PETER VARNDELL AND MIKE MULLER: Strategic partnerships — this is water’s moment

This year’s state of the nation address was full of water — 23 references in all, more than any time before — a focus that is long overdue.

In the past decade SA’s cities have faced a succession of water failures. In Cape Town, looming disasters were well flagged but acted on only when it was too late to avoid extreme interventions. That situation was repeated in Gqeberha and, slightly differently, in eThekwini. Now Gauteng is facing its own set of water supply disruptions. And this is without mentioning the calamitous state of water and sanitation in many small towns and rural areas.

Avoiding these failures is a whole-of-society challenge. It requires all levels of government, businesses, local communities and individual water users to work together to achieve water security since all have a role to play. To address this, the Strategic Water Partnership Network (SWPN), which brings together government, business and, increasingly, civil society, already provides a template for action that could be effective. 

SWPN was established in 2011 by the late Edna Molewa, then water minister, after meetings with global corporate leaders at the World Economic Forum. They agreed that a stronger government-business partnership could help address SA’s growing water security challenges.

The value of similar partnerships has since been well demonstrated by progress made in electricity generation and freight rail transport. In both, turnarounds are being achieved through a host of collaborative efforts, often co-ordinated or promoted by the presidency’s Operation Vulindlela.

Too often, however, serious collaboration only begins when the impacts of failure cross a critical threshold. That’s the point we have now reached with water. And that’s why the partnership is now being intensified.

One reason greater priority has not previously been given to water is that it is vulnerable to unpredictable “slow-onset” disasters. Vulnerability in water supplies often grows unnoticed until a drought, a storm or even just a spell of unduly hot and dry weather reveals that the system can no longer cope. And once systems fail it can take years to reinstate them. 

The water sector also presents other peculiar challenges. While electricity generation and freight rail can be addressed by effective collaboration at national level between government and (mainly large) business, water is more complex and more local.

Water resources and the services derived from them are not centralised. Each water resource system is different. Each municipality has a constitutional mandate to provide services. So, while there is a national framework of law, regulation and financial support, most water problems have solutions that are local.

Central government can and does provide guidance and assistance through the departments of water & sanitation and co-operation co-operative government & traditional affairs, as well as funding through the National Treasury’s overarching programme of financial support for local government. The challenge is to translate this practical package of support into action that improves performance on the ground. 

SPWN’s strategy has been to focus on a few critical areas of intervention and implement practical projects to demonstrate how they can work. And this strategy has achieved some successes. 

Irrigated agriculture is the country’s largest water user. It is an obvious focus for improved water management since savings from small efficiency gains produce large volumes of water that can be used for other purposes — or to further expand farming jobs and incomes. An early initiative of SWPN was to support the development and rollout of a water administration system to reduce water losses and increase water use efficiency for 21 large irrigation schemes. In just four of those schemes savings of almost 1-million cubic metres per annum were reported. 

Mining is another large water user but its activities — and their closure — can pollute the natural resource, affecting local communities and the environment. To better address the issues posed by the mining cycle, SWPN helped establish a mine water co-ordinating body. This made some progress on its key goal of developing “water positive” mine closure approaches. It also catalysed further co-operation and funding for multipurpose water resource development in the Olifants river basin. Similar partnerships are now under way to upgrade bulk water supplies to mines and mining communities in the Northern Cape.

However, perhaps the most important contribution of SWPN has been to turn municipal “water saving” from a pious hope into practical action. Recognising that water availability challenges could be addressed by improving water-use efficiency, SWPN encouraged the national government to introduce a No Drop report, monitoring municipal water losses, alongside the Blue and Green Drop reports on municipal water supply and wastewater treatment performance.

SWPN promoted a structured approach to water-loss reduction in Polokwane by a local partnership between the Polokwane municipality, SA Breweries and Anglo American. The mayor recognised that reducing leaks would save money for the municipality and make more water available for local users. Over three phases of the project, enough water was saved to show payback for the project investment in just a few months.

This model is now being widely replicated with many similar projects now planned in municipalities across the country. It has the potential to support a self-funding programme that will improve both water availability and municipal finances across the country.

While there have been successes, some interventions have not achieved the desired results. Among these are proposals for “off-setting”. This is a simple concept. Companies that need more water to expand their business, or to be allowed to discharge more wastewater, often face onerous requirements to improve the water-use efficiency of their operations or invest in new treatment facilities.

In Gauteng, many property developers presently cannot get planning permission to build new housing or commercial complexes because the public infrastructure does not have the capacity needed to service them. The offsetting option has been proposed to solve this problem. This would see developers fund and support implementation of water saving in the municipal system and in return get a proportion of the water saved for their use, with the rest of the saving shared by the community. The challenge with such programmes is to show that the achievements can be sustained. 

Even more controversial are suggestions that offsetting could help address failing municipal wastewater treatment plants. Now, developers are often required to build their own local treatment plants. It might be cheaper for society as a whole to rehabilitate and expand failed municipal plants. But this type of intervention would pose serious regulatory challenges even if achieved the same — or better — quality standards. 

Many offsetting proposals are stalled, not because of a lack of trust between the parties but because municipal regulatory frameworks simply do not allow them. The hope is that the growing evidence of successful collaborations will lead to greater openness to creative partnerships in future. If the communities concerned participate in the preparation and implementation processes, this will help to build understanding, trust and support.   

SWPN is thus promoting greater involvement of domestic as well as corporate water stakeholders. This will help unlock the capabilities that public-private collaboration offers and respond to the evident urgency for immediate action. The state of the nation address priorities suggest that it is now time for the partnership approach to be mainstreamed.

• Varndell is executive secretary of the Strategic Water Partnership Network. Muller, a visiting adjunct professor at the Wits School of Governance and former director-general of the department of water affairs & forestry, is supporting SWPN’s strategy work.