Urban Environment - Cape Town I

Following my previous blog posts, discussing a general picture of climate change, groundwater, water management in Africa and a case study on the 2015/16 El Niño, I have decided to first take a closer look at an example of URBAN ENVIRONMENT in Africa to explore their problem in accessing groundwater resources due to consequences from global climate change. Upon reviewing, I would like to note that the definition of environmental change does not remain restricted to the natural physical environment, but extended to the process of urbanisation as well. By looking at the urban setting of specific case studies and its adaptation to the consequences of climate change, hopefully, we can review the different strategies taken and propose improvements to develop more considerable solutions for the future.

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Case Study: The Drought and Cape Town

Attention to water resource access, management and distribution becomes increasingly noted as Africa sees a trend of rapid urbanisation and great change in urban demography, namely growth in urban population, which I will elaborate on in future posts. At the same time, as global climate change takes place, cities around the world are facing numerous environmental-related threats, such as drought, that could worsen their control current water management scheme. The drought in Cape Town in early 2018, affected water access to over 4 million urban population, is an example of such a case.

The following short video gives an insight into the life that people in Cape Town need to live in due to the running out of water resources. I found it helpful to watch the video to keep some questions in mind:

How has the urban setting altered the situation?

How effective were the regulations? 

Was there a ‘right approach’ to deal with the problem? 

What social factors are considered or missed out on?

Water Accessibility in the Urbanised Environment

Figure 1. The location of 6 dams consisting of the Western Cape Water Supply System (WCWSS) and the City of Cape Town

The existing condition of Cape Town’s poor access to water and sanitation, which is worsened with the exposure to annual flooding, together with the increasing rainfall variability due to climate change have caused the urban population to face different kinds of vulnerability. 

Efforts are being made by the local government in managing water resources. The Western Cape Water Supply System (WCWSS), consisting with 6 dams that provide water for the growing population, is an investment made to extend water supply infrastructure for Cape Town (Figure. 1). Change in climate leads to change in rainfall patterns a lot, examples like increase in frequency or unexpected cycle of El Nino and La Nina are the proves. In the case of Cape Town and the 6 damns in use for water supply, due to unexpected extreme low precipitation and failed to regulate at an early stage, the city put itself in a dangerous situation of running out of water. When full, the "main six" dams in WCWSS contain 900 Mm^3, of which 10% is deemed useless. At the end of 2015 the dams were down to 78%; subsequently 58% in 2016 and eventually down to 38% full at the end of the hydrological year of 2017.

Mitigation Plan

Figure 2. The 3 Phase mitigation plan for Cape Town

Managing residential water demand became the biggest problem for Cape Town, due to its large urban population. The plan made by the local government (Figure 2) demonstrates the key threshold of water resources and the corresponding action plan. At phase 1, preservation restriction, the municipal officials advised people to reduce their water usage. This means going from pre-drought consumption of about 200 litres person/day to 50 litres person/day for suburban families in order to control and regulate total water demand. Phase 2, disaster restrictions, famously known as Day Zero, planned to take action of turning off taps in the cities, leaving around 3.8 million people with no access to water and in vulnerable sanitation situations. Numerous critics have been made on the government’s action, stating the act of climate change is no excuse for poor planning; others took the investigation into the effectiveness of different policies, to see how should the government and its people tackle such situations. The study done by Matikinca, Ziervogel and Enqvist interviewed 20 individuals living in Cape Town houses to evaluate the effectiveness of different policy approaches. The results show that price mechanisms were deemed unsuccessful since they did not incentivise individuals to save water in their homes. Non-price techniques were seen to have a greater influence on respondents, encouraging water conservation behaviour, particularly when it came to hygiene-related home indoor water usage activities.