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Reducing demand was a key priority. The City of Cape Town worked to get residents and businesses on board with a host of water-saving initiatives. People were instructed to shower for no longer than two minutes. A campaign with the slogan “If it’s yellow, let it mellow” promoted flushing the toilet only when necessary.
Cape town generated nearly 10 percent of the country’s total gross domestic product in 2016. Last Tuesday, Statistics South Africa said the economy grew 3.1 percent in October-December, the highest rate since the second quarter of 2016, after expanding by a revised 2.3 percent in the third quarter.
Cape Town has an 80% higher chance of another 'Day Zero' drought by the end of the century if greenhouse gas-emissions keep rising at current rates, according to research. The 2018 crisis was only averted by the city making an aggressive push to conserve water.
This tragedy wasn’t inevitable. The city authorities have known that the city and its agriculture were drawing more water from reservoirs than is being replenished. And this has only got worse since the drought hit in 2015. But drought and bad planning are only partly to blame. There is a deeper issue at work: the cost of water is invisible.
Collaboration within municipal departments also needs to improve. The Cape Town drought highlighted the importance of this. Before 2017, there was limited collaboration between city departments on water issues. During the drought however, collaboration between certain departments increased considerably as the complexity of the crisis became clear.
Interacting climate risks during the Cape Town drought. Image: Simpson et al (2021) This focus on interactions among multiple climate change risks across different sectors and/or regions is important because they are a reality people need to manage regardless of the level of assessment available to inform decision-making.
From nuclear power plants that can't be cooled to unexploded WW2 bombs discovered on riverbeds, drought means more than just a water shortage. Drought has been declared across the globe, from the Horn of Africa , to China and England , as climate change continues unabated.
According to Google Trends, on 28 January 2018, the search term "waterless toilets" reached a peak in searches coming from drought-hit Cape Town. The country on which the fate of SDG 6 rests India is the country with the largest number of people without access to basic sanitation facilities.
As the World Economic Forum on Africa gets underway this week in Cape Town, a new report – The Sub-Saharan Africa Risks Landscape – is set to be unveiled. The report highlights five interconnected risks impacting countries across the continent.
The most effective response to drought is to curb water use, which various cities have done with incentives and enforcement. Facing a drought in 2018, Cape Town, South Africa, reduced its water consumption by nearly 60% (pdf), in part by limiting individuals to 50 liters (13 gallons) per day and instating tariffs for excess use.