For this to work it is essential that desalination plants

are retained as a permanent part of the water mix and not only

for emergencies. The possibilities were shown in the Ndlambe

district municipality in the town of Albany in the Eastern Cape

where Minister Sisulu launched the next phase of its desalination,

now utilising a sand water harvesting system to supplement the

seawater feed. The town is now predominantly supplied with

these sources, supplemented by rainwater harvesting tanks. It is, if

you like, an oﬀ-the-surface water grid.

The quickest win of all lies in reticulation eﬃciency. We currently

lose about 25% of treated, expensive drinking quality water to

leaks in our cities and towns. One out of every four litres of water

is lost before it reaches the tap. A dramatically reimagined “war-

on-leaks” initiative designed to build the plumbing capacity we

need, building entrepreneurs to permanently provide this service

to maintain the reticulation systems and the use of the latest

technological platforms, including drones and robotics, will not

only win back the 25% of water currently lost, but will support

an industry platform that will provide livelihoods and economic

growth in an inclusive manner. This is not pie-in-the-sky. The

Water Research Commission, in partnership with the African

Development Bank, has successfully piloted the social franchising

model for school sanitation maintenance in the Eastern Cape,

creating in the process 20 new companies employing at least 3

people each now active players in the industry. This is a model

that can easily operate with similar eﬃcacy and eﬀectiveness in

address the water leaks challenge.

If we delve deeper into the new non-sewered sanitation

technologies, we have the potential to save 30% of water in every

household and workplace in the country. What we observed

when we launched the second phase of the SASTEP (South

African Sanitation Technology Evaluation Programme) with the

WRC’s partners, the South African Government and the Bill and

Melinda Gates Foundation, was the high interest from both

the business sector and the investment community. We add to

this scaled recycling systems as part of the global purple pipe

revolution where up to 80% of water in an average household

can be reused for further purposes. The water arithmetic

now begins to look very positive. In fact, with these demand

management interventions we can easily reduce our South

Africa’s per capita use from its current 253 litres per person per

day to the global average of 173 litres per person per day. This

will be an immediate saving of 30% overall. If we move to the

global best practice of 108 litres per person per day as claimed by

the likes of Denmark, then an amazing 57% of the current water

asset will be available for new use. We will be in the realm of

water prosperity. To answer the expert’s question – that is where

Upfront

WRC CEO, Dhesigen Naidoo

The Water Wheel January/February 20205

Upfront

Water governance

11-13 February

The Water Institute of Southern Africa

(WISA) is oﬀering a three-day training

course in Stellenbosch on water

governance. The course has been

designed to facilitate understanding

of the principles of water governance

from a human rights perspective, and

covers international water governance

approaches, sustainable water resource

management initiatives, and the

implementation of measures in South

Africa through the relevant legislation.

Visit: www.wisa.org.za

Large dams

4-10 April

The 88th annual meeting and symposium

of the International Commission on

Large Dams (ICOLD) will be held in New

Delhi, India, under the theme ‘Sustainable

development of dams and river basins’.

Visit: www.icold-cigb.org

Water

31 May – 4 June

The Biennial conference and exhibition

of WISA is taking place at the Sandton

Convention Centre. The conference is

the region’s biggest water conference

– bringing together water sector

professionals and other stakeholders

from across the country and beyond.

The conference will consider the broader

impacts of water on society and the

environment.

Visit: https://wisa2020.org.za/

Water and the environment

11-10 June

The IUCN World Conservation Congress

is taking place in Marseille, France. The

congress comes just four months before

the world’s governments come together

to set conservation and sustainable

development priorities and to mobilise

action to reach them.

Visit: https://www.iucncongress2020.org

Sanitation

21-24 July

The First IWA Non-Sewered Sanitation

specialist group conference is being

hosted at the Future Africa Campus in

Pretoria in partnership with the Water

WATER DIARY

Research Commission and the University

of Pretoria. The aim of the conference

is to provide stimulus for research and

innovation for non-sewered sanitation

and oﬀ-grid sanitation solutions, including

faecal sludge management, build the

technical and scientiﬁc base for sanitation

and to contribute to scientiﬁc knowledge

and good practice learnings. Enquiries: Dr

Sudhir Pillay, Email: sudhirp@wrc.org.za,

Visit: www.shorturl.at/DIJQ0

World Water

18-23 October

The IWA World Water Congress will take

place in Copenhagen, Denmark with the

theme ‘Water for smart liveable cities’.

Visit: https://worldwatercongress.org/

Municipal water

28-30 October

The Institute of Municipal Engineering of

Southern Africa will be holding its annual

conference in Cape Town.

Visit: https://www.imesa.org.za/

the water will come from even before you consider the classical

augmentation schemes.

Let us address the other side of the coin – the ﬂood of bigotry

and prejudice infused with a deep Apartheid nostalgia garnished

with thinly veiled hyper-privilege. That the current water woes

are only there because there are new folk, black folk, in charge,

completely ignores the fact that the notion of water crisis has

been in the top ﬁve risks in the World Economic Forum’s Global

Risk Register for 9 years continuously. That the vagaries of

extreme weather events and climate change is driving two thirds

of the world to water stress. No, it must be a lament on the loss

of skills in the water sector, of course in particular the white male

skills base. Let us remind ourselves that the great eﬃciency of

water services that these folks long for was one in which only

58% of South Africans had access to safe water and far fewer

had the beneﬁt of digniﬁed improved sanitation. In short, the

nostalgia is not shared. Also, the comments are not only deeply

insulting to the millions of men and women, black and white, that

put their best foot forward every day, toiling hard to provide for

their families while keeping SA Inc ticking over.

This expression of hyper-privilege has become a major hurdle to

the Mzansi Social Democracy project. Also, there is another way.

In 2011, 80% the WRC’s research portfolio was led by white male

researchers, today the majority of projects are led by women and

black researchers. The key enabler to this great transformation

story was, in fact, the generosity and willingness of the older

white male researchers to come on board as the mentorship

group to enable this very important change.

The future is not what it used to be. When we were pegging

our hopes on 2020 in the 1990s, we were in the middle of what

Clem Sunter labelled the long (economic) boom. Our optimism

was further driven by our own liberation from Apartheid and our

re-entry into the Global Community of Nations. The fact that the

Kyoto Protocol was still the main game in town added to our

positive views that we had a handle on making the world a much

better place for future generations.

Much has changed and the world has become a much more

challenging place. Let us reﬂect this festive season on the South

Africa we really want and whether our current actions help us to

get to the right space or is it taking us the other way. If there was

one truism worth repeating from the Apartheid era it is Eendragt

maakt magt, a national motto shared with several countries.

Unity is indeed strength! A Mzansi united is the only way we can

navigate our way out of the doldrums into prosperity.

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

NEWS

Upfront

Water sector gearing up for biggest technical event of the year

#AllHandsOnDeck, the theme for this

year’s event. The WISA 2020 conference

will, therefore, provide a platform for

these issues to be discussed, solutions

shared and decisions taken in a pledge

to action. The theme calls for local and

regional players to work together towards

a sustainable water future, and WISA

2020 aims to speed up delivery and bring

purposeful feedback to the leadership of

South Africa.

The conference will cover various

sub-themes, including reducing water

demand and increasing supply; managing

the resource for a capable ecology;

managing and monitoring eﬀective water

and sanitation services and infrastructure;

governance and regulation; improving

raw water quality and management;

and developing skills and technology

innovations and disruptors.

“Our past conferences have provided

a platform to discuss problems and

solutions facing the water and related

sector. Now is the time to create

the mechanisms and an enabling

environment to set us on a path of

implementation and impact,” notes

Dr Shaﬁck Adams, Chair of the local

organising committee. “Water is

everyone’s business and everyone should

be involved in ensuring that we have

water security. This is now more important

than ever, as we need to navigate issues

of climate change, weather variability,

demand growth, infrastructure needs and

so forth.”

Parliament welcomes DWS financial recovery plan

“An eﬃciently-run department is a

precursor to improved service delivery.

The plan and the impacts it has made

so far are reasons for optimism,” the

committee believes.

One of the major areas of improvement

has been the reduction in accruals and

payables, which had been reduced to

around R808 000 by November. The

payment for services received ensures

that service providers remain viable and

that projects are completed.

The committee also welcomed the DWS’s

consequence management initiatives to

deal with the over R16 billion in irregular

expenditure. As many as 86 guilty verdicts,

13 dismissals, one demotion and various

suspensions have been meted out against

errant oﬃcials.

In respect to debt owed to the

department and its entities, the

committee emphasised the need for

constructive discussions coupled with

strong implementation in areas of

agreement to deal eﬀectively with the

debt and to assist water agencies to

improve their balance sheet.

The committee also noted the

department’s intention to exit the War on

Leaks programme. “While the committee

acknowledges the need to conclude

the programme, the department should

improve its planning capacity, as the

intentions of War on Leaks were noble

and much could have been achieved,

especially in relation to decreasing non-

revenue water.”

The committee has requested regular

updates from the department on the

ﬁnancial recovery plan.

The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on

Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation

has welcomed the Department of Water

and Sanitation’s ﬁnancial recovery plan.

In a statement released in November the

committee said that the plan gave them

assurance that the current leadership

would be able to overcome the

department’s long-standing challenges.

The Water Institute of Southern Africa

(WISA) Biennial Conference and Exhibition

will be held at the Sandton International

Convention Centre from 31 May to 4 June.

Southern Africa’s water demands are

on the rise, as a rapidly growing and

urbanising population, changing lifestyles

and economic growth place increasing

pressure on this resource. The result

is a growing water crisis worsened

by insuﬃcient water infrastructure

maintenance and investment, recurrent

droughts and ﬂoods driven by climatic

variation, inequities in access to services,

deteriorating raw water quality, and a lack

of skilled water practitioners.

WISA believes that in order to address

these challenges, the sector needs to have

The Water Wheel January/February 20207

Upfront

Dam safety adherence slips – Minister expresses concern

Water and Sanitation Minister, Lindiwe

Sisulu, has called on dam owners across

the country to adhere to dam safety

legislation in the wake of extreme weather

patterns.

Sisulu warned that failure to stick to the

rules may prompt the department to take

legal action against transgressors.

“We are faced with water security

challenges as a country and key to

this is deteriorating infrastructure. I

therefore urge dam owners to do their

bit to safeguard water infrastructure by

conducting the required [dam safety]

evaluations, which will not only protect

society from potential dam failures, but

will also ensure guaranteed storage,

especially in the current climatic

conditions facing our country,” she noted.

South Africa’s dam safety legislation

requires that all dams with a storage

capacity of more than 50 000 m3 and a

wall height of more than ﬁve metres must

be registered as a dam with a safety risk

and is subject to dam safety inspections

by registered persons. The Dam Safety

Oﬃce (DSO) currently has over 5 600 such

dams registered across the country.

Sisulu noted that for the 2018/19 period,

at least 313 dam safety evaluation reports

were expected to be submitted to the

DSO, but only 207 (66%) were submitted.

“Each dam must have a safety inspection

conducted every ﬁve years. In this case,

dam owners are required to arrange for

the execution of a formal dam safety

inspection by an approved professional

person.”

The minister said that her department

remained committed to safeguarding

South Africa’s water resources. “As such,

dam owners are encouraged to play their

role by abiding to dam safety legislation,

as set out in the National Water Act.”

(Photo for illustrative purposes only)

Environmental assessment practitioners body officially recognised

The South African Qualiﬁcations

Authority (SAQA) Executive Committee

has recognised the Environmental

Assessment Practitioners Association of

South Africa (EAPASA) as the ﬁrst statutory

environmental assessment professional

body for a period of ﬁve years.

EAPASA Chairperson, Snowy Makhudu,

has hailed the recognition by SAQA as a

historic achievement for the organisation,

the country, and the African continent.

“This gives credence to our work as we

seek to promote ethical practice and

quality of environmental assessments in

South Africa.”

EAPASA was appointed by the

Department of Environment, Forestry

and Fisheries as the single Registration

Authority for environmental assessment

practitioners in South Africa in 2018. The

recognition of EAPASA as a professional

body is beneﬁcial to the environment

sector, contributing to skills development

of environment assessment practitioners

and enhancing quality assurance and

professionalism in South Africa, the

association said in a statement.

“Registration with EAPASA enables

environmental assessment practitioners

to comply with the national legislation in

their operation. It also creates a platform

to independently address incompetent

and unethical behaviour, while protecting

those who comply and uphold the

EAPASA Code of Ethical Conduct and

Practice.

For more information, Visit: www.eapasa.org

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

GLOBAL

Upfront

World Toilet Day highlights rights, dignity of sanitation workers

shunned. “Workers often come into direct

contact with human waste, working with

no equipment or protection to remove

it by hand, which expose them to a long

list of health hazards and diseases,” the

international organisation said.

“It is only when those critical services

fail, when society is confronted with

faecal waste in ditches, streets, rivers and

beaches or occasional media reports of

sanitation worker deaths, that the daily

practice and plight of sanitation workers

come to light,” it maintains.

The publication, Health, safety and dignity

of sanitation workers was produced

jointly with the International Labour

Organisation, World Bank, and WaterAid.

It examines nine case studies of sanitation

workers in low and middle-income

countries, who empty pits and tanks,

transport faecal sludge and perform

sewer maintenance.

The publication describes the workforce

as “invisible, unquantiﬁed and ostracised”

and insists that many of the challenges

that sanitation workers face stem from a

lack of acknowledgement for what they

do.

While the workers include full-time

employees with health beneﬁts, pensions

and legal protection, a signiﬁcant

proportion comes from some of the “most

marginalised, poor and abused members

of society.”

The report also highlights where

sanitation work has been oﬃcially

acknowledged and formalised, citing

South Africa as an example, where public

and private employees follow national

labour standards and have proper

equipment and training.

“Many of the challenges sanitation

workers face stem from their lack of

visibility in society,”WHO said, noting

that few countries in the developing

world had any guidelines to protect

sanitation workers. “Where laws do exist,

governments may lack the ﬁnancial or

technical means to implement them, and

the informality of the roles present further

challenges.”

To access the publication, Visit:

https://www.ilo.org/sector/Resources/

publications/WCMS_728054/lang--en/index.

htm

The plight of sanitation workers in the

developing world should be addressed

urgently, according to the World Health

Organisation (WHO).

Highlighting the dangers for the millions

of people who clean toilets, sewers and

septic tanks, ahead of World Toilet Day

on 19 November, the WHO insisted

that wile the workforce performs an

essential public service, their own health

is compromised and they are often

US shift away from coal saving significant volumes of water

Environment at Duke University.

These savings in both water consumption

and water withdrawal have come despite

the intensiﬁcation of water use associated

with fracking and shale gas production,

the study shows.

“For every megawatt of electricity

produced using natural gas instead of

coal, the amount of water withdrawn from

local rivers and groundwater is reduced

by 10 500 gallons (about 39 747 litres), the

equivalent of a 100-day water supply for a

typical American household,” says Andrew

Kondash, a post-doctoral researcher who

led the study.

At these rates of reduction, if the rise of

shale gas as an energy source and the

decline of coal continues through the

next decade, by 2030 the US will save

about 483 billion cubic metres of water

each year.

The study was originally published in

Environmental Research Letters, Visit:

https://iopscience.iop.org/

article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab4d71

The ongoing transition from coal to

natural gas and renewables in the US

electricity sector is dramatically reducing

the industry’s water use, a new study has

found.

“While most attention has been focused

on the climate and air quality beneﬁts

of switching from coal, this new study

shows that the transition to natural

gas – and even more so, to renewable

energy sources – has resulted in saving

billions of gallons of water,” notes Avner

Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and

water quality at the Nicholas School of the

The Water Wheel January/February 20209

Upfront

In memoriam – Arjen Hoekstra, father of the water footprint

The international water sector has

expressed its shock and sadness at the

unexpected death of Arjen Hoekstra, co-

founder of the Water Footprint Network.

Hoekstra, who passed away on 18

November at the age of 52, was a

professor of Water Management at the

University of Twente and the inventor of

the ‘water footprint’ concept. The water

footprints Hoekstra invented in 2003 gave

the sector a framework to analyse the

link between human consumption and

production and the appropriation of the

world’s freshwater. This innovation not

only kicked oﬀ a whole new academic

ﬁeld, Water Footprint Assessment, but

also made it possible for companies,

governments and consumers to

understand their water dependence in

locations around the world and how

their water footprint contributes to social,

environmental and economic impacts in

vulnerable river basins.

The water footprint is the actual volume

of freshwater consumed or polluted by

a process, a product or an organisation.

“Thanks to Arjen Hoekstra, the

international discussion about production

and consumption and the trade of goods

moved to a new level of clarity, making

it much easier to go from intentions to

action,” noted the Stockholm International

Water Institute (SIWI).

Over the years thousands of students have

followed the e-learning courses that have

been organised by Hoekstra’s network.

Several companies, including Tata Steel,

Ikea, Coca-Cola and Heineken have used

the concept of water footprint to raise

awareness about water conservation

within their own organisations.

Hoekstra worked tirelessly to expand

the scientiﬁc understanding of the real

appropriation of water required for

diﬀerent human activities. He was one of

the most cited researchers in his ﬁeld. He

also authored several books.

“With the death of Arjen Hoekstra, the

water world has lost one of its most

brilliant and innovative minds,” said SIWI

in a statement. “Furthermore, many

of us have lost a friend, a colleague

who inspired the best in us and a

co-conspirator who challenged us to

become better advocates for sustainable

development.”

Nile River ‘older than thought’

Ancient Egyptians considered the Nile

River to be the source of all life. The steady

northward path of the river has nourished

the fertile valleys of northeast Africa for

millions of years and in doing so, shaped

the course of human civilisation.

The Nile’s unchanging path, however,

has been a geologic mystery because

long-lived rivers usually move over time.

Researchers at the University of Texas at

Austin have cracked the case by linking

the river’s ﬂow to the movement of rock in

the Earth’s deep mantle. In the course of

their investigation, they found the eternal

river to be much older than anyone

realised, with the scientists estimating

the age of the Nile to be 30 million years

– about six times as long as previously

thought.

The research, published in the journal,

Nature Geoscience, found that if it weren’t

for the mantle movement keeping the

river on course, the Nile would have

turned west long ago, probably changing

the course of history along with it.

The results should settle a long-running

debate about the age of the river

and provide evidence that the slow

movement of the deep mantle is one

of the key forces shaping our Earth’s

landscape and geological processes.

To view the original article, Visit: https://www.

nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0472-x

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

To keep the oceans clean, look towards our rivers

According to Senior Manager for the Stockholm International

Water Institute (SIWI) Water Governance Department,

Ruth Mathews, the issue of plastic pollution in the marine

environment was ﬁrst recognised as an ocean problem. As such,

the necessary action was to clean up the ocean by removing

the plastic that was already there. This led to beach and ocean

cleanups, and the development of technologies to capture

plastic waste from the surface of coastal and marine waters.

However, she says, more recently research has begun to quantify

the amounts of trash in the ocean, and where it comes from.

What goes into our oceans?

According to the United Nations Environment Programme

(UNEP), marine litter is any persistent, manufactured or

processed solid material discarded, disposed of or abandoned in

the marine and coastal environment.

It mainly consists of plastics, wood, metals, glass, rubber,

clothing and paper, although the World Bank reports that about

80% is plastics. This is conﬁrmed by Geoﬀ Tooley, eThekwini

Municipality Senior Manager for Catchment Management, when

asked about what the bulk of trash that ends up on Durban’s

beaches consists of. “Plastic and polystyrene form the base,” he

explains. “There are things like furniture, but most of it is either

plastic, the largest portion, and the next is polystyrene, in the

form of fast food outlet packaging.”

Marine litter has become a global crisis. As the impact of the waste that we generate become

clearer, so is people’s alarm, their willingness to take action and the search for solutions. Now,

instead of looking for ways to clean-up the seas, researchers are saying that a large part of the

answer lies elsewhere; not in the ocean, but in our rivers. Petro Kotzé takes a closer look.

WATER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Cover story

The Water Wheel January/February 202011

Where does the trash come from?

International studies (in particular by the Jambeck Research Group at the University of Georgia) estimate that the largest quantities of

marine litter and plastic waste originate from a relatively small number of countries in Asia and other middle income, rapidly developing

countries. Of the top 20 countries South Africa is ranked eleventh and, together with the rest of top perpetrators, account for 83% of the

mismanaged plastic waste entering the ocean.

Water resource management

Waste estimates for 2010 for the top 20 countries ranked by mass of mismanaged plastic waste, indicated in units of millions of metric tons per year.

Mismanaged waste is the sum of inadequately managed waste plus 2% littering. Total mismanaged plastic waste is calculated for populations within 50 km

of the coast in the 192 countries considered. Economic classification is indicated according to World Bank definitions based on 2010 Gross National Income,

as follows: high income (HIC), upper middle income (UMI), lower middle income (LMI), and low income (LI).

Regardless of where the litter comes from, it adds to a global problem. Plastic pollution is moved throughout the world’s oceans by the

wind and currents, but congregate in ﬁve highly concentrated subtropical gyres: North Marine Litter Paciﬁc, North Atlantic, South Paciﬁc,

South Atlantic, and Indian Ocean.

A mock-up of the evolution of marine debris by 2018 after 10 years of advection by currents, as determined from real drifter movements, indicating the five

subtropical gyres.

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

Water resource management

Figuring out how much plastic there is in the ocean exactly

(by number of pieces and weight) is an ongoing process. This

is made more diﬃcult because the plastic does not remain on

the water’s surface. The UNEP estimates that only 15% of marine

litter ﬂoats on the sea’s surface. The rest remains in the water

column (15%) while the bulk (70%) rests on the seabed.

Furthermore, plastic progressively breaks down into smaller

pieces, and is digested by various forms of marine life, making

the true state of plastic presence in the ocean even more diﬃcult

to quantify.

Researchers have placed conservative estimates of the global

weight of plastic pollution in the sea surface at a minimum of

5.25 trillion particles weighing 268 940 tons (as published in Plos

One). This is still only 0.1% of the world annual production of

plastic. Plastics Europe, a trade organisation representing plastic

producers and manufactures, reported that 288 million tons

of plastic were produced worldwide in 2012. The researchers

thus stressed that their estimates of the weight of plastics in the

ocean are highly conservative and based on a limited inventory

of ocean observations. Furthermore, it does not account for

the potentially massive amount of plastic on shorelines, on the

seabed, suspended in the water column, and within organisms

that ingest it.

The route of plastic to the sea

The main sea-based sources of marine litter are shipping and

ﬁshing, but various reports indicate that up to 80% of the litter

comes from land. Sources are listed to include tourism, sewage

and illegal or poorly managed landﬁlls. Tooley estimates that

at least 90% of the litter that plagues Durban’s beaches is from

their river basins. Another 5 – 6% reach the sea directly from the

stormwater drainage system, and the balance is windblown or

chucked on the beach by people.

All over the globe, an astounding amount of litter and other

forms of pollution enter our seas in the same way. The Jambeck

study, using worldwide data on solid waste, population density

and economic status estimated the amount of plastic waste

generated in 192 countries at 275 million metric tons (in

2017). Of this, an estimated 4.8 to 12.7 million metric tons was

estimated to enter the ocean. Looking at plastic pathways, the

study found that 10 rivers basins are responsible for 90% of land-

based leakages to the ocean.

“Researchers have placed

conservative estimates of the global

weight of plastic pollution in the sea

surface at a minimum of 5.25 trillion

particles weighing 268 940 tons.”

Marine litter and other waste has long found an easy way to the sea – via

the rivers that transport it there.

Petro Kotzé

The top ten rivers contributing to marine litter. Both studies show the Yangtze River basin as the main contributor. The ranks for other polluted rivers differ

due to the entry data used in two studies: Lebreton used the global river plastics input model for estimation whereas Schmidt’s made calculations as a

product of mismanaged plastic waste generated per capita and population size in the catchment.

The Water Wheel January/February 202013

Water resource management

Mathews notes that research like this has brought attention

to the urgent need to address land-based sources of plastic

pollution. The challenge, both locally and internationally, is

substantial. Says the Department of Environmental Aﬀairs

(DEA) Chief Director of Communications, Albi Modise: “Despite

ongoing eﬀorts to clean the Republic of South Africa’s beaches,

litter continues to ﬂow to the coast through rivers and

waterways from inland sources.”

There are positive signs that the tide is slowing turning, however.

And increasingly, attention is being turned to the route litter

follows to the sea.

SIWI recently released the Source-to-Sea Framework for Marine

Litter Prevention, highlighting the central role of the river basin.

In South Africa, the DEA too is piloting a source to sea approach

to address marine litter at selected river basins. Tooley says, every

time they experience a big storm, and the beaches are left full

of litter, the same discussion is raised: “How do we stop it from

getting there in the ﬁrst place?”

South Africa’s source-to-sea intervention

The DEA’s approach involves catchment wide or river basin wide

interventions in ﬁve rivers in coastal KwaZulu-Natal. Modise

says these rivers consistently generate beach and marine litter,

especially after heavy rain, when pollution throughout the

catchment tends to be ﬂushed out via the rivers towards the

coast. “Coastal clean-up activities downstream of these loaded

river systems have not been successful due to the constant and

ongoing ﬂow of litter,” he says.

Debris and litter washed up on the shores of Mabul, a small island off the south-eastern coast of Sabah in Borneo, Malaysia.

The ﬁve rivers in question are the uMngeni River that ﬂows into

the Blue Lagoon at Durban North Beach; the uMlazi River that

ﬂows towards Cuttings Beach; and the uMbilo, uMhlatuzana and

aManzimnyama rivers, all three of which ﬂow into Durban Bay.

The DEA’s aim is to “reduce the impacts from land-based sources

and activities and sustainably manage critical coastal-riverine

ecosystems through the implementation of waste management

practices, advocacy, education and job creation,” says Modise.

The initiative is cross-sectoral in nature and includes key

roleplayers and stakeholders.

To reach a long-term goal of cleaning up the catchments

to reduce marine litter, the project has various short-term

objectives. Among others, litters hotspots are to be identiﬁed,

from where litter is to be recovered for 24 months. This includes

the installation of litter ‘booms’ to intercept waste ﬂoating on the

water surface. The types and quantities of litter collected will be

recorded, and an assessment made of the micro-plastics present.

At least one waste management intervention per pilot river is

to be identiﬁed, explains Modise. This can include waste sorting,

recovery and recycling. This will be followed by educational

activities and awareness campaigns.

“The medium to longer term goal is to expand the footprint of

the source-to-sea initiative nationally,” adds Modise. Once the

results of the pilot project have been reviewed, he says, it could

potentially be replicated at other coastal areas in South Africa.

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

Water resource management

“Ten rivers basins are responsible

for 90% of land-based leakages

to the ocean.”

Still, Modise admits that there are ample challenges, some

of which include the lack of waste management in informal

settlements, for which innovative solutions are necessary.

Another challenge is to change the communities’ behavior and

attitudes to not dump illegally, and to recycle, he says.

Mathews says they hope that their framework can help

address such challenges. “Ultimately the framework is aimed at

supporting local and national governments in gaining control

of plastic waste and guiding the investments of international

organizations, ﬁnanciers, NGOs, and others who can bring

knowledge and ﬁnancial resources and build awareness and

political will to address plastic leakage.”

The SIWI Source to Sea Framework

The Source-to-Sea Framework for Marine Litter Prevention

focuses speciﬁcally on addressing plastic leakage from river

basins. The framework calls for ﬁrst, an understanding of the

sources, types, behaviour and impacts of plastic pollution in

riverine and marine environments. Then, stakeholders who are

impacted by, contribute to and provide solutions for plastic

leakage should be engaged.

Failures in governance, ﬁnance, management and operations

must be analysed. Commitment towards preventing plastic

pollution must be built. Then, action should be taken on

individual to global levels. Progress should be monitored and

learning fostered by doing and adapting. Transformation to

a circular economy must be supported. Last, the framework

should be applied to key challenges. This includes the many

other issues that contribute to the degrading of riverine and

marine environments, beyond poor solid waste management

and the uncontrolled consumption of plastic goods.

Such a source-to-sea approach takes a global concern, and ﬁlters

it down to local interventions, with the river basin at the core. At

the same time, the changes in behavior and practices on various

levels combined, can achieve a large improvement in river basins

that will ultimately ﬁlter back again, to the oceans.

“My hope is that the Source-to-Sea Framework for Marine Litter

Prevention will be used in river basins around the world to

establish the governance, management, ﬁnance, and behaviours

that will gain control of plastic waste and prevent plastic leakage

from river basins,” notes Mathews.

“Initially, investments should be made to improve solid waste

management locally,” she says. For this, stakeholders at global,

national, and regional levels who can bring ﬁnancial solutions

and build the political will to address these challenges must

be engaged. Simultaneously, a circular economy that will

There are many sources of marine litter, including from the sea itself, in the form of material lost at sea, or deliberately left there or on the beaches and shores,

such as fishing gear and cargo.

The Water Wheel January/February 202015

Water resource management

add value to plastic must be developed. This will shift plastic

waste management from disposal to reuse and recycling, she

says. “The framework supports this two-pronged approach

of strengthening local management of plastic waste while

developing a circular economy globally.”

SIWI is currently piloting the framework in two locations, namely

the Vu Gia – Thu Bon River basin in Vietnam and Lake Hawassa

basin in Ethiopia. “We have held stakeholder workshops and

capacity training and have received strong interest in using the

framework to address plastic leakage,” explains Mathews. The

project will be continuing into 2020.

Components of a good plan to solve marine litter

According to Modise, research shows that reducing the amount

of mismanaged waste by 50% in the top 20 countries where the

most marine litter and waste originates from, would result in a

nearly 40% decline in inputs of plastic to the ocean. And, he says,

the research also suggests that solutions to the growing problem

of plastic pollution are possible, given suﬃcient resources and

commitment.

For any such success the whole community has to involved, says

Tooley, including residents, government, the private sector and

businesses. He adds that a convincing factor is the cost avoided

should marine litter not exist. These could include the cost of

collecting the waste from the marine and beach environment,

and the harbours, for example. “It’s cheaper to get it out of the

system before it gets into the system,” he explains. “If we can

get that right, we won’t even have to talk about marine waste.”

Concludes Tooley, the cheapest wat to get rid of the problem, is

to tackle it at the source.

Minh Hai in the Vu Gia – Thu Bon River basin in Vietnam.

SIWI

Sources:

• Plastic Pollution in the World’s Oceans: More than 5 Trillion

Plastic Pieces Weighing over 250,000 Tons Aoat at Sea by

M Eriksen, LCM Lebreton, HS Carson, M Thiel, CJ Moore, JC

Borerro, et al published in PLoS ONE (2014)

• Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean, by Jenna R.

Jambeck, Roland Geyer, Chris Wilcox, Theodore R. Siegler,

Miriam Perryman, Anthony Andrady, Ramani Narayan and

Kara Lavender Law published in Science,13 February 2015

• Solving marine pollution - Successful models to reduce

wastewater, agricultural runo, and marine litter, a World

Bank report by Olha Krushelnytska, September 2018

• Source-to-Sea Framework for Marine Litter Prevention:

Preventing Plastic Leakage in River Basins by RE Mathews,

R.E. & J. Stretz, 2019 for the Stockholm International Water

Institute (SIWI)

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

Feature

WATER RESOURCES

At the beginning of December, residents of Port Elizabeth and

adjacent towns in the Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB) Municipality

were facing another holiday season of harsh water restrictions

due to the ongoing drought. Yet the situation was not quite as

dire as might be expected from the area’s startlingly low dam

levels.

Two weeks earlier the level of the second largest dam, the

Krom River’s Impofu Dam, had fallen below the lowest intake

point, which meant that its water was no longer accessible.

Subsequently, good rains in the catchment caused the small

Churchill Dam, 21 km upstream, to overﬂow, and by 2 December

this water had raised the level of the Impofu Dam a percentage

point to 17.5%. The larger Kouga Dam (previously called the

Paul Sauer Dam) on the Kouga River stood at 32.8% – a huge

improvement from the record low of 6.7% in July 2018.

But it is thanks to planning initiated a decade ago that there

is room for optimism. In 2008 the then Department of Water

Aﬀairs, in collaboration with Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB)

Port Elizabeth – Planning, engineering and science combine to

avoid Day Zero

Forward planning for the Algoa Bay Water Supply System has helped reduce the risk of a

drought-induced ‘Day Zero’ in Port Elizabeth. Article by Sue Matthews.

The Kouga Dam is the largest dam in the Algoa Water Supply Scheme. Apart from providing water for Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality and the towns of

Hankey and Patensie in the Kouga Municipality, a large allocation is set aside for the Gamtoos Irrigation Board.

The Water Wheel January/February 202017

Municipality, commissioned the Algoa Reconciliation Strategy

Study to ensure a sustainable future supply from the Algoa Water

Supply System, which serves the area extending from the Kouga

River system in the west to the Sundays River system in the east.

The study was completed in April 2010, but updated in April

2011 to address emergency interventions planned as a result

of the 2009-2011 drought, as well as the anticipated water

requirements of the Coega Industrial Development Zone (IDZ).

Since then, a strategy steering committee set up to monitor

implementation of the study recommendations and update

them as necessary has continued to meet regularly. Technical

support has been provided by Aurecon, which also conducted

the reconciliation strategy study with the assistance of AfriCoast

Engineers, Palmer Development Group, Groundwater Africa,

MGP Consulting, and Scherman Colloty & Associates.

The ﬁnal report of the reconciliation strategy study identiﬁed a

number of potential interventions and made recommendations

about their order of priority. Among others, they included

options for water re-use (using treated wastewater from the

existing Fishwater Flats wastewater treatment works and

planned Coega wastewater treatment works) and desalination

(of both seawater and Sundays River irrigation return ﬂows),

some of which were investigated further and either ruled out

as not feasible or put on the backburner, being unaﬀordable or

impractical at this time. For example, environmental approval

for the rezoning and development of the Coega IDZ was

conditional upon treated wastewater being used as a source of

industrial water supply. But the NMB Municipality does not have

the funds to implement this – and the IDZ does not yet have

any big industry players with signiﬁcant water requirements – so

currently there is only limited re-use from the Fishwater Flats

wastewater treatment works, mainly by the surrounding Deal

Party industries.

The reconciliation strategy study supported the fast-tracking

of the Nooitgedacht Low-Level Scheme, an extension of the

existing Nooitgedacht High-Level Scheme that treats water

from the Gariep Dam, delivered via the Orange-Fish-Sunday’s

transfer system. Although Treasury made R450 million of

emergency drought funding available to the NMB Municipality

in 2011, this still left a massive shortfall. Phase 1 was completed

by mid-2013, but numerous delays due to funding issues

meant that Phase 2 was only completed in mid-2017, and the

completion date for the ﬁnal Phase 3 has recently been pushed

back to April 2021. National government has footed the bill,

but the total cost has escalated by some R300 million over the

past decade. Nevertheless, the scheme is designed to provide

an average of 160 Mℓ potable water per day for distribution

by the NMB Municipality, which is a signiﬁcant contribution.

Water restrictions, leak repairs and pressure management had

succeeded in reducing potable water use to approximately

280 Mℓ per day in November 2019 – it had risen to 345 Mℓ per

day in 2017, before the current drought took hold.

The reconciliation strategy study also supported the NMB

Municipality’s emergency intervention to investigate

groundwater resources close to existing infrastructure.

Dr Ricky Murray of Groundwater Africa explains that he was

asked by the municipality to start looking for areas with

promising groundwater potential in 2010. Two years previously

– before the 2009-2011 drought began – he had completed a

Water Research Commission (WRC) project on the development

of a GIS-based approach for identifying municipal groundwater

exploration target areas. The ﬁnal report, co-authored with Marc

Goedhart and Jane Baron, was titled High-yielding groundwater

areas around the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality (WRC

Report No. TT 327/08), and it focused on areas within an

economically acceptable distance of existing water-supply

pipelines and electricity sources. This was a desktop study that

drew upon an earlier WRC and Council for Geoscience project by

Goedhart, Small and Hulley, completed in 2004.

Water resources

The main dams supplying Port Elizabeth and other towns in the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality and the Kouga Municipality. There are also a number

of smaller dams, plus water is transferred from the Gariep Dam on the Orange River via the Orange-Fish-Sundays interbasin transfer scheme to the

Nooitgedacht water treatment works.

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

Water resources

The area to the north of the Port Elizabeth central business

district, extending along the coast to the Coega IDZ and inland

to Uitenhage, has long been recognised as an important

groundwater area. This is the Uitenhage Artesian Basin, which

was so heavily exploited for irrigation in the ﬁrst half of the 1900s

that it was declared a Subterranean Government Water Control

Area in 1957. Subsequently, the basin was extensively researched

in a variety of projects, and the ﬁndings on its hydrogeology

were synthesised by Maclear in a paper published in Water SA in

2001.

The basin is divided into two independent systems, separated

by the Coega Fault. To the north is the relatively shallow Coega

Ridge Aquifer, subject to large-scale abstraction to supply some

outlying suburbs and the town of Uitenhage, while the much

deeper Swartkops Aquifer to the south is relatively underutilised.

Interestingly, in 1909 a borehole drilled there in search of oil

struck artesian groundwater at a depth of 1 082 metres, and 55°C

water, rich in iron and manganese, gushed to the surface. This

put paid to the oil exploration at the site, but the Zwartkops Spa

was established instead, and later upgraded to a swish hotel that

incorporated ‘mineral baths’ and a drinking fountain for those

who wanted to ‘take the waters’. In 1965 the borehole’s steel

casing rusted through and groundwater leaked under artesian

pressure at a rate of 13 ℓ/s into the surrounding sediments, so

the Department of Water Aﬀairs drilling division grout-sealed the

borehole a few years later to prevent further loss of groundwater

from the aquifer.

This very deep borehole is believed to have tapped into water

from the basal bedrock – the fractured quartzitic sandstones of

the Table Mountain Group’s Peninsula Formation. The Formation

can be seen buckled up as mountain ranges inland, but it dips

below the surface at the coast, apart from isolated outcrops at

Coega Kop and the Algoa Bay islands. Murray and his team knew

that the section of the Coega Fault close to Coega Kop oﬀered

the potential to access this TMG Aquifer water much closer to

the surface than the kilometre-deep Zwartkops borehole. But

ﬁrst they had to ﬁnd it.

Dr Murray explains that in the 1970s a wide swath depicting

the fault zone had been mapped by the state oil-exploration

company SOEKOR from data collected during seismic surveys,

but pinpointing the exact location of the main Coega Fault

would require some additional detective work.

“The challenge was trying to look with geophysics through

about 200 metres of soft material to ﬁnd a near-vertical fault

below that,” says Dr Murray. “It really was like trying to ﬁnd a

needle in a haystack, but the haystack was buried 200 metres

below the ground! And since you’re looking for a near-vertical

target, if you’re oﬀ by a few metres you can miss it.”

First he commissioned Dr Edgar Stettler – a geological

consultant and University of the Witwatersrand honorary

professor – to re-interpret SOEKOR’s seismic data and construct a

3D model of the Coega Fault.

“That put it in a zone about a kilometre wide, which got us in the

right area, and then we did a gravity survey to try and narrow it

down to a point where we could do more precise geophysics.”

He explains that the gravity survey was conducted with a

handheld metre that is used to take density readings, since the

quartzitic rock has a higher density than the soft Cretaceous

sediments that had ﬁlled the displaced area at the fault zone. The

gravity model developed from the survey results allowed them

to narrow their target down to a 200 metre wide zone.

“Again, that doesn’t help us pinpoint a near-vertical fault, but it

told us where to focus our geophysics eﬀorts. Then we tried a

variety of diﬀerent methods, and the one that gave us the most

precise data to work with at depth was magnetotellurics.”

Magnetotellurics, or MT, makes use of natural variations of the

Earth’s magnetic and electric ﬁelds, caused by solar wind and

lightning strikes, to measure the electrical resistivity of the

subsurface.

“Essentially, you use electrodes to measure the diﬀerences in the

conductance of the rocks in a particular area,” explains Dr Murray.

“Quartzites are far more resistive to electrical currents than the

more clay-rich, younger Cretaceous sediments, which conduct

electricity very easily.”

Ensuring accurate and noise-free results meant that the

electricity supply to the area had to be switched oﬀ for six hours,

but the MT survey allowed the team to peg the position of the

faults. In 2014 they drilled a number of exploration boreholes,

and made a massive strike that conﬁrmed they were on the right

track in targeting the Coega Fault. In late 2018 they returned to

start drilling production boreholes, and on 21 March 2019 they

The initial spa at the kilometre-deep Zwartkops borehole in 1914 was

replaced by a swish ‘sanatorium’ hotel in 1936.

The Water Wheel January/February 202019

hit their target at a depth of 265 metres. A second borehole was

drilled at the site and the combined drilling yield of these two

holes was 150 ℓ/s.

Drilling of all ﬁve production boreholes that make up the Coega

Kop Wellﬁeld is now complete. The boreholes have not yet been

test pumped, but initial indications are good as their combined

drilling yield is 357 ℓ/s. The groundwater cannot yet be fed

into the NMB Municipality’s water supply system because – like

the Zwartkops Spa ‘mineral waters – it is very high in iron and

manganese.

Treating it to meet SANS 241 standards is best done in a

dedicated bioﬁltration plant, similar to the 10 Mℓ per day

Preekstoel plant in Hermanus, which treats groundwater tapped

from the Overstrand Municipality’s Gateway and Hemel en Aarde

wellﬁelds. The Coega Kop plant will have the capacity to treat

20 Mℓ per day, and although its design has been completed – by

Aurecon, using some innovative 3D modelling and virtual reality

(VR) tools – construction has not yet started.

Given that the current drought will probably have broken before

the plant is up and running, why should the groundwater

development work provide any cause for optimism?

Dr Murray explains that using drought-relief funding provided

by National Treasury to NMB Municipality, the groundwater team

drilled over 23 km of boreholes between late 2018 and mid-

2019, both in the Port Elizabeth city limits and further aﬁeld. They

included, for example, areas close to reservoirs and hospitals, on

the Churchill Dam property and St Georges Park Cricket Ground,

as well as in the Bushy Park area, which the 2008 WRC study had

highlighted as the top priority.

“The total drilling yield was just under 1000 ℓ/s and the results

are still being analysed to ﬁnalise production yields,” he says. “But

there are some boreholes that could potentially be equipped

very rapidly and brought online if the water supply situation got

really bad. At the same time, National Treasury also gave Kouga

Municipality drought-relief funding, and we drilled boreholes for

them too. Since their towns of Jeﬀreys Bay, Humansdorp, Hankey

and Patensie all partly depend on water from the Algoa Bay

Water Supply System, the increased groundwater use by Kouga

Municipality will relieve pressure on the surface water supply, to

the beneﬁt of the Port Elizabeth metro.”

Water resources

Groundwater spurts up from a depth of 265 m in the first strike at a

production borehole at the Coega Kop wellfield.

Ricky Murray of Groundwater Africa led a field trip to the Coega Kop

wellfield as part of the GWD 2019 Groundwater Conference, held in Port

Elizabeth in October 2019.

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

Connecting to water in a dry Johannesburg

“My grandmother often extolled the powers of sea water and

it was not uncommon in our house to ﬁnd bottles of ocean

water reverently stashed away. These stashed bottles seemed

to represent an extra layer of protection over the family,” says

Conﬁdence Joseph, a PhD student at the Oceanic Humanities

for the Global South project based at the Wits Institute for Social

and Economic Research (WISER). “She also believed that there

were benevolent as well as malevolent water gods who could

either bless or smite, depending on how one related with them.

Decades later, ﬁnding myself in Johannesburg, my connection

with water has not changed much. This should not be surprising

considering that Johannesburg is as dry and land-locked as

Bulawayo.”

Joseph recently presented her paper on how water, and the

absence of it, can help us think diﬀerently about the plight of the

global citizen. A student of African Literature, she says she also

wanted to show that there are alternative ways of replenishing

ourselves in waterless spaces like Bulawayo and Johannesburg.

One is through stories of water spirits who defy time and space,

and make their presence felt in urban and modernised settings.

Her talk was one of a series of lectures, screenings, live musical

performances, immersive installations, live readings and public

city walks led by artists and scholars. Called Holding Water, the

programme was a collection of interpretations of the politics and

poetics of ocean ﬂow, from the perspective of Johannesburg.

Petro Kotzé explores how stories and art can keep the city of gold, and the people that live there,

connected to water.

WATER AND SOCIETY

Feature

The Water Wheel January/February 202021

The project is also investigating how our stories and histories

can help us understand each other, our past, and the current

environmental crisis we are experiencing.

A city far from the coast, but close to the ocean

Charne Lavery, research associate at WISER (and lecturer at the

University of Pretoria), says thinking about the ocean from the

perspective of land-locked Johannesburg is not that far-fetched.

“Despite the paradox of the ocean versus the landlocked city,

they are connected,” she says. Hints of Johannesburg’s unlikely

connection to the sea are scattered throughout its streets. For

one, it’s home to Africa’s largest dry port. Reportedly, more than

half of the cargo received at our seaports at Durban and Cape

Town lands at the City Deep container terminal. Hurrying along

the transport of goods between land and sea, it’s our only inland

terminal where customs clearance takes place.

Then there was the South African Institute for Maritime Research,

a shadowy apartheid-era paramilitary force, the existence of

which emerged during the Truth and Reconciliation Committee

meetings. Once, Wemmerspan in the South of Johannesburg

was home to one of our two inland navy bases (the SAS Rand

Naval Base). Back in the day, the best restaurant was known to be

the Carlton Hotel’s Three Ships.

The city’s very location connects it to the sea. Straddling the

watershed that divides the Limpopo and Orange rivers’ basins,

rain falling north of Johannesburg’s Parktown ridge drains

into the Limpopo River to ﬂow towards the Indian Ocean.

Rain falling south of the ridge, again, drains into the Vaal River

and eventually into the Atlantic. Lavery says their research has

shown that Johannesburg itself is located on what was once a

prehistoric ocean ﬂoor.

The connection can also be drawn to environmental impacts.

“It seems out of sight and out of mind, but it’s not,” she

maintains. The impact of climate change, for one, will also be

felt in Johannesburg. Possible droughts are connected to the

hydrological cycles that start in the ocean. Johannesburg may

also, in future, become waterlogged again, as a dry island amid

rising seas or sunk into acid mine water.

Environmental humanities analyse and investigate exactly this -

the complex interrelationships between human activity (cultural,

economic and political) and the environment.

Oceanic humanities for the global south

Within this ﬁeld, oceanic humanities engage with the human

and non-human aspects of the ocean. Oceanic Humanities

for the Global South, in particular, focuses on themes of

decolonialism. Critical of knowledge dictated by the Euro-

North point of view, global maritime trade and the oceanic

environment is instead approached from the viewpoint of the

Indian Ocean and other southern seas.

This approach favours South-South connections instead of the

history of European explorers that came to Africa. “Indian Ocean

studies puts the Indian Ocean at the centre, highlighting links

between Africa, India and the Arab world,” notes Lavery.

Within this ﬁeld of academia, scholars have recently started to

call for critical ocean studies, she adds. Not only should we speak

about themes of decolonisation, but it should include critical

environmental issues. Lavery says, “It’s asking how to think about

environmental and social justice at the same time.”

The Holding Water programme was part of WISER’s attempt to

engage a broader public in this ﬁeld of thought. They want to

“bridge the gap between ivory tower academia and the wider

public.”The events took place throughout Johannesburg, in

collaboration with POOL, described as an emergent platform for

curatorial and artistic production, experimentation and research,

working with artists to support and commission new work.

Taking oceanic humanities to the streets of the city

One of WISER’s aims is to provide a platform for experts from

diﬀerent ﬁelds to collaborate, and then to develop the ideas

that emerge. Lavery, for example, specialises in oceanic literary

studies, but the project includes varied experts across ﬁelds that

include visual art, maritime archaeology and architectural history.

As such, the topics presented throughout the programme varied

vastly, but all of them approached Johannesburg’s relation to

oceans and water.

Jonathan Cane is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Oceanic

Humanities at Wits, with research interests in landscape art,

architectural modernism, post-colonialism and urban queer

studies. His presentation, ‘Concrete Oceans’ is part of a larger

research project investigating concrete and modernity in the

Global South. Cane explains that so far, he has written about

the use of precast concrete panels in Chile, high-rise concrete

structures in Maputo and the London Zoo’s concrete penguin

pool.

“The focus of ‘Concrete Oceans’ is to apply an oceanic humanities

lens to my broader project,” he explains. “This means looking at

the relationship between the southern oceans and concrete

through a 1964 invention called the dolos.” Cane says this

modular interlocking ‘coastal armour’ works to attenuate wave

energy and thereby stabilise the water-land relationship.

“Through my analysis of the history of this invention, I oﬀer a

critical reading of apartheid science and technology and hope

to suggest alternative ways of conceptualising the ocean-earth

binary.”

WISER senior researcher, Dr Pamela Gupta’s research interests

include connecting Lusophone India (Goa) and Africa,

Water and society

Johannesburg is located on top of an escarpment which functions as a

continental drainage divide or watershed.

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

ethnographies of decolonisation, heritage tourism and visual

cultures. She chose to approach the Holding Water project

through Johannesburg’s public pools, “precisely because

they hold water in some sense in a dry land-locked city like

Johannesburg.” Gupta says this city’s aridity is always related

to its wetness, and as a Johannesburg resident and regular

swimmer for the last 15 years, she has continually gone in search

of it in places that she is also fond of frequenting, and where

she knows she can ﬁnd and feel water. “I think this viewpoint of

Joburg is valuable because swimming pools hold many of the

city’s complex histories within its infrastructural borders, those

of apartheid (whiteness), sexuality, freedom, (black) leisure, and

disrepair.”

During her talk, Gupta presented a series of contemplations on

Johannesburg’s public pools which, for some residents, is the

closest thing to an ocean they have in the city. Gupta says “pools

supply/provide water oases in cities, yet they are as evil as they

are gentle and tranquil, and portend our dry futures in an era of

the Anthropocene. I am reminded of ﬂying into Cape Town in

March 2017 and seeing eerily empty swimming pools from my

aerial view window seat.”

In reference to a series of paintings of abandoned pools by artist

Willem Pretorius, Gupta says: “That so many dried up pools exist

(and have been captured on canvas by Pretorius), scattered

throughout South Africa’s barren landscape suggest they are an

important part of Joburg’s landscape of ruination, decay, and

abandonment, much like its leftover mines. They too portend

an anthropogenic future of dramatic climate change and water

restrictions, a future Joburg in which, during crises (such as

the one that hit Cape Town in 2017, suggesting that Joburg

is perhaps not so far oﬀ), the ﬁlling of pools will be strictly

forbidden except for the chosen few, a luxury in a sea of dryness,

thus producing an aerial view of a landscape littered with mostly

empty squares and circles.”

Lavery notes that personal experiences, individual beliefs and

cultural representations such as those presented during Holding

Water are important in order for us to understand diverse views

and contribute to deeper understanding of the environmental

issues we are currently experiencing.

The importance of stories in our world today

“If you don’t engage with hidden stories and histories to deal

with the aftermath of colonisation, you cannot understand

where people come from, or try and instill positive change,” she

says. As example, Lavery mentions diﬀerent culture’s historical

experiences with beaches. In Mozambique, for example, the

beach is, among other things, the place where people were

taken away from their homes during the slave trade. “Beaches are

not only a places of leisure, but also of deep historical wounds.”

This perspective was one of the many explored during the

programme. The below is an excerpt from the poem ‘Water’ by

Koleka Putuma published in Collective Amnesia (part of the list

of suggested reading for one of the Holding Water events):

Water and society

Johannesburg’s connection with water goes much further than its water reservoirs.

The Water Wheel January/February 202023

Water and society

If you don’t engage with hidden stories and histories to deal with the aftermath

of colonisation, you cannot understand where people come from, or try and instill

positive change.

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

“I often wonder why I feel as if I’m drowning every time I look out

into the sea,

this and feeling incredibly small.

And I often hear this joke

about Black people not being able to swim,

or being scared of water.

We are mocked

and we have often mocked ourselves

for wiping our faces the way that we do when we come out of

the water.

Compare to how they do it, all Baywatch-like,

And how we so ratchet-like with our postures and kink.

Yet every time our skin goes under,

it’s as if the reeds remember that they were once chains,

and the water, restless, wishes it cold spew all of the slaves and

ships onto shore,

whole as they boarded, sailed and sunk.

Their tears are what have turned the ocean salty,

This is why our irises burn every time we go under.”

If you do not engage that history, you cannot demand that

people help conserve and keep the ocean clean, says Lavery.

“The humanities and arts angle is one of the resources that we

have to think through our ecological crisis.”

Yet, she thinks there’s more to it. “There’s something deeper to

these symptomatic reactions that we’re swiftly cycling though,”

she says, in reference to the suite of issues like the hole in the

ozone layer, the use of plastic straws and acid mine drainage

that have received so much public attention for relatively short

periods of time. “There seems to be a panicked, short-term view

of the environmental crisis as its hitting people.” In comparison,

environmental humanities calls for a long-term, vigorous view of

what is happening in our culture, what brought us to this crisis,

how we talk about it and the metaphors we use to describe it.

“Good historical and cultural research needs to be done,” she

says. “We have to learn what the metaphors and stories are

that can have damaging and empowering eﬀects.” Stories have

power, she maintains, “and we need to understand how stories

work in order to help us harness them as one of the tools to

solve our environmental problems.”

While the Holding Water programme has come to an end, Lavery

says they are considering more events for next year. Updates will

be posted on the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research

Facebook website, the Oceanic Humanities for the Global South

Facebook page, and the mailing list and social media of the

POOL project.

Water and society

Artist Willem Pretorius’s style can best be described as observational realism. His work can be seen as a type of visual diary

where he documents a specic time and place in our history and in doing so, remembering. It also reminds us of our own

transience and mortality. Everything is temporary.

The Water Wheel January/February 202025

Feature

ECOLOGICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

South Africa is among the most water scarce countries per capita

in the world, a situation which is made more complicated by

the uneven distribution of water availability across the country.

Rainfall varies from over 1 900 mm in the east of the country and

in the mountainous areas, to almost zero in the west and north-

west of the country.

With an average rainfall of less than 500 mm/year, and signiﬁcant

annual and seasonal variability, only 9% ends up as water in

rivers and aquifers (DWAF, 2013). Like precipitation, runoﬀ

is highly variable in both space and time. Much of South

Africa’s water is generated in small areas identiﬁed as Strategic

Water Source Areas (SWSAs) for surface water (SWSA-sw) and

groundwater (SWSA-gw) (see map elsewhere).

These areas are considered strategically important at a national

level for water and economic security for the country, supporting

growth and development needs. The transboundary SWSA-sw

cover only 10% of the country’s land surface area but produce

50% of its surface runoﬀ and most of its groundwater recharge,

sustaining most of the perennial rivers.

The SWSA-gw cover around 9% of the land surface of South

Africa and account for up to 42% of the baseﬂow. Sustained

Investing in ecological infrastructure to improve drought

resilience and enhance water security

Chantel Petersen, Lindie Smith-Adao, David Le Maitre, Nebo Jovanovic

Strategic Water Source Areas for surface water and groundwater in South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland (Le Maitre et al., 2018).

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

river ﬂows are important because they support people and

communities who depend directly on rivers for their water,

especially during droughts. Society obtains many water-related

beneﬁts from water source areas, including water for urban and

industrial purposes, and for irrigation. Water from these areas are

also critical for cooling at the power stations, which generate

most of South Africa’s electricity (Le Maitre et al., 2018).

South Africa’s water security therefore depends not only on our

built or hard water infrastructure but also on well-managed land

in our catchments. Most of the cost-eﬀective, hard infrastructure

options such as large-scale dams and pipeline schemes are

exploited in key catchment areas, with planners historically

relying heavily on such engineering solutions to secure the

country’s water security.

Healthy wetlands, rivers and groundwater ecosystems in

the multi-purpose landscape will however make our future

more water secure. They are ecological infrastructure that can

generate and deliver signiﬁcant improvements in water quantity

and quality if we look after them. Ecological infrastructure

refers to naturally functioning ecosystems that deliver valuable

services to people, such as fresh water (water puriﬁcation),

climate regulation, soil formation and disaster risk reduction

(e.g. ﬂood attenuation and drought mitigation). It is the nature-

based equivalent of built infrastructure, and is just as important

for providing services and underpinning socio-economic

development.

Investing in water-related ecological infrastructure in

conjunction with built infrastructure, will deliver more clean

water from our land. Investments are particularly important in

our SWSAs where ecological infrastructure assets are under-

protected and degrading. Currently only 11% of all water source

areas fall within protected areas. Investment in this kind of

infrastructure includes clearing invasive alien vegetation like pine

trees and black wattle from mountains, rivers and wetlands as

well as river and wetland rehabilitation (Figure 1).

Ecological infrastructure

Figure 1: Examples of beneﬁts ﬂowing to society from investing in ecological infrastructure (after SANBI, 2014).

Water security underpins economic development but is at risk from the pressures created by a growing population, land degradation and

an increasingly variable climate (CSIR, 2010 and 2015). Many predictions of climate change have been made and they have improved over

time, but some uncertainty still remains (Pearce, 2014).

What is certain is that our climate is changing based on the overwhelming evidence of its impacts and knock-on eﬀects observed in many

sectors of the environment including cities. Climate change is shifting rainfall patterns, causing increases in temperatures and accelerating

the risks of extreme weather events across the country.

Recent droughts that occurred in the Southern African region (2015-2017) exacerbated issues of water scarcity and equitable water

allocation in the country. The drought, which started in 2015, was a result of the combined eﬀects of a severe drought and a strong El Nino

event (Baudoin et al., 2017). This has resulted in some South African Provinces declared as disaster areas (e.g. KwaZulu-Natal), declines in

harvest being experienced, which resulted in the necessity to import crops, and heavy water restrictions were implemented to cope with

dwindling water resources and the need to adapt to the “new normal” of water scarcity.

The Western Cape Province and the City of Cape Town in particular experienced one of its worst droughts ever during 2015 to 2017. Water

shortages occurred with low dam levels experienced (e.g. Theewaterskloof Dam) and six levels of water restrictions were imposed as a

means to reduce usage and conserve water (Booysen et al., 2019).

The Water Wheel January/February 202027

partnership with the National Disaster Management Centre

developed an open access online tool, called the Green Book

(visit www.greenbook.co.za). The Green Book was funded by

Canada’s International Development Research Centre and

launched on 8 March 2019.

This state-of-the-art climate risk proﬁling and adaptation

tool is intended to be an applied knowledge resource for

municipalities to address climate change impacts and

vulnerabilities in human settlements. The Green Book is a unique

attempt at interdisciplinary, applied sciences that combined the

expertise of researchers in climatology, demography, disaster

risk sciences, environmental sciences, geography, informatics,

urban planning, economics, ecology, architecture, anthropology,

hydrology and statistics.

The multi-disciplinary nature of the Book, combined with the

high-resolution scientiﬁc evidence, makes this one of the most

novel, innovative and information-dense research platforms

about disaster risk and climate adaptation planning on the

African continent. Its ultimate goal is to contribute to resilient,

sustainable and liveable human settlements through climate

change adaptation.

Likewise, to support decision making for this type of investment,

a short-term project entitled, ‘Review of WRC drought research

and gap analysis’ was funded in 2019 by the WRC to ﬁll the

overall knowledge gap in drought research so as to establish a

focused strategy for future research.

A longer-term WRC project entitled, ‘The role, beneﬁts and

prioritization of ecological infrastructure (EI) in mitigating

the impacts of droughts in South Africa,’ will integrate the

environment and the people utilising it by determining how

well-managed ecological infrastructure can mitigate the impacts

of droughts on human livelihoods and well-being. Strategic

responses will be developed with communities aimed at

maintaining and enhancing the value of this ecosystem service

that people will embrace and implement.

The focus these days is on making environments work for

both ecosystems and people. A way of achieving this is by

concentrating on improving ecosystem and land degradation

as these are the leading causes of risk and vulnerability, and

to invest in nature-based solutions as an adaptation measure.

These approaches have the added beneﬁt of being cost-

eﬀective to implement which is an essential consideration,

especially in developing countries. An additional beneﬁt is that

nature-based approaches are ﬂexible, easily adapting to change,

making them resilient in coping with climate unpredictability.

Adaptation measures to drought that are researched and

implemented are already moving in this direction. Mitigating

drought is a shared responsibility, which includes the general

public and awareness should be created. People and their

environments are interlinked and future planning and the

country’s development goals should integrate the two.

These severe droughts appear as a ‘surprise’ to the country

despite the fact that South Africa is susceptible to such a

hazard (Bruwer, 1989). The ﬁrst detection of El Niño conditions

in the Tropical Paciﬁc in 2015, months before the impacts were

observed, provided governments with the earliest possible

warning of likely adverse impacts on water supply and food

production.

Notwithstanding the warning signs and the notable disaster

risk legislation (the National Disaster Management Act, 2002), it

seems that early warnings about a likely severe drought did not

catalyse the swift implementation of risk preparedness measures

that it should (Baudoin et al., 2017). This delayed reaction is of

concern within the context of future climate change across the

region.

Broad-scale predictions show that sub-Saharan Africa will get

drier. Meteorological drought (the occurrence of reduced

precipitation), is expected to become increasingly more frequent

in the country. Even in the best-case scenario, South Africa, like

the rest of the region, is expected to become more vulnerable

to water insecurity in the coming decades. This increases the

urgency of implementing the best and most cost-eﬀective and

eﬀective adaptation plans, including those related to ecological

infrastructure and nature-based solutions.

The Council for Scientiﬁc and Industrial Research (CSIR) and

its institutional partners recognised the importance of ﬁnding

innovative ways to reduce risk vulnerability. The CSIR in

Ecological infrastructure

Low dam levels at the Theewaterskloof Dam located on the Sonderend River near Villiersdorp,

Western Cape, South Africa. The dam is responsible for storing more than half of Cape Town’s

surface water supply yet water reached less than 20% of its capacity in 2017. Photograph on the

left shows the dam in March 2017 while the photograph on the right is the dam in August 2017.

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

Water scenarios for the future: A glimpse of what is to come

Change is taking place in the climate system and this could have

a signiﬁcant impact on the future of water and agriculture.

This reality has been highlighted in the latest research on South

Africa’s water management scenarios for the future. Experts from

the University of the Free State (UFS) have been researching the

diﬀerent drivers and enablers that could determine South Africa’s

water futures. This has enabled them to come up with four

detailed scenario’s that can now inform policy responses and

adaptation practices.

This project, funded by the Water Research Commission (WRC),

provides a glimpse of what is to come in future decades.

Prof Andries Jordaan, a research fellow at the UFS, led this

comprehensive scenario-building process. The researchers

considered key trends and drivers reshaping the water and

agricultural future and the road ahead. They also investigated

diﬀerent policy responses and decision-making concerning

water realities.

“The challenge now and in the future is to produce more food

with the same quantity of water or less given the depleting

state of water resources in the country,” Prof Jordaan said. “It is

empirical to promote the productivity of agricultural water use

to enhance agricultural output and increase the contribution of

the sector to the economy.”

The paradigm of scarcity

There are major challenges with water availability and quality

across the country. South Africa is expected to face a water

deﬁcit of 17% by 2030, and this shortage will only be worsened

by climate change.

South Africa receives 450 mm of rain a year, which is half the

global rainfall average. Only 12% of the land area generates

50% of available surface water resources. Pollution remains a

serious problem, causing water quality and quantity problems

in various regions. Most of the major urban hubs and industrial

developments are also situated far from the country’s larger

watercourses, which necessitates large-scale transfers of water

across catchments.

Decadal rainfall variability also results in extended periodic dry

and wet periods across the country. As the country’s water

resources become more constrained, the amount of water

Taking into account future uncertainties, what kind of realities do we need to adapt to ensure we

use our water resources sustainably while promoting economic development and food security?

Jorisna Bonthuys reports on the latest research looking at the country’s future water management

scenarios.

WATER RESOURCES

Feature

The Water Wheel January/February 202029

Africa’s growing population in a climate-altered, resource-

constrained future are “substantial”, he pointed out in a recent

interview.

A glimpse of what’s to come

South Africa’s water-related agricultural future can unfold in

many ways as the recent scenario process has shown. Prof

Jordaan highlights the following: “It is important that South

Africa take note of potential future outcomes in the agricultural

space and speciﬁcally water and agriculture. Policy decisions

today will have a direct impact on food security in the future.”

Scenarios are not predictions, forecasts or projections. Rather,

they are stories about the future with a logical plot and narrative

governing how events unfold.

The researchers developed qualitative water management

scenarios and then modelled those quantitatively. The

scenarios were discussed with stakeholders including AgriSA,

the National African Farmers’ Union (NAFU) and the African

Farmers’ Association of South Africa (AFASA) at workshops and

a national symposium. This information was also used to inform

the mathematical simulation models to analyse the qualitative

scenarios, explore some of the consequences, and to help ﬁll in

some of the gaps.

The results allow the government to identify critical drivers that

will impact on the future. These critical drivers need policy and

implementation attention. Prof Jordaan elaborates: “Agriculture

needs to align itself with future challenges and opportunities

in the water space. Understanding the drivers in the diﬀerent

scenarios will allow for timely strategic, operational and tactical

decisions.”

In future, the shift in agricultural production patterns will

be aﬀected both by push-and-pull factors, according to the

research. Push factors include energy costs, the political climate,

land reform, and water security. Pull factors include markets,

management and production climate change, fertile soil, and

government support.

So far, the most surprising result of this research is the common

agreement from diﬀerent sectors regarding the drivers

and potential outcomes. Prof Jordaan said: “We completed

workshops with AFASO, NAFU and AGRISA and all farmers;

allocated to irrigation will come under increasing pressure.

The recent multi-year drought has put immense pressure

on local water systems and has had a devastating impact on

agriculture and communities, including in the Eastern Cape

and the Northern Cape. This was highlighted in President Cyril

Ramaphosa’s recent open letter to South Africans that focused

on the current water crisis facing the country.

“Our existing water systems are already over-exploited as usage

increases rapidly due to population growth and as more homes

get connected to water. Combine this with the worsening

eﬀects of climate change and we are clearly facing a dire

situation,” he said. “Unless we take drastic measures to conserve

water sources and promote eﬃcient use, water insecurity will

become the biggest developmental and economic challenge

facing this country. Our current energy challenges will seem

small by comparison.”

South Africa intends spending R900 billion over the next decade

to improve its water-supply and storage infrastructure and tackle

a growing shortage of the resource. The investment is outlined

in a new national plan, recently unveiled by Human Settlements,

Water and Sanitation Minister Lindiwe Sisulu.

Economic growth is a ‘surprisingly thirsty business’, Prof Jordaan

highlights. Poor management of water resources also threatens

the resource base on which agriculture depends.

Researchers consider climate change as a key factor that will

inﬂuence our future water realities. Climate risks for southern

Africa are increasing. Climate change prediction models

suggest that average temperatures will rise and rainfall events

will become more infrequent but also more intense, thereby

increasing the unpredictability of (water availability for)

agricultural production. The risk of more frequent extreme

events, including ﬂoods and droughts, is also on the rise.

Climate change will increase water-related shocks on top

of already demanding trends in water used, Prof Francois

Engelbrecht from the University of Witwatersrand’s Global

Change Institute emphasised. This would aﬀect a wide range of

economic sectors and livelihoods, impact on the development

of infrastructure and catchment management, and demand

management into the future. The challenges of feeding South

Water resources

Push pull factors in food production in southern Africa.

Andries Jordaan

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

emerging, communal, small-scale and commercial is largely in

agreement of the key drivers and potential outcomes in the

water sector and that agriculture is not governed properly.”

Scenarios for the future

Prof Jordaan and his team identiﬁed four basic scenarios. These

include the ‘Traditional scenario’, the ‘Best-case scenario’, the ‘Z

scenario’ and the ‘Frustration scenario’.

The Z scenario is the result of poor leadership in both the

political and water environment with low education standards

and a private sector that withdraw from the national discourse

due to extreme polarisation between the private sector and

the government. In this scenario, South Africa will experience

a continuous recession, with negative economic growth.

Unemployment will increase dramatically and the safety and

security situation will get out of hand. Violent civil unrest will be

a daily occurrence with security forces (SAPS and SANDF) using

deadly force to control the masses. South Africa will become a

net importer of food. This is the chaos scenario – very similar to

Zimbabwe today.

In this scenario, South Africa experiences water shortages,

hyperinﬂation and disinvestment in agriculture. This scenario,

really a worst-case scenario, leads to food insecurity, land

grabs, and a poor, small-scale agricultural sector. Commercial

farmers move to other countries and food-importing increases

signiﬁcantly. At the same time, water infrastructure is not

maintained, and rivers and dams are heavily polluted. The ‘Day

Zero’ threat becomes a reality for urban areas and agriculture

during dry periods.

The frustration or polarisation scenario is the result of

poor governance and political leadership with a strong private

sector that is still functioning in a hostile political climate. More

people are educated and civil society takes responsibility for

its functioning. The gap between the haves and have-nots

will continue to increase with the poor totally dependent on

the State, who is nationalising all resources. In this scenario,

researchers foresee slow economic growth of about 2%, which is

mainly driven by the private sector. Production from commercial

agriculture will slow down with many farmers investing in other

countries. South Africa will become a net importer of staple food

5 out of every 10 years.

In this scenario, the gap between the haves and the have-nots

increases. Poor enforcement of policies and laws, conﬂict about

water use and unequal access to water could also become

more pronounced. Only the private sector will beneﬁt from the

advantages of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) with the

State still working with outdated systems and not able to apply

regulations and policies. The private sector will take responsibility

for water management where it is possible, but many towns

and cities will experience Day Zero scenarios during dry periods

because of poor management at all governance levels. The

private sector will, however, also invest the bulk of their funds in

other countries. Agriculture will be heavily taxed with high water

and electricity tariﬀs.

In the traditional scenario, political leadership takes strong

action to reduce corruption and increase productivity and good

governance in the State. Distrust remains high between the

private sector and the government. This scenario will see slow

economic growth with less than 2% and little innovation in the

water sector. Food insecurity will increase, and the country will

become a net importer of staple food 7 out of every 10 years.

In this scenario, South Africa becomes a welfare state. Land and

other resources are nationalised with new farmers having no title

deeds for their land. It entails centralised water management

and policies, low productivity and innovation in agriculture as

well as increased competition between water users. Farmers

do not trust government and food production will slow down,

with many farmers investing in other countries. The smallholder

sector will increase dramatically with the government enforcing

more socialist policies.

The best-case scenario is the result of strong leadership,

good governance, more people receiving a good education

and a private sector who work together with the government

to reduce unemployment rates and increase eﬃciency in

production and water use through innovative technologies.

Economic growth increases to more than 5% annually. All

sectors and people have equal access to water resources. The

smallholder sector received good extension support from the

government and the commercial agricultural sector actively

assist with mentoring new farmers. South Africa remains a net

exporter of food, even during dry years. The exchange rate is

stable and global markets reacted positively to developments in

the country.

In this scenario, decentralised water management is embraced

by water management agencies. New water infrastructure

is built with the newest technologies. Current infrastructure

is well — maintained and pollution levels in all rivers and

dams are within limits. In this scenario, there is good regional

collaboration in terms of water management, decentralised

water management through water management agencies and

eﬃcient institutions that manage water resources.

There is strong enforcement of water user guidelines, and

water management authorities are eﬃcient. There is also good

collaboration between the private sector and the state where

water is concerned. The country as a whole beneﬁts from the 4IR.

Where are we heading?

The strength of the scenarios is that it considers all drivers that

might impact on the future and the classiﬁcation of the drivers

into diﬀerent clusters allows researchers to systematically analyse

all drivers. The weakness of this process is that it remains looking

into the future between diﬀerent extremes.

“We cannot for sure say which scenario we will experience 10

years from now,” Prof Jordaan said. “The global economy and

political landscape, as well as our own political landscape, is just

too unpredictable and unstable to tell for sure where we are

going. What we can do now is identify the drivers that will push

us into the direction of the Z-scenario and address those as a

priority and implement the drivers that will put us on a path to

the best-case scenario.”

“Until recently, we were deﬁnitely leading to the Z-scenario

or frustration scenario,” Prof Jordaan continued. “That is where

Water resources

The Water Wheel January/February 202031

Water resources

What are the practical suggestions based on this assessment

to government, the private sector and farmers? And what

are the direct and indirect interventions needed? “This is the

most important outcome of scenario building — the ‘so what’

question,” Prof Jordaan said.

On the one hand, the government needs to sort out political

issues for the country as a whole and to provide strong

leadership. It needs to appoint qualiﬁed people in the water and

agricultural sector, improve extension services in agriculture and

sort out safety and security, among others. On the other hand,

the private sector needs to continue to support the government

in spite of frustration and continue to invest in agriculture and

the water sector.

“Government also has a responsibility to enforce water

management regulation, and to implement measures to support

agriculture in times of need,” Prof Jordaan maintained. “The

implementation of an index insurance scheme for drought

losses, for example, is something that requires urgent attention.”

Agricultural systems need to adapt to warmer conditions and

more extreme events; farmers need to plan for droughts as part

of a normal production cycle. Irrigation farmers, for example,

should measure production output as a unit output per kilolitre

water instead of output per hectare. Farmers also need to put in

place strategies that are aligned with dry periods and droughts.

They need to plan for dry periods and drought, ensure enough

water reserves for dry periods, measure production output

against water eﬃciency (kilogram per kilolitre water and not

per hectare), implement water-saving irrigation technology and

remain innovative and resilient.

the government falls apart and does not provide responsible

leadership and management in the water sector. “The

deterioration of the Department of Water and Sanitation the

past decade steered us into the path to the Z-scenario. The

private sector, however, was still actively involved with society

and came to the rescue in some rural areas. The threat, however,

was that the private sector will eventually decide to withdraw

and relocate to elsewhere.

“New developments since the election of President Ramaphosa

give me hope that we will not enter the Z-scenario — yet.

Positive things are taking place in the water space under Minister

Sisulu but to change such a big organisation around can take

years. “As a country we need expertise and we need visionary

and innovative thinking. We need implementation if we want to

achieve sustainable water management.”

According to Prof Jordaan, “no-regret options” should start with

strong leadership not only in government but also in the water

and the agricultural sector. That should be supported with the

expertise to implement innovative future planning but also to

maintain and manage current infrastructure.

Municipalities did not maintain water infrastructure, he added.

“Governance requires urgent attention at the district and

local level. The appointment of qualiﬁed engineers and water

managers at the local and district level is non-negotiable.”

The path ahead

What can be done to enhance agricultural production in the

context of emerging water scenarios? Agriculture should

implement more innovative drought-resilient strategies, Prof

Jordaan believes. “The current drought forced agriculture to re-

think current production systems. Dry periods and droughts and

water shortages are the ‘new normal’.”

Potential scenarios

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

Feature

WETLANDS

Alien plant infestation is a huge problem in many parts of

the country. Often, these alien plants form a thick, almost

impenetrable wall high up in important catchments. Research

shows that the catchment area for the Theewaterskloof Dam –

the biggest dam providing water to the City of Cape Town – is,

for instance, nearing natural thresholds due to land-use changes

and the impact of alien plants on water supplies.

It is estimated that alien invasive plants are currently reducing

the water supply to the Theewaterskloof Dam by 55 million m3

per annum. This is equivalent to almost the full capacity of the

Wemmershoek Dam. Should no clearing be done, the reduction

in water supply by 2045 will double per annum.

Luckily, water yield from catchments can be improved

signiﬁcantly by removing alien invasive species from the

landscape and key catchments. Ecological engineering (‘soft’

solutions) can also be used rather than constantly turning

to expensive ‘hard’ solutions. At the very least, wetland

management should complement traditional engineering

solutions (municipal dams and water treatment works), the

research highlights.

“Alignment of solutions to ensure water security in the Western

Cape is needed, and this includes wetland rehabilitation and

other nature-based solutions,” says Louise Staﬀord from the

global non-proﬁt organisation, The Nature Conservancy. Staﬀord

and colleagues developed the business case for establishing the

Greater Cape Town Water Fund. A key focus of this new fund will

be the potential to make investments in nature-based solutions,

Nature-based solutions for the future: Securing wetlands for

water security in the Western Cape

The rehabilitation of priority wetlands as part of an investment in nature-based solutions can

contribute signicantly to water security in the Western Cape Water Supply System, according to

the latest research. Article by Jorisna Bonthuys.

A view across the Theewaterskloof Dam. It is estimated that alien invasive plants are currently reducing the water supply to the dam by 55 million m3 per

annum.

The Water Wheel January/February 202033

including catchment restoration, to address water security for

the City of Cape Town (for more information on the fund, see the

November/December 2019 issue of the Water Wheel).

Prioritising wetland rehabilitation eﬀorts are key given resource

constraints and growing pressures on freshwater resources,

Kate Snaddon from the Freshwater Research Centre indicates.

“Catchment restoration is listed as only marginally more costly

than dams, with the main emphasis being on control of invasive

alien plants,” Snaddon says.

Long-term water security begins at the source with ‘ecological

infrastructure’ that regulates source water quality and supply,

according to The Nature Conservancy. This type of ‘green’

infrastructure is deﬁned as naturally functioning ecosystems that

deliver valuable natural goods and services that people beneﬁt

from. The rehabilitation of wetlands is strengthened through

sound catchment restoration and management.

Until now, few studies have, however, documented evidence of

whether and how wetlands perform the ecosystem services with

which they are credited; and there has been varied results from

those studies that have documented this evidence.

These and other issues are under the spotlight in a recent

study commissioned by The Nature Conservancy. This analysis

provides new insights about wetlands and considerations

about their ecosystem services when rehabilitation eﬀorts are

determined. The research is part of work to evaluate the impact

of nature-based solutions on water supply in the region. The

researchers prioritised wetlands for water security in priority dam

catchments in the Western Cape Water Supply System (WCWSS).

The researchers undertook a prioritisation of wetlands located

within catchments upstream of the six major dams supplying

water to the City of Cape Town – Steenbras Dams (Upper and

Lower), Theewaterskloof Dam, Wemmershoek Dam, Berg River

Dam and Voëlvlei Dam. Criteria were selected as a means of

ranking the wetlands in order of importance for water security.

This included wetland size, slopes, soil types and rainfall

intensity, among others. This allowed the researchers to rank the

wetlands in order of their perceived importance for the supply of

ecosystem services related to water security.

Snaddon and her colleague, Katherine Forsythe. collaborated

with Jessica Dietrich from The Nature Conservancy and Jane

Turpie from Anchor Environmental Consultants on this project.

The potential return on investment

Based on the assessment, seven sub-catchments were identiﬁed

for control in the water source areas of the WCWSS in terms of

their potential return on investment. They comprise a total of

54 300 hectares and are the sub-catchments for the

Wemmershoek, Berg River and Theewaterskloof dams, which

supply 73% of the surface water contribution to the WCWSS.

Within these catchments, six wetlands and wetland clusters

ranked highest in relation to their criteria. These are the Upper

Riviersonderend and Du Toits River wetlands that feed into

Theewaterskloof Dam, the Olifants River wetland supplying

water to Wemmershoek Dam, a cluster of wetlands upstream of

Steenbras Dam, a similar cluster in the upper catchment of the

Berg River, and the Zuurvlak wetland supplying water to Voëlvlei

Dam.

Three wetlands satisﬁed all the criteria – the Upper

Riviersonderend, Du Toits River, and the Wemmershoek wetlands.

These wetlands were assessed for condition and ecological

importance and sensitivity, and also for opportunities for

rehabilitation.

In terms of organic content, run-oﬀ potential of soils, and the

catchment rainfall intensity, the Upper Riviersonderend wetland

also emerged as likely the most critical wetland for the supply of

important wetland functions relating to water security, while also

being located in a part of the catchment where there is a high

demand for such services. “Prioritising wetland rehabilitation

eﬀorts are key given resource constraints and growing pressures

on freshwater resources in the region,” Snaddon indicates.

The ability of wetlands to perform water quality amelioration

services depends on their area and type of vegetation as well

as their overall health and management. Wetlands on a gentler

slope are, for instance, likely to be more eﬀective in terms of the

attenuation of ﬂows, retention of water over time, and ﬁltration

of water into the ground (should the soils and geology allow).

Unsurprisingly, the study showed that pristine wetlands provide

a greater suite of ecosystem services than those that are

degraded. Speciﬁcally, pristine wetlands scored higher for water-

related ecosystem service provision as well as carbon storage,

compared to degraded wetlands. Wetlands located in areas of

Wetlands

Erosion present in the Upper Riviersonderend wetland.

Kate Snaddon

Palmiet occurs in the Riviersonderend wetland.

Kate Snaddon

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

of priority wetlands, the economic gains in terms of ecosystem

services could be in the order of R0.81-R1.35 million per year (see

accompanying tables for more information).

This analysis suggests that rehabilitation of the Zuurvlak wetland

could, for instance, save treatment costs in the order of

R472 000-R937 000 per year. This large range of values highlights

the need to collect more site-speciﬁc data.

The Du Toits River wetland also showed the highest return on

investment compared to the other two wetlands. This is due to

the lower rehabilitation costs, even though the costs avoided

through rehabilitation were the lowest of the three wetlands.

The study lays the groundwork for prioritising investments in

wetland restoration and alien clearing eﬀorts in the region,

Snaddon indicates. Unfortunately, the National Inland Aquatic

Ecosystem Inventory map was not completed at the time of this

study’s conclusion. There was also not enough information on

the prioritised wetlands to allow an in-depth ecosystem service

high total rainfall are likely to be more important in terms of the

demand for services relating to attenuation of ﬂows, streamﬂow

regulation and inﬁltration into groundwater.

The presence of ﬁbrous peat (and to a lesser extent amorphous

peat) is also likely to increase the capacity of the wetland to store

water and ensure inﬁltration of water into groundwater (should

the geology allow). Water is more likely to be released slowly

throughout the year.

To calculate the return on investment for rehabilitation of these

priority wetlands, the researchers calculated the present values

of the costs avoided through rehabilitation and the present

value of the rehabilitation costs over a 30-year time frame using

a 6% discount value. They assumed that the capital costs were

spent in the ﬁrst year with ongoing maintenance costs of 2% per

year (based on an average of costs reported in the literature for

wetland rehabilitation works).

The preliminary analyses suggest that through rehabilitation

Wetlands

Total wetland

area inﬂuenced

Number

of hectare

equivalents

gained or

secured

% increase in

streamﬂow

regulation

% increase in

nitrate removal

% increase in

erosion control

% increase in

carbon storage

% increase in

biodiversity

maintenance

Upper

Riviersonderend

22277 0033 25 23

Du Toits680560061116

Wemmershoek3230 (no rehab

opportunities

currently

identiﬁed)

n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a

Zuurvlak925 227 88252532

Summary of potential costs avoided through rehabilitation of priority wetlands (R’000s per year)

WetlandIncrease in water

quality amelioration

beneﬁts

Increase in sediment

retention beneﬁts

Increase in carbon

beneﬁts

Increase in tourism

value

Total gain (R’000s/yr)

Upper

Riviersonderend

- 164-32818-71- 182-399

Du Toit-116-23222-89-138-321

Zuurvlak 472-937-10-13010-26492-628

Total472-937 280-560 50-29010-26812-1348

Preliminary estimates of present values of costs avoided through rehabilitation and costs of rehabilitation as well as the

potential range of return on investments

WetlandPresent value of ES gains (6% discount rate

over 30 years)

Present value of

rehabilitation costs

(6% discount rate

over 30 years)

Return on investment

Lower BoundUpper BoundLower BoundUpper bound

Upper

Riviersonderend

2 496 0005 478 0003 842 0000.651.43

Du Toit1 898 0004 406 000691 0002.756.38

Zuurvlak6 757 0009 636 0006 744 0001.001.28

Summary of rehabilitation gains

The Water Wheel January/February 202035

valuation within the time available. Ideally, the prioritisation done for this study should be repeated when this becomes available, she says.

“There are still many gaps in our understanding of wetland ecosystem services,” Snaddon concludes. “But what we do know is that since it

is so diﬃcult to restore damaged wetlands, the priority must be to halt damage to pristine wetlands.”

Wetlands

More about the priority wetlands

Upper Riviersonderend wetland

• The Upper Riviersonderend wetland is a weakly channelled valley-bottom wetland that ﬂows into the Theewaterskloof

Dam near Vyeboom.

• It is situated in a priority catchment due to the good condition of the river.

• The upper end of this 222 hectare wetland lies within the Hottentots-Holland Nature Reserve.

• Most of the wetland has been classiﬁed as an aquatic critical biodiversity area in the Western Cape Spatial Biodiversity

Plan for the Theewaterskloof Municipality.

• The upper reaches of the Riviersonderend are known to provide sanctuary to the endangered Giant Redﬁn

(Pseudobarbus skeltoni), which is endemic to the Breede River.

• The vegetation is dominated by dense stands of palmiet (Prionium serratum). This wetland plant has been

described as an ‘ecosystem engineer’ due to its ability to block water ﬂow where the plant proliferates, leading to the

accumulation of organic material and the development of wetland conditions.

• Some rehabilitation interventions, all of which are considered to be ‘soft’ engineering options, are recommended for

this wetland.

Du Toits River wetland

• The Du Toits River wetland is located on the north-western margin of Theewaterskloof Dam. It is an extensive

weakly channelled valley-bottom wetland, dominated by plant communities that are very similar to the Upper

Riviersonderend wetland.

• Palmiet grows in large, dense stands, with more mixed plant communities inhabiting other portions of the wetland.

• There has been extensive invasive alien plant removal over the past few years, and the vegetation now appears to be

in good condition.

• The rehabilitation strategy for this wetland is follow-up alien invasive plant clearing.

Zuurvlak wetland

• The Zuurvlak wetland is located on the Waterval River, a tributary of the Klein Berg River, which supplies water to

Voëlvlei Dam.

• The wetland is situated on a gently sloping valley ﬂoor or plateau with seeps and streams feeding into it from the side

slopes.

• Until approximately a decade ago, the wetland was completely under SAFCOL pine plantations, managed by MTO,

but the pines have been systematically cleared since the early 2000s. A 30-year lease agreement was signed in 2015

between the Department of Public Works and a private renewables company who have plans to construct a wind,

solar or a pumped storage scheme on the site.

• A high waterfall separates the wetland plateau from downstream, leading to the isolation of this plateau from the rest

of the catchment. This is likely to have inﬂuenced species diversity and speciation.

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

Creating climate change resilient communities Part 3: A

decision support system for smallholder farmers

The project is exploring best practice options for climate resilient

agriculture (CRA) for smallholders and evaluating the impact of

implementation of a range of these practices on the resilience

of agriculture-based livelihoods. Alongside this, a decision

support methodology and system has been designed to assist

smallholders and the facilitators who support them to make

informed and appropriate decisions about choices of a ‘basket of

options’ for implementation at a local level.

The smallholder climate change adaptation decision

support process

The decision support process focuses on a bottom-up approach,

where individual farmers in a locality make decisions regarding

the ‘basket’ of climate resilient agriculture approaches and

practices most suited to their speciﬁc situation. To do this in a

way that also includes the concepts of social learning, innovation

and agency the following decision support concept has been

developed.

The process is designed to also support and assist the facilitator

in their decision making, in support of the smallholder farmers;

meaning that the facilitator accesses information such as the

basic climate change predictions for the area, the agroecological

characteristics including rainfall, temperature, soil texture etc)

and an initial contextualised basket of practices from which to

negotiate prioritised practices with farmers. Practices are thus

chosen by both facilitators and farmers.

In this third article based on the Water Research Commission (WRC) funded project titled,

‘Collaborative knowledge creation and mediation strategies for the dissemination of water and

soil conservation practices and climate smart agriculture in smallholder farming systems’ we focus

on the design of a farmer level decision support system. Article by Erna Kruger.

SMALLHOLDER FARMING

Feature

Figure 1: The smallholder decision support model.

The Water Wheel January/February 202037

‘lay of the land’.

This information is pulled together into a database that has

been put together to provide for a farmer segmentation/ farmer

typology approach. Farmer typologies allow for diﬀerentiation

between diﬀerent levels of vulnerability in a community to

target interventions/ practices more speciﬁcally.

The three typologies developed within this process are shown in

the ﬁgure below:

Situation and vulnerability assessments

The model for vulnerability assessments used in this process

provides for a combination of socio-economic (livelihood)

and socio-ecological (access and utilisation of natural capital)

indicators, in a climate change context (wellbeing, adaptive

capacity and governance). This is a new process design, built

from elements of existing international best practice options.

The process consists of focus groups discussions, individual

interviews (baselines) and household visits, or walkabouts as we

call them – as they include a broad and initial assessment of the

A typical participant is thus:

Smallholder farming

Figure 2: Smallholder typology for a climate resilient farming decision support system.

These typologies are one of the input categories into the decision support system.

The web-based platform

The model is designed primarily as a participatory and facilitated process at community level. In support of this process, a computer-based

model can be used alongside this methodology to provide further information and decisions support to the facilitator. It is also possible

for a farmer to access this model independently to derive an initial basket of CSA practice options for themselves.

The computer model information ﬂow is designed as shown in the ﬁgure below – and follows the same basic steps as the facilitated

model shown in Figure 3 on the following page.

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

Besides this, the resources and related management strategies

as well as a list of practices need to be provided as input to

the system. All information, except the physical environment;

i.e. climate, soil and topography, and the resources and

management strategies, are derived through the use of a range

of participatory processes. Data on the physical environmental

conditions have been taken from datasets freely available online.

This information can however be customised by the DSS user,

in case more appropriate information is available for the speciﬁc

farmer concerned.

For the Facilitator-Farmer DSS the resources and related

management strategies are discussed and negotiated in the

participatory process. For the computer based or Individual

Farmer DSS these are provided as an input into the model using

the following framework:

In our case the set of criteria (proxies used as indicators for

the complex reality) that helps to make informed decisions on

management practices are:

• The current farming systems; gardening, ﬁeld cropping,

livestock production and natural resource management

(NRM) (including trees),

• The physical environment: agroecological zone, soil texture,

slope and organic soil carbon and

• The socio-economic background of the farmer;

demographic information (gender HH head, age,

dependency ratio), level of education, sources of income

(unemployment vs. external employment, own business,

grants, farm, etc.), total income, access to services,

infrastructure, technology (Electricity, water (tap, borehole,

rainwater harvesting, etc.), irrigation (buckets, standpipes,

etc.), fencing and farming tools (hand vs traction/other),

social organisation, market access (formal vs. informal), farm

size and farming purpose (food vs. selling).

Smallholder farming

Figure 3: The computer-based model for the smallholder DSS.

Figure 4: Resources to manage and their associated management strategies.

The Water Wheel January/February 202039

Smallholder farming

Once all the information is inputted into the model an initial list of practices is suggested for each individual farmer. The model has

been tested and rened, through comparison of this computed based process with the participatory process and assessing how

closely these two processes are aligned.

Below is an example for 1 farmer in each of the three provinces where the model has been tested.

Table 1: Basket/list of practices recommended for version 2 of the DSS

ProvinceKZNLimpopo EC

VillageEzibomvini SekororoMxumbu

Name and SurnamePhumelele HlongwaneChenne MailulaXolisa Dwane

Drip irrigation 000

Bucket drip kits000

Furrows and ridges/ furrow irrigation000

Greywater management110

Shade cloth tunnels110

Mulching11 0

Improved organic matter (manure and crop

residues)

111

Diversion ditches100

Grass water ways000

Inﬁltration pits / banana circles110

Zai pits100

Rain water harvesting storage111

Tied ridges000

Half- moon basins001

Small dams000

Contours; ploughing and planting100

Gabions00 1

Stone bunds000

Check dams001

Cut oﬀ drains / swales001

Terraces00 0

Stone packs100

Strip cropping100

Pitting11 0

Woodlots for soil reclamation100

Targeted application of small quantities of

fertilizer, lime etc

100

Liquid manures110

Woody hedgerows for browse, mulch, green

manure, soil conservation

100

Conservation Agriculture100

Planting legumes, manure, green manures100

Mixed cropping100

Planting herbs and multifunctional plants100

Agroforestry (trees + agriculture)100

Trench beds/ eco circles110

push-pull technology 100

Natural pest and disease control100

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

Smallholder farming

ProvinceKZNLimpopo EC

VillageEzibomvini SekororoMxumbu

Name and SurnamePhumelele HlongwaneChenne MailulaXolisa Dwane

Integrated weed management 111

Breeding improved varieties (early maturing,

drought tolerant, improved nutrient

utilization),

111

Seed production / saving / storing111

Crop rotation111

Stall feeding and haymaking000

Creep feeding and supplementation100

Rotational grazing101

De-bushing and over sowing101

Rangeland reinforcement101

Bioturbation11 1

Tower garden110

Keyhole beds110

No of practices recommended351614

practices have been recommended in their basket of options.

Ranking can be undertaken ﬁrst by the facilitator or can be done

directly by the farmer depending on the circumstances. Below

is the ranking exercise undertaken for Phumelele Hlongwane

(Ezibomvini, KwaZulu-Natal). The practices shown in green are

those that Phumelele are already implementing. This ranked list

then provides options for inclusion of further ideas and practices.

For the KwaZulu-Natal participant, this means that around

88% of the full list of practices have been recommended for

her. She has a wide range of recommendations being a farmer

in Typology B (fewer restrictions) and engaging in gardening,

cropping and livestock production. Although this is quite high,

it is understood that the farmer level ranking is still to take place

and these practices can then be prioritised and narrowed down

further. For the Limpopo and EC participants, around a third of

(KZN; Bergville)Phumelele Hlongwane: List of practices scored by facilitator

PracticesField croppingVegetable gardeningLivestockNatural resources

and trees

Shade cloth tunnels8

Mulching 9

Improved organic matter111111

Diversion ditches999

Inﬁltration pits10

Zai pits1010

RWH storage9999

Stone packs999

Strip cropping11

Pitting1111 11

Woodlots for soil reclamation999

Targeted fertilizer application8

Liquid manure7

Woody hedge rows101010

Conservation agriculture11111111

Planting legumes, manure, green manures888

Mixed cropping99

Planting herbs and multifunctional plants99

Table 2: Ranking of CRA practices recommended for Phumelele Hlongwane

The Water Wheel January/February 202041

Smallholder farming

(KZN; Bergville)Phumelele Hlongwane: List of practices scored by facilitator

PracticesField croppingVegetable gardeningLivestockNatural resources

and trees

Agroforestry (trees + agriculture)11111111

Trench beds/ eco circles9

push-pull technology 7

Natural pest and disease control777

Integrated weed management 777

Breeding improved varieties (early maturing,

drought tolerant, improved nutrients),

77 77

Seed production / saving / storing666

Crop rotation99

Stall feeding and haymaking

Creep feeding and supplementation7

Rotational grazing9

De-bushing and over sowing9

Rangeland reinforcement9

Bioturbation999 9

Tower garden10

Keyhole beds10

Below are a few indicative photographs of Phumelele’s CRA practices.

Above clockwise from top left: A view of Phumelele Hlongwane’s vegetable garden, a newly constructed tower garden, trench beds planted

to a mixture of vegetables in her shade cloth tunnel, a plot of Dolichos in her CA eld and a plot of summer cover crops- sunnhemp and

millet.

The decision support system for climate resilient agriculture implementation by smallholder farmers is an important new innovation in the

ﬁeld of community-based climate change adaptation and can be scaled up as a framework in research, learning and implementation in

this ﬁeld.

The Water Wheel January/February 2020

At a glance

NEW PARTNERSHIP HOPES TO BOOST

ROLLOUT OF SAFE SANITATION

In November, the Water Research Commission (WRC) and

its partners, the Department of Science and Innovation,

Department of Water and Sanitation, the South African Bureau

of Standards, and the Department of Trade and Industry with the

support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, launched the

South African Sanitation Demonstration Programme (SASTEP).

SASTEP will support and accelerate the application and uptake

of the latest cutting-edge toilets through evidence-based

policy adjustments, demonstration, testing and science-based

improvements towards localisation and industrialisation. This

includes technologies supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates

Foundation ‘Reinvent the Toilet’ programme. The revolutionary

toilet systems will oﬀer water-saving or water-recycling features,

be aspirational in design and, more importantly, oﬀer dignity and

convenience. To demonstrate the potential of the reinvented

toilet as a sustainable solution to national sanitation challenges,

the initiative will work with local communities to pilot proven

and emerging technologies alongside the business and

service models used to maintain the systems,” noted WRC CEO,

Dhesigen Naidoo. “Local innovation which ﬁt the criteria and

are designed to meet the new SABS 30500 standard for a non-

sewered sanitation system could also join the programme for

further support and evaluation.”

The Water Wheel May/June 2016

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