EWT calls for ‘radical rethink’ of water issues

Some 2000 people from 140 countries came together to discuss issues of international importance relating to water in this year’s World Water Week held in Stockholm, Sweden from August 20-26, 2006 under the theme of Water, Environment, Livelihoods and Poverty Reduction. In the wake of this, the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) has called on South Africa to take a new approach to water saying, “A radical rethink is required to conserve and be able to sustainably use our most-limited, and most-threatened, natural resource which we are already using beyond sustainable limits.”

They suggest a move away from supply- side solutions like dams and inter-basin transfer to demand-side solutions. “An immediate shift to holistic water conservation and water demand management is imperative for South Africa.” Taking statistics from several national assessments conducted in South Africa, the EWT drew attention to the fact that 82 percent of the country’s major river systems are threatened by poor land use and water extraction activities and that almost every single one of South Africa’s 259 estuaries has been negatively impacted by human activities.

The EWT says that the links between water, environment, livelihoods and poverty reduction “are mostly overlooked or ignored by policy makers.” “Dry sanitation is a far more rational option for a semi-arid country like South Africa, but political expediency is driving massive, unsustainable wet sanitation infrastructure with little attention or investment in the former.”

They conclude that “natural systems are at their most productive when they function in their natural state” and that “the priority for our water management authorities must be the protection of the resource base upon which we all depend, and the protection of the poorest from scarcity and vulnerability by implementing local demand-side management and infrastructure.”