Ensuring access toWater for all inSouth Africa
Water for all - our top priority...
No person, animal or plant on earth can survive without this wonderful giftfrom nature we call water. But, the water we have on Earth is finite and, inSouth Africa, our government has prioritized water conservation high on theiragenda. South Africa is the 30th most water scarce country in the world.
The average annual rainfall of South Africa is 480 mm per annum, half that of
the world, but 21% of the country receives less than 200 mm per year.
Many of the country’s water sources are degraded and 50% of our wetlands
have been lost to the impacts of agriculture and urban sprawl. Of the 262
municipalities in South Africa, 1/3 do not have access to an in-house engineer
and it is estimated that South Africa will experience significant water
shortages by the year 2020.

Water
SecuritySouth Africa

Northern Cape Demonstration
Namaqualand, is part of the Northern Cape Province and falls within theSucculent Karoo, one of only two arid biodiversity hotspots in the world. The
average rainfall for the Namakwa District Municipality is 180mm per year,
making water an extremely scarce resource for the region.
With livestock farming by far the largest industry in the region, taking up 95%of the land suitable for agricultural use, water is critical to local communaland private farmers to keep their goats and sheep alive.
In the remote rural villages in Namaqualand, water services are often
unreliable and local people often rely on water from wetlands for their own
consumption during the dry summer months. As a result of ploughing up
valley bottoms to plant grains, most of the wetlands in the area have been
destroyed and are no longer functioning. This loss of water combined withthe aridity of the region and the predicted decreased rainfall as aresult of climate change, bodes ill for farmers, their families andtheir livestock in the future. In Namaqualand, farmers are reliant onunderground water sources as well as wetlands but funding andcapacity issues within local government has contributed to heavy
losses of not only water but income for farmers – primarily due tobroken water infrastructure. The cycle of degradation that cancome about from something as harmless as a broken water pump
can be devastating. In many areas across Namaqualand you mightfind 5 or 6 farmers sharing one pump in a remote part of the land.
The convergence of stock and farmers around one pump causes
trampling and overgrazing of the land, the loss of ground cover andsoil erosion. Coupled with that is the poor condition of animals
who have to travel too far for water, resulting high mortality rate of
weaning lambs and a massive reduction in stock for market for thestruggling farmers of the region.
CSA, in partnership with the national program, Working for
Wetlands, and the implementing agent, Namaqua National Park, isworking to restore critical wetlands and to remove alien invasive
water-hungry trees from the wetlands, in the area. Local people
are trained and employed to carry out vital restoration work
thereby creating work in an area where 60% of the people arewithout work. This program is immensely successful, with farmers
reporting water flow in previously dry wetlands within half a day ofinvasive aliens being removed.
One particular wetland, restored in the remote village ofLeliefontein, proved its worth when it provided enough water to theentire town for over a week when the water infrastructure broke andwas left in disrepair during the hottest summer month of the year.
Natural infrastructure maintenance is essential to build peoples
resiliece to these types of disasters.
The cost saving alone to the municipality is enormous andsignificantly less than the cost to repair hard infrastructure likedams and pipes.
CSA continues to focus on wetland health restoration andeducation so that natural vegetation can return. The skills to repair
and maintain these precious resources are transferred fromconservationists to farmers so that they can continue to accessthis water and fodder resource while keeping it healthy.

livestock. By ensuring water security in Namaqualand, both thepeople that live there and the many endemic species that depend
on wetlands, will be more resilient to the expected impacts ofclimate change.

Eastern Cape Demonstration
Conservation South Africa is working with a group of partners torestore the last remaining undammed river in South Africa. The
Umzimvubu is located in the Maputaland Pondoland Albany
Hotspot and the programme will see a 20 year investment protectmore than 1 million hectares of globally significant grasslands andindigenous forest in the region. The area consists of 22 different
vegetation types within 5 of South Africa’s 8 eco regions and, alongwith its many wetlands, provides food, fresh drinking water andecosystem services to more than 770,000 people in one of South
Africa’s poorest rural areas.
One of the greatest challenges facing this catchment is the highunemployment rate, with at least one out of three people jobless inthis region and massive ecological degradation due tounsustainable human activities. This degradation is evident all overthe catchment in the form of dongas or gully erosion, wattle
infestation and high silt load in rivers. The conservation effort isestimated to cost about R26,652,840 over the next seven years
and could create up to 1,548 green jobs annually.
The degradation of this catchment doesn’t only affect water supply,
but also leads to loss of good grazing land, poor livestock
productivity, loss of fertile topsoil and agricultural productivity,
destruction of infrastructure such as roads and bridges that are
washed away, and siltation of dams. The catchment restorationand management strategies employed here, and the demonstration
projects being implemented, are aiming at being major job creation
initiatives, with a multiplicity of long-term benefits in line with thepresidential priorities of integrated rural development, job creation,
appropriate pro-poor infrastructure development and service
delivery.
Implementation will expand from the Upper Catchment to the wider
catchment over the next two decades.

Helping local people to achieve water security is critical for boththeir livelihoods and the plants they depend on as grazing for their

For more information: Julia Levin | Vice President | Conservation South Africa
Email: jlevin@conservation.org | Tel: +27 10 100 3492
Photo’s by ©CSA/J Cloete; CAP

healthy ecosystems
benefit humanwellbeing inSouth Africa
human wellbeing

access to clean drinking water
more jobs
more income for healthier stock

ecosystem services

increased		
water retention of soil
sustained water supply
improved grazing

healthy ecosystems
removal of alien plant species
restored grasslands