/ 26 September 1997

Writing on the wall for water hogs

Whether or not Mother Nature inflicts El Nio on South Africa this year, new legislation aims to distribute water fairly, reports Ann Eveleth

Water affairs minister Kader Asmals move to regulate farmers water rights this week is just the tip of the iceberg on an innovative plan to turn South Africas water priorities upside down.

According to National Water Conservation Campaign programme director Guy Preston, Asmals draft National Water Bill due to reach Cabinet later this year includes an internationally unique plan to place productive water users like farmers, foresters, mines and factories who use water to produce goods at the bottom of the consumer pool.

Asmals water reserve concept means that basic human water needs and ecological water needs will be met first. Productive users will get whats left over. And they will have to pay for it, said Preston.

The proposal marks a 180 shift from apartheid-era policy in which basic human consumption rights particularly for the rural poor lagged far behind commercial water rights. It will attempt to ensure that every South African has access to 25, possibly 50, litres of water daily.

The plan also sites the maintenance of South Africas delicate ecological balance at the foundation of long-term water supply strategies.

Long-term resources depend on that balance, otherwise you have a loss of vegetation and a loss of the sponge-effect [through which indigenous plants help conserve water] and a further depletion of water resources, added Preston.

This long-term approach contrasts starkly with a growing public fixation on short- term predictions that El Nio the cyclical climatic aberration caused by warming Pacific waters will cause drought and/or floods in the coming months.

The predictions have serious implications for the agricultural sector and the economy as a whole, but chief water planning engineer Chris Swiegers said this week that South Africa is more prepared than ever before. Our dams are full, some like the Vaal Dam are at nearly 110% capacity, and we have enough water to survive for about five years without good rains.

Two years of good rains, a series of projects to reduce wastage, and early warning of El Nios rise have helped the department prepare for the worst: But you can never be too prepared, he added.

This El Nio cycle is the second to hit South Africa this decade, and many more are likely. At the same time, the rising global demand for water is predicted to surpass the available supply in a world water crisis expected to hit by the middle of the next century. We must stop thinking of bad years as drought and think instead about good years as wet. We are an arid country and we must plan for drought and see wet years as a bonus, argued Preston.

This is the thinking behind Asmals plan to target all sectors of water consumers on the basis of efficient and equitable use of this dwindling resource.

By making productive users pay for the water they use, it will become more cost- effective for them to use water efficiently. At the moment we have people growing maize in places they have no business growing it. We have forests growing along river beds, where a tree with its feet in the water drinks two to three times the water it needs, added Preston.

A history of massive subsidies, guaranteed drought relief, a move from labour- intensive watering to mechanised watering, and hundreds of thousands of farm dams that were little more than evaporation pools, have led many South African farmers into unproductive practices and massive water wastage.

Thats fine when theres no competition over resources. But in a situation of water scarcity, like when Tzaneen Dam in the Northern Province was only 1% full in 1995, there is enormous competition for water use and that can lead to conflict. By paying for water, farmers and foresters will also legitimise their water use, he said.

Economists have warned that predicted water shortages around 2005 could become a source of conflict between countries and communities. In South Africa, the skewed distribution of water resources could see such conflict between water-rich and water- poor communities a situation the government wants to avoid.

As Swiegers points out, however, even the current state of preparedness does not mean rural communities will be immune to drought that strikes unevenly across regions.

It depends where the water is. We transport a lot of water from one catchment area to another. A place like Gauteng doesnt have its own water, so we transport it there. Rural areas without that infrastructure are the ones who will feel the drought.

Efforts to reduce the amount of water lost during this transport, improvements to groundwater use, repairs to apartheid plumbing in townships like Soweto where massive leakage occurs and the removal of alien plants from water catchments are just some of the moves under way to stave off a water crisis.

In addition, said Preston, urban domestic users who consume up to 150 litres per person daily must pay realistic water tariffs to subsidise the rural poor, because if you dont help them theyre just going to migrate and become your water problem anyway.

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