Kader Asmal
17 November 2008
opinion
Johannesburg — WATER has been called the oil of the 21st century, with all the political and economic pressures accompanying that.
But water provides us with an opportunity to apply hard lessons learned from the profligacy and brinksmanship that's pervaded our management of fossil fuels and, in doing so, find a more equitable, sustainable world.
Access to fresh water is directly linked to dignity and the most basic of human rights. Fresh water is a unique resource in the sense that it cannot be owned, yet is effectively owned by all. It is a finite resource and one that, unlike oil, has no substitute. Without it we have no viability as a species and without it we can't hope for economic viability. Failure to ensure judicious use of this resource will put paid to aspirations for the kind of economic growth required to provide our citizens with the basic rights they're entitled to under our constitution.
So: no fresh water, no economic growth, no social justice.
There are lessons, too, to be learnt from our electricity supply problems. A willingness to ask the hard questions early on about of our management of such basic requirements helps limit painful adjustments later on. If you thought load-shedding made it tricky to run a business or a household, try water-shedding.
The environmentalist George Monbiot recently wrote in the Guardian that the global financial crisis is outweighed by the loss of the ecological resources that sustain us. "The two crises have the same cause. In both cases, those who exploit the resource have demanded impossible rates of return and invoked debts that can never be repaid. In both cases we denied the likely consequences."
He's correct. Yet these two calamities differ in one important and encouraging aspect: the financial one will reach into all our pockets, but fixing it is primarily the preserve of a few, namely the Bernankes, Paulsons, Manuels and Mbowenis of the world. On the other hand, our water supply crisis will also affect us all, yet each human being has the capacity to do something about it. And with the ability to act, comes the responsibility.
About 2,2-billion human beings live in water-stressed catchments. Climate change and other factors will see that figure double in the next two decades.
It's common knowledge that SA is a water-stressed country and that at current consumption rates our demand for it will outstrip supply by 2015. That overarching imperative demands action and investment. In the past, "investment" has meant building dams. As a result, SA has 539 dams, by far the most of any African country.
Dams do have their place. They store water during droughts, provide irrigation and hydropower, but can and often do have massive social and ecological effects. About 4-million people are displaced by dam projects each year. Like those affected by water shortages, these are generally people with few choices in life.
Too often their use has been injudicious and building them a bigger-is-better, testosterone-fuelled, almost knee-jerk undertaking that triggered or perpetuated social injustices. This consequence was demonstrated under the previous government, which had an unstated water management policy of "All, for some, for now" rather than "Some, for all, for ever".
The fact that we need fewer, better dams, not more, was driven home by the Commission on Dams, which I chaired in 2000. The investment requires more planning, dialogue and input from all strata of society rather than leaving it up to concrete-happy engineers.
There's certainly room for action on preserving freshwater resources with damming rivers, such as the fact that 7% of our mean annual run-off is consumed by alien vegetation -- that's the equivalent of 26 large dams each year.
As I said, with the capacity to act, comes the responsibility. The poor have limited choices, but a large business, with a large water footprint and ability to act has a moral duty to manage that effect.
The extent to which that has been ignored can be seen by comparing the Working For Water programme, where largely unskilled people -- many of them women -- removed massive amounts of alien vegetation, in effecting putting millions of litres of fresh water back into the nation's catchments.
Contrast this with the effect of mining operations, which have reaped massive profits while doing little or nothing to prevent the poisoning of water resources through acid mine drainage.
The mining sector has much cleaning up to do, but the private sector in general hasn't until recently begun to assess and act on its effect on freshwater resources.
That's why I was so gratified to become involved in the WWF Water Neutral Scheme, of which I am the patron.
The scheme seeks to harness private sector investment in the management of our freshwater ecosystems and resources through a three step process of: reviewing their water use; reducing their effects; and replenishing water through quantitative investment in projects that enhance the health of our freshwater ecosystems -- the so-called R3 process.
South African Breweries is the first major water user to commit to this novel scheme. While my own palate tends towards another kind of amber liquid, I was gratified to see such proactive action by a major industrial user of fresh water. Sanlam, which has been investing in freshwater management for a number of years now, has also committed to this scheme.
The total annual amount of water used by industrial and urban users in SA, the main target market for the scheme, is about 3652-million cubic metres. This amount is very similar to the 3300-million cubic metres of water estimated to be used by invasive alien trees -- those 26 dams I mentioned.
Even a modest 10% market uptake of this scheme could therefore deliver significant benefits in terms of increased water yield, management of invasive alien trees, biodiversity restoration and employment creation.
SAB uses about 4l of fresh water to produce a litre of beer. Other industries have a higher ratio of consumption to yield but few are yet taking the first step of voluntarily reviewing what their effect is.
Those that do will come up with a number, a volume of water for which they're responsible -- their water deficit, in effect. Seeing that number for the first time isn't an especially comfortable moment but it represents a willingness to ask the hard questions about one's use of a precious resource.
Water availability is one of the most decisive factors that will affect the economic development of this country. Water runs through every layer of our aspirations as a nation. For those who have the ability to act comes the responsibility to make simple, comfortable adjustments now to avoid painful sacrifices later. The invitation is open to all.
Prof Asmal is the patron of the WWF Water Neutral Scheme. He is the former minister of water affairs and forestry and former minister of education.
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