Extreme droughts can result in crippling impacts across local and regional scales. In South Africa, droughts are regular occurrences presenting several opportunities to learn from and improve on drought risk reduction efforts. Drought responses in South Africa, however, show a rather 'messy' reality. In the early 1990s, for example, an expanded set of various actors, not only restricted to science 'experts', collectively shaped and expanded the traditional drought response that had dominated in the country enabling a rethinking of risk reduction. Recent extreme droughts, occurring over 20 years later, appear to have produced interventions that have taken place with little focussed recollection of these past drought responses. A comparative assessment of the responses to droughts over time reveals some reaction but little effective 'deep' thinking about drought. The persistent truths of recurring drought, a failure to learn from the process of drought rather than the event, the problems of the scientific uncertainty linked to droughts and the usual crisis response to drought made by a select few, are all shown to be threats to ensuring adaptation to repeated droughts in the future.
Worldwide declines in fish stocks have a significant impact on the livelihoods of coastal fishing communities as jobs are lost and alternative forms of employment are limited. Mariculture (marine aquaculture) is considered by governments to be a viable solution to address unemployment and poverty in such communities. In Saldanha Bay, South Africa, the growing mussel and oyster industry has considerable potential for poverty alleviation, hence food security enhancement. In the first part of this study, we examine the potential ecological carrying capacity of the Bay to produce bivalves, and estimate the impact of this on employment creation should the sector's growth potential be fully realised. This growth potential could take the sector to 10 to 28 times its current size, providing direct employment for 940 to 2,500 people in the Saldanha area. Secondly, we assess five factors that affect the sustainable growth, development and employment creation potential of small-scale mariculture in South Africa and other countries. These are state support, markets, funding, the natural environment and the local community. Participants in the sector perceive its expansion potential to be hampered by regulatory issues such as incomplete implementation of a cohesive and accessible financial support policy, slow processing of mandatory samples required to monitor product safety, poor facilitation of access to international markets, price undercutting by imports subsidized in their countries of origin, and injuriously high lease fees for water levied by the parastatal harbour authority, coupled with lack of medium-and long-term lease tenure. The risk of environmental degradation from competing harbour use by large, fossil fuel and ore transport industries is of potential future concern.
The interruption of essential water services in Cape Town, foreshadowed as ‘Day Zero,’ is one of several recent examples of urban water scarcity connected to the language of urgent climate change. Johannesburg, with its larger and growing population and deeply enmeshed water and power infrastructures, is currently regarded as one drought away from disaster. As a result, the lessons to be learned from Cape Town are under active debate in South Africa. We used Q method to examine the structure of perspectives on urban water scarcity among South African water management practitioners. Our results illustrate distinct viewpoints differentiated by focus on corruption and politics, supply and demand systems, and social justice concerns as well as a distinct cohort of pragmatic optimists. Our analysis underscores the significance of public trust and institutional effectiveness, regardless of otherwise sound policy or infrastructure tools. As practitioners explicitly connect domains of competency to solvable and critical problems, integrated systems approaches will require deliberate interventions. Furthermore, urban water crises exacerbate and are exacerbated by existing experiences of racial and economic inequality, but this effect is masked by focus on demand management of average per capita water consumption and characterization of water scarcity as ‘the new normal.’
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