flush it away into treatment plants that ultimately return it to the sea via increasingly eutrophic rivers . In short , we spend vast amounts of money to acquire access , expect to pay minimal amounts for it and , after we ’ ve used it once , we pretty much flush it away .
The African water sector is a truly exciting place for savvy investors with a healthy appetite for risk .” Professor Anthony Turton
This attitude , explains water strategist , Anthony Turton , ‘ is encapsulated in the paradigm of scarcity . The Dublin Principles , on which integrated water resource management ( IWRM ) is based globally , tells us that “ water is a finite and vulnerable resource ”.’
The scarcity paradigm , he continues , ‘ has only two tools in the box – getting more by building dams , and using less by managing demand .
These are very blunt instruments as the Day Zero saga has shown us .’
How have we valued water in the past ?
In a word , illogically . The one thing on earth that we depend upon most critically is the one thing we squander , throw away and – not to put too fine a point on it – defecate in . Of course , in some places where water is not so available , we have put a greater value on it … sort of . Take Johannesburg – an excellent example of how we really value water . It ’ s one of the very few cities in the world situated on a watershed , so it ’ s always been water-constrained . But we value gold more than water ( until you haven ’ t had a drink for two days , of course ), so we have gone to extraordinary lengths to obtain sufficient water to keep the city – and the mines – going . Johannesburg gets its water through interbasin transfer schemes from KwaZulu-Natal and – even more so – from the Lesotho Highlands Water Programme , which means that much of the city ’ s water is imported from a foreign country .
So it seems that we are prepared to pay vast sums of money to get access to water , but once we have it , how do we treat it ? Sticking to our example of Joburg , it ’ s pretty much a case of use , abuse and refuse ( the latter is a noun , not a verb ). We use it in the mines , and let it stagnate in acid-rich slurry ponds to pollute groundwater ; we water crops with it , and allow dissolved fertiliser and pesticides to return to the rivers ; we use it in our homes and
The paradigm of scarcity , he explains , ‘ exists in a world dominated by the linear economy . We regard water as a stock , to be used once and then discarded , as all linear-process thinking dictates . In this model putting money into water is seen as a cost to be avoided and only spent by government .’
But , as he points out , water is not scarce . It ’ s only fresh water that is . Actually , even that is not 100 % true – it ’ s only accessible , clean , fresh water that is .
What ’ s changed ?
Well , nothing . And everything . Nothing , in that the systems in place are still archaically wasteful . And everything , in that the sickly , dehydrated , semi-starved pollution-mutated chickens have come home to roost . Johannesburg has woken up to the fact that acid mine drainage is destroying farmland , causing birth defects , and even poisoning crocodiles way downstream in the Kruger – albeit with a solid cadre of denialists .
And Cape Town – nuff sed . We all know about the Cape Town water crisis , and even though the winter rains have been pretty okay , it ’ s not over yet . We ’ ve woken up , and we are – slowly – wising up . But perhaps too slowly . Failure to effectively address the water issue could have frightening consequences that will inevitably impact on the economy . Turton puts it into perspective :
In 2002 South Africa became a water-constrained economy , and in 2015 it became capital-constrained . This means that
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