networking contributor innovations industry debate environment infrastructure municipalities world of highest local terrestrial temperatures. This is mirrored with rising sea temperatures. The erosion of the polar ice sheets and glaciers in many parts of the world corroborate this changed world.
In many parts of the world, the argument has been strengthened by more frequent extreme weather events. This is true in the form of extended and extreme drought episodes in southern Africa, barrelling, almost sequential, hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and typhoons in the China Sea, with major flood events in South Asia and Europe. This new weather pattern is indeed global. Its longevity seems highly probable, as we have witnessed in the 100-year precipitation record in South Africa.
This is not an event; it is a trend to a new normal pattern.
The second pillar is that this comes in combination with a high population growth that is already greater than seven billion souls on the Earth, heading to nine billion by 2050 on the most conservative scenario. Of the nine billion people on the planet at that time, it will be 6.3 billion urbanites with only 2.7 billion rural cousins.
The third is that all of this is in an increasingly connected world on the back of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This means the end of isolation of impact— what happens in even the remotest of places, to some degree or another, rapidly has a global impact.
We have this critical Janus moment for water and sanitation practitioners. The discussions at the IWA converged on many important matters. First is the acknowledgement of the new normal. The second is that we must radically change our water management strategies and protocols. This includes new standards, and best practice to accommodate the new innovative management that is required to ensure water security and reliability of service, from the smallest village to the biggest metropole.
This is particularly pressing in the wake of the Sustainable Development Goals( SDGs) that we all have signed up to under the auspices of the United Nations. The ability to meet the targets of access to safe water and improved sanitation for all the people in the world by 2030, and maintaining the reliability of that access into the future, presents some special demands.
It means smarter water security tools, mainstreaming water reuse, and recycling institutionally through towns and cities as part of the new infrastructure. It means water demand management as the norm, as opposed to anecdotal exception. It means new taps like desalination and managed aquifer recharge-supported groundwater access.
Clearly, this has implications for the capacity of the individual practitioner on what constitutes the water management team and, of course, the size of the practitioner base that is required going forward.
It all sounds incredibly daunting. Yet, my anxiety level, as a member of Water Team South Africa, is not that high. The progress of water management has always been the enabler of human development. Our first efforts to harness water facilitated the development of agriculture, which in turn allowed humankind to emerge from our largely nomadic phase to begin the first permanent settlements.
The ability to ensure the sustainability of the different models of development has always had water professionals at the core— and the water professionals have always delivered. I am sure that the water and sanitation fraternity will once again rise to this new challenge.
It is my hope that 2018 will be characterised by these pioneers, and new recruits to these cadres, carving out the new water and sanitation paradigm to ensure even higher levels of water security, access, and reliability in the wake of the daunting challenges thrown at us by the new normal. u
“ We must radically change our water management strategies and protocols. This includes new standards, and best practice to accommodate the new innovative management that is required to ensure water security and reliability of service, from the smallest village to the biggest metropole.”
WRC
Dhesigen Pydiah Naidoo, CEO of the Water Research Commission.
40 Water Sewage & Effluent January / February 2018