How Can We Prevent Drought In South Africa?
South African drought is now being recognized as a chronic problem rather than a series of ad hoc emergencies in SADC, and it is becoming an important part of national and regional development planning. The continues to suffer from the effects of drought, which has devastated most of the country, Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation Minister Lindiwe Sisulu has announced immediate and long-term measures to mitigate the risks.
What Can We Do To Prevent The Effects Of The Drought?
The World Bank has called for urgent action to improve monitoring and management of water supply and mitigation against drought risks. This is also to ensure equitable water supply under normal conditions, while reducing vulnerability by improving drought preparedness in the event of future droughts or floods.
Minister Sisulu, had stated that the department will implement drought-relief measures in the short term, which include:
- Implementing drought-related operating rules
- Borehole drilling and/or rehabilitation
- Tankering of water from available sources
- rainwater and fog harvesting
- Spring safety and application.
- Cloud Seeding and Evaporation
What Are The Long Term Drought Prevention Methods?
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In the Long-term, The Minister further said that the department will implement drought-resilience measures. Among them are:
- Water storage and transfer infrastructure will be built.
- Also, conveyance pipelines and dams to redistribute water over time and space will be built.
- Review and implement legislative restrictions to restore and protect ecological infrastructure; and
- Developing and integrating other sources, such as groundwater, desalination and re-use, and so on, with surface systems to improve water security.
- Sisulu noted that desalination is still an expensive form of water security, and that it would benefit only coastal provinces.
- Domestic consumption of water will be reduced.
What Risk Management Steps Should Be Taken?
Drought risk management is built on three key elements. The models are built around three pillars of integrated drought risk management: interconnected, multi-disciplinary, and multi-institutional activities.
These pillars are as follows:
1) Assessment of vulnerability and impact;
2) Monitoring and early warning systems; and
3) Mitigation, preparedness, and response.
Every pillar is critical in promoting proactive drought management measures, “The pillars are interdependent, and failure to implement one of them will result in failure to strengthen drought resilience.
IWMI created the National Drought Risk Index from scratch by using Google Earth to create risk maps for the entire Southern African continent.”
Droughts have historically made Southern Africa one of the world’s most vulnerable countries. Droughts cost the country $3.4 billion and directly impacted over 100 million
