Rare: People fill water containers for household use from a well near Sudan’s most populous city, Omdurman, on March 21, a day before UNESCO’s World Water Day, to focus on clean water and the sustainable use of water resources. Photo: Ashraf Shazly/Getty Images
Water is too precious in South Africa to continue to allow the amount of pollution, mismanagement and disregard with which it is treated, said a leading water activist.
Ferrial Adam, manager of WaterCAN, an initiative of the Organization Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa), spoke in a webinar on World Water Day entitled “clean water is everyone’s right”. Outa co-hosted the webinar with Lawyers for Human Rights.
There are global concerns about water quantity and quality and the same concern applies to South Africa, which is already a water-scarce country, receiving an average rainfall of less than 500mm, while the global average rainfall is 850mm.
“If you know South Africa, you know there are parts of South Africa that don’t get much [rainfall] everything,” says Adam, adding that climate change will make places like the Northern Cape dry out.
He warned that as water becomes increasingly scarce, there will be steps to privatize water. “This is something we have to look after because this is the direction we are going as a country.”
Adam said that what could lead to a “water war” in the country is “where you have the middle class can put a hole in it while the poor don’t have access and there will be these clashes.”
Water movement must be built before the country reaches that point, he said, adding that citizens must be the eyes and ears that monitor water sources and hold polluters accountable.
“We’re killing the ecosystem; we don’t have enough water and we’re going to have a drought, deepening the crisis, and making us more vulnerable,” said Adams. “It is estimated that we will not have enough water in this country by 2030.”
Inequality in people having clean water at home is another problem. “Department [of water and sanitation] will go to the United Nations and New York and say we can boast 90% access to water. But the fact is that only about 46% of people in this country have a tap at home,” he said.
“We have a high level of pollution from the mining industry, the agricultural industry and the chemical industry. Today there is a picture of bright blue water flowing in Alexandra along the Jukskei River. No one knows where it comes from… there is a lack of enforcement.
Criminal charges have been laid against Sasol for dumping hazardous waste containing vanadium, diethanolamine and potassium carbonate into the Vaal River system. Former employee Ian Erasmus, who blew the whistle, told the webinar that WaterCAN had conducted water tests in a river near Sasol in Secunda, finding trace elements of vanadium in the water and others in the soil.
Adams said sewage pollution makes the government the biggest polluter of the nation’s water supply. “The Department of Water and Sanitation must adequately deal with pollution at the local government level. “We want him to fill the municipal manager. There is no point in charging all the municipalities because it is our tax payers money.
He added that mismanagement and corruption plagued the water sector. “Corruption is not only a government problem, it’s also a private sector problem,” he said of the development of a water tanker mafia that destroys infrastructure in order to continue getting deals to supply water.
Mark Heywood, editor of Maverick Citizensto the webinar: “It often strikes me that when everyone is worried about electricity and Eskom and the breakdown of infrastructure and the lack of planning in relation to electricity, the same thing happened to our water infrastructure, it is only people who have woken up.”
Palesa Maloisane, from the environmental rights program at Lawyers for Human Rights, said many constitutional rights in the Bill of Rights overlap and support the right to water and sanitation. “The right to water intersects with the right to the environment and the right to enjoy other rights, such as the right to health and safety. The right to water is a joint competence at the national, provincial and local levels,” said Maloisane.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) and UN-Water warn in the latest UN World Water Development Report that there is an “imminent risk” of a global water crisis. It was released at the 2023 UN Water Conference in New York this week, the first major UN conference devoted to water since 1977.
Between two and three billion people worldwide experience water scarcity. These shortages will increase in the coming decades, especially in cities, if international cooperation on how water is used and managed is not encouraged, the report found.
Two billion people do not have access to safe drinking water and 3.6 billion do not have access to safely managed sanitation. The global urban population experiencing water scarcity is expected to double from 930 million in 2016 to 2.4 billion people in 2050.
According to the report, water scarcity is becoming endemic due to the localized effects of physical water stress, coupled with the acceleration and spread of freshwater pollution.
“As a result of climate change, seasonal water shortages will increase in areas that currently have plenty – such as Central Africa, East Asia and parts of South America – and will worsen in areas that lack water – such as the Central. East and the Sahel in Africa. “
Poor water quality in low-income countries is usually related to poor wastewater treatment, while in higher-income countries runoff from agriculture is a serious problem. More extreme and longer droughts are also stressing ecosystems, “with dire consequences for plant and animal species,” the report said.