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Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 08 April 2011
Many fastest-growing cities, especially those in the developing world, stand to suffer disproportionately from the effects of climate change, a new study reported on Thursday.
 In cities, prolonged hot weather can exacerbate existing levels of air pollution, causing health problems. Few urban areas are taking the necessary steps to protect their residents – billions of people around the globe – from such likely events as heat waves and rising seas, according to research to appear in Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability and European Planning Studies.
They are also failing to cut their own emissions of climate-warming greenhouse gases, the study found.
“Climate change is a deeply local issue and poses profound threats to the growing cities of the world,” study author Patricia Romero Lankao, a sociologist specialising in climate change and urban development, said in a statement.
Because half of Earth’s population is in cities, scientists like Romero Lankao are focusing on the potential climate change impacts in these areas.
Air pollution
The mere fact that they are cities, with densely packed construction, places their populations at greater risk from natural disasters, including those expected to be made worse by climate change. Continue reading Fast growing cities will suffer more from climate change
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 28 March 2011
More than one third of 231 local municipalities do not have the capacity to perform their sanitation functions, a new study by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has found.
 Overflows of raw sewage are severely detrimental to the environment. The report, discussed at a United Nations water conference in Cape Town, includes a comprehensive survey of South Africa’s levels of water pollution.
It also tracks access to clean, safe water and sanitation. And it warns that South Africa is heading for disaster unless it tackles the problem of water pollution, including its failing sewage treatment systems.
It found that the situation was so bad, it called for waste-water facilities that did not comply with their licences to be prosecuted.
Water quality, the report stated, was excellent in metropolitan areas, but in many rural areas and towns, drinking water quality and waste-water effluent quality were frequently below the standards set. Continue reading Call for wastewater facilities to be prosecuted
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 21 March 2011
By 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in regions with absolute water scarcity and two-thirds of the world’s population may experience water-stress conditions. Forests capture and store water and can play an important role in providing drinking water for millions of people in the world’s mega-cities. Given this fact, the members of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF), international organizations involved in forests, call upon countries to pay more attention to forest protection and management for the provision of clean water.
 One third of the world's biggest cities draw a portion of their drinking-water from forested areas. “Forests are part of the natural infrastructure of any country and are essential to the water cycle”, said Eduardo Rojas-Briales, Assistant Director General of the FAO Forestry Department.
“They reduce the effects of floods, prevent soil erosion, regulate the water table and assure a high quality water supply for people, industry and agriculture.” He was speaking prior to the UN World Water Day which will be celebrated this year on 22 March.
Forests are in most cases an optimal land cover for catchments supplying drinking water. Forest watersheds supply a high proportion of water for domestic, agricultural, industrial and ecological needs.
“The management of water and forests are closely linked and require innovative policy solutions which take into account the cross-cutting nature of these vital resources”, said Jan McAlpine, Director of the United Nations Forum on Forests Secretariat. “The International Year of Forests, 2011 provides a unique platform to raise awareness of issues such as the water-soil-forests nexus, which directly affect the quality of people’s lives, their livelihoods and their food security.”
Moreover, forests and trees contribute to the reduction of water-related risks such as landslides, local floods and droughts and help prevent desertification and salinization. Continue reading Forests are essential to water cycle
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 12 March 2011
Postwar Angola is keen to expand irrigation for much-needed development, Namibia is prioritising clean drinking water and sanitation, while Botswana wants to preserve the integrity of the world-renowned Okavango Delta for tourism.
 The Okavango Delta is the world’s largest inland delta All three depend on an equitable share of quality water from the Okavango River, the fourth largest in Africa, running 1,600 kilometres from Angola to its inland delta in Botswana.
In other parts of the world, conflicting interests like these, against a backdrop of uncertainty due to climate change, have led several observers to predict water wars might lead to water wars. But the three countries are putting in place a cross-border plan to manage the river.
A trans-boundary diagnostic analysis of the basin led to a strategic action plan which encompasses national priorities. To this end National Action Plans (NAPs) are currently being formulated in the three countries.
“The realisation has dawned that issues in the basin are much larger than just the river that runs through it,” says Steve Johnson head of the USAID funded Southern African Regional Program (SAREP) that facilitates the NAPs. Continue reading Cross-border plan to manage the Okavango
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 09 March 2011
Tap water in SA could be undrinkable in the next 19 years if the country does not change the way it uses water, or how it treats used water, scientists say.
Already, some of the tap water in SA contains poisons.
 Blue-green algae produce toxins that rob water bodies of oxygen. Poor quality water will negatively affect the economy, curbing the manufacturing sector directly and indirectly, says limnologist Bill Harding. Limnology is the study of freshwater bodies.
Despite Water Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica promising a turnaround in the parlous state of wastewater treatment almost a year ago, there has been no visible action taken to curb the risk from semi-treated water discharged into SA’s rivers and reservoirs, the scientists say.
Last year’s Green Drop (wastewater quality) report showed that only 32, or 3%, of SA’s estimated 850 wastewater treatment works complied with requirements for safe discharge. The report noted that only 449 of the works had been assessed, with the rest either ignoring, or being unable to comply with, the call to submit to scrutiny.
Only 32 (7%) complied with the Green Drop criteria after being measured for E. coli bacteria, nitrates, phosphates and ammonia and other nasties.
The national Green Drop Programme was launched in 2008 and was meant to cover all wastewater treatment works so as not to harm the water bodies into which they discharge their product. Continue reading SA tap water could be undrinkable in 19 years
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