Johanensburg - Water was increasingly becoming a key economic business risk, the Water Research Commission said on Thursday.
Delegates at the Emerging Frontiers for Sustainable Water trilateral conference between South Africa, India and the United Kingdom listened to various experts speak about the importance and scarcity of water. The conference was hosted by the University of Johannesburg this week.
“Water is now a key economic business risk discussed in boardrooms, rather than the ‘green issue’ it has been categorised as previously,” said Dr Inga Jacobs of the Water Research Commission at the conference.
She added that water drove crucial aspects of energy generation in South Africa, making it an important natural resource.
She said: “For the first time, water tops the charts for the highest global risk in terms of devastation, ahead of nuclear war or a global pandemic. In South Africa, we are dealing with quite a severe physical scarcity of water, but also an increasingly severe economic scarcity of water.”
Jacobs noted that several trends stood out from research done on countries that had good economic water security.
“In those countries, there is a robust, well-maintained water infrastructure. Water secure countries also tend to have smart, responsible water users. An example is Singapore, where if you visit, people appear to function as if they are living in a permanent drought. These countries tend to have sustained pools of highly-talented people managing and maintaining their water systems and national systems of innovation. They invest significantly in knowledge-based solutions and good partnerships with academia and research entities,” she said.
According to the 10th edition of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks 2015 report, water crises was rated at the top of the list of the top 10 risks that would most likely have the most impact on any one person.
In addition, according to the report, water crises in which societies experienced a critical shortage of drinking water was a societal risk associated with a failure to adapt to climate change, a result of man-made environmental catastrophes, biodiversity loss and a collapse of the ecosystem, natural disasters and extreme weather events such as droughts.
The high risk status attributed to water crises, said Jacobs, “is why the Water Research Commission is now also considering funding late-stage research which requires substantial funding to take to market or to be included in government policy”.
“One of our big initiatives is with Eskom, where we have identified a basket of water-energy projects being implemented or researched.”
Jacobs said in the light of rapid urbanisation and population growth, the water-energy nexus became even more significant on the African continent which was facing regional desertification.
“There are more than 1.2 billion people on the African continent today. In about 85 years, we can expect to have closer to 2 billion people in Africa,” said Professor Tshilidzi Marwala, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research from the University of Johannesburg
He asked: “How are we going to supply clean and safe water and sanitation to all these people?”
He said: “Studies show that South Africa will become drier in the next 30 years and that we lose close to 30% of our water in distribution systems. Meanwhile, we depend on water from an independent country, Lesotho. The effective utilisation of water resources, as well as efficient management and reducing waste is at the centre of the economy and politics of South Africa. No development can succeed without water.”
Prof Catherine Ngila, Head of the Department of Applied Chemistry at the University of Johannesburg said “New approaches will be needed to confront these challenges.”
“The issues we face are partly due to water pollution from increased activity in the agriculture, mining, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and petroleum industries. These industries supply the demands of an increasing population. There is a growing need for developing and adopting new technologies to test and treat contaminated water and recycle waste water in an affordable manner,” she said.
ANA