The Water Wheel July-August 2018

Abstract

Planning for future water security in a nexus paradigm From a water perspective, we live in a ‘world of Cape Towns’ . That was the banner of the 2018 Water Week edition of Down to Earth, the signature publication of the Centre for Science and the Environment (CSE), India. The publication had its global launch when the water practitioner community gathered in Cape Town at the biennial Water Institute of Southern Africa congress in June. The special edition magazine was explicit on a few pivotal issues. Firstly, it offered an external analysis of the severity of the extended drought episode we have gone through on the back of the 2014 El Niño event. Secondly, it illustrated once again the class diversity of the water scarcity experience in South Africa; in particular the middle-class inconvenience dominated the media coverage, masking the real threat of socio-economic stagnation on the one hand, and a missed opportunity to highlight the dire need to bring servicing to the poor and vulnerable in South Africa on the other. The third is the worldwide nature of the challenge.

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