The most beautiful city in the world. Home of Table Mountain, one of the 7 wonders of the natural world. In the midst of the worst drought ever recorded in the region, it is at risk of running out of water. Rainfall hasn’t been bountiful in the last few years and dams have fallen to alarming levels. Water restrictions are in place, and people have a daily limit of 50 litres of water. With greater awareness and people getting serious about saving water, the so-called ‘day zero’ has been pushed back – the day when the taps will run dry and water trucks will be sent.

I travel a lot to Cape Town and in previous years it has been an absolutely beautiful experience flying over the Winelands and fertile valleys. Flying over the area, it now looks like the Karoo has moved all the way to the sea. People talk about desertification, and I can see that happening in that region.

Both degradation and desertification are among South Africa’s most critical environmental issues, intricately linked to food security, poverty, urbanization, climate change, and biodiversity.  Globally, desertification affects 70% of all drylands, and 73% of Africa’s agricultural drylands are degraded.  As much as 91% of South Africa comprises drylands, making it susceptible to desertification. 

Source: Department of Environmental Affairs, State of the Environment report.

I live in Johannesburg, and in the last week, we’ve had enough rainfall to fill the Cape dams 2 times over. Cape Town is a winter rainfall area and I can only hope that this winter will be a wet one for them.

My Cape Town uber driver of a couple trips back said to me as he drove me to the airport:

“Regina, I just want to fill a bath with water and just lie in it.!

People are stockpiling bottled water and there have been reports of fights breaking out in supermarkets to get the last bottles on the shelves.

People have come up with inventive and creative solutions – like a colleague who’s got a hand washing system in the bathroom and kitchen made with just a coke bottle and a thin rubber pipe. I’ve used it and can report that it works very well, uses a negligible amount of water, and is most satisfactory to clean hands:

Of course, it’s not just climate change that causes desertification. A lot of it has been driven by human activity. Degradation of previously fertile land, depletion of groundwater supplies, overgrazing and deforestation, to mention just a few.

Integrated land and water management are one of the ways to control the progression of the sands time, protecting soils from erosion and other degradation. Prevention is better than cure because such cures are expensive and yield limited results. 

In seemingly intractable issues, there is no one solution, only a series of next wise moves to shift the system, to make it better than it was, each and every day.