Water scarcity and poverty: The lasting impact of a maintenance campaign at South African schools across the affluence divide

Abstract

Water features prominently in discussions on sustainability. The recent Cape Town ‘Day Zero’ drought heightened fears about global cities running dry as the climate changes. During that crisis a campaign was launched to save water at schools, consisting of a basic maintenance campaign and a behavioural campaign. The former was limited to easy fixes, and the latter comprised an information campaign and an information and competition campaign. The impacts of these were assessed immediately after the interventions. This paper revisits the maintenance results by assessing the difference in responses according to affluence levels of the schools, and by evaluating the impacts a year after the campaigns. We find that the poorer schools were not able to sustain the maintenance gains, especially at the primary schools.

Rethinking education in the context of climate change

“…On the side of incentives, granting recognition to schools that incorporate sustainability considerations in all aspects of their operations, such as in "green" labelling programmes like Eco-schools (Foundation for Environmental Education, n.d. [134]), can be an effective form of external pressure to raise students' environmental literacy (Boeve-de Pauw and Van Petegem, 2017 [135]; Byrne et al, 2023[136]; Cincera and Krajhanzl, 2013 [137]). In France, for example, since 2013, the E3D label has been awarded to 12 500 schools (20% of institutions) when they teach sustainability while also implementing concrete actions like waste reduction or biodiversity protection.…”

A proposal for effective promotion of the rational use of water in school buildings

“…However, the perception index has limitations since respondents can choose to indicate the lowest consumption. However, the minimum water usage does not match actual water usage; Daily monitoring of consumption combined with a preventive and predictive maintenance routine is recommended to achieve the best results (Booysen;Gerber, 2021).…”