South Africa water crisis deepens amid electricity, infrastructure issues

South Africa has for years experienced unreliable electricity and water shortages, which together have hampered the country’s economic growth. It’s a vicious cycle: In Gauteng province, home to Johannesburg, almost half of all utility-supplied water is lost because of aging infrastructure, leaks, and theft, the Mail & Guardian reported. Existing inequalities exacerbate the problem: More affluent households can afford to shield themselves from interruptions to municipal electricity and water supplies by investing in alternatives, two researchers argued in The Conversation. That in turn means less revenue for the municipalities, threatening access to adequate services for less wealthy residents, they argued.

Water shortages are a global issue, with around half of the world’s population dealing with shortfalls at least one month of the year, and 1.8 billion people likely to face absolute scarcity by 2025, according to the United Nations. Climate change is exacerbating the problem, but lack of access to clean water is perhaps more to do with “the scarcity of financial and physical wherewithal” to build the necessary infrastructure, a water management expert told the Council of Foreign Relations. The United Arab Emirates, for example, meets its water needs by importing rather than growing food, as well as desalinating ocean water.

Global food production will be at risk of failure within the next 25 years without urgent action to conserve water, according to a report by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water. Global water systems are interconnected, which indicates that water resources should be treated as a “common good” rather than an endlessly renewable resource, one of the commission’s co-chairs told The Guardian: China’s economy, for example, relies on sustainable forest management in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and the Baltic, for managing its own water supply, he added.