Pathways to water resilient South African cities (PaWS)

You can follow our progress and find results by clicking on the main activities below. Appendix A provides an update on the status of the proposed activities

• Infiltration experiments in Cape Town
• Evaluation of WSUD options at different scales in Johannesburg
• Exploring governance processes
• Status of research plan as per project proposal

The project was launched in June 2019 with a series of initiation workshops, field visits and stakeholder meetings (including the initial Advisory Board meeting) in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Seminars and workshop sessions were held with representatives from the two local governments involved as well as with their consultants (where relevant) to discuss the proposed research.

Recent project activities

Resent presentations at conferences/symposia

Recent student projects

The problem of water scarcity is a top concern for South African cities. Cape Town is currently experiencing a drought that has led to a water supply crisis with the city declared a Disaster Area. This declaration has enabled the city to access funds for accelerated construction of several small desalination plants and the drilling of the Cape Flats and Table Mountain aquifers to augment water supply. Johannesburg is a historically water-scarce city, relying on Inter-Basin Transfers (IBT’s) from Lesotho for water and like Cape Town, recurring droughts are resulting in uncertainty in water supply. Desalination and IBT’s are indicative of both cities’ continued path-dependence on centralised, hard water infrastructure whose negative environmental impacts also in light of projected climate change is increasingly recognised.

Water management is an essential part of urban sustainability. However existing centralised water provision models are increasingly viewed as ill-suited to address prevailing problems including climate change and resource pressures. There are increased calls for adaptive urban water governance to address the environmental and socio-economic uncertainties confronting urban water systems.

’Sustainable urban Water management’

Sustainable urban water management (SUWM) is an umbrella term for various nature-based approaches to water management that take a total urban water cycle view through the integration of built water infrastructure with green infrastructure in a decentralised manner. Approaches that link storm-runoff and wastewater to water supply are also known as Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD), Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS); they help to return urban rainfall-runoff processes to natural hydrological cycle flows, by reducing runoff volumes and peak flows, improving infiltration, and reducing pollutant loads.

Improved water supply

There is a need to explore under-exploited water resources such as stormwater harvesting and managed aquifer recharge with treated sewage effluent that can simultaneously augment water supply and enhance urban resilience. However, the quality of stormwater in South African cities is generally poor due to infrastructure deficits, with point and non-point source pollution in runoff flows. Harnessing SWH and MAR with treated effluent would be more feasible if the quality of runoff being infiltrated or stored is improved through pre-treatment with green infrastructure options such as swales, biofiltration cells and constructed wetlands. These elements also offer cities the benefits of flood risk management and improved biodiversity, opportunities for food production through edible green infrastructure and increased liveability.

Improved water governance

Whilst there is consensus within the urban water fraternity on the need for a shift to more adaptive approaches, how such transformations in the design, implementation and governance can be realised remains unclear, particularly in the highly compartmentalised infrastructure sectors typically found in South African cities.

Recognising the economic, environmental, technological and governance challenges in the South African urban water sector, the South African government developed the Water Research Development and Innovation Roadmap. One focus area is the unlocking of water supply alternatives such as SWH and groundwater through the use of WSUD approaches. There is a need for assessing the technical feasibility of these alternatives and the governance implications of hybridising built water infrastructure with nature-based solutions. The project will also contribute to the achievement of SDG’s 6, 9, 11, 13 and 17 of ensuring access to drinking water and integrated water resources management; promoting urban resilience to climate change and cooperative governance for sustainable development. It will also support the national priority of increased urban green infrastructure and facilitating engagement and coordination between stakeholders in the management of human settlements.

The project will explore the opportunities for transitioning towards water-sensitive futures in Cape Town and Johannesburg, with the following research questions and objectives:

• What are the possibilities for institutionalising the hybridisation of built infrastructure with nature-based solutions in both cities?
  – The objective is to explore pathways for policy embedment and upscaling of such infrastructural integration with a view to engendering an enabling governance environment.

• What is the potential for integrating nature-based solutions into the urban water cycles of the two cities to augment water supply?
  – The objective is to physically experiment with, map and evaluate, the design and integration of stormwater harvesting / treated effluent options and managed aquifer recharge with built infrastructure within the urban fabric.

Methodology and WP’s

The research is organized as a case study using Cape Town and Johannesburg as cases. In each city a transition management process methodology will be deployed. The first work package will consist of initiating pilot transition arenas based on system and actor analyses, as well as on peer-to-peer nomination of members representing diverse stakeholders. Here, action research will be undertaken to steer and enable co-creative processes of developing city-specific WSUD visions based on the benchmarking exercises, progress of the 1:1 physical experiments with SWH and MAR. The arena will also explore avenues for embedding results from experiments and mainstreaming WSUD visions with responsible city stakeholders and regular policy frameworks.

A second work package will consist of physical solutions in Cape Town, where the focus will be on 1:1 experiments and assessment of the feasibility of SWH and MAR as nature-based solutions to augment water supply. For Johannesburg, a outlining/mapping of the city water cycle will be undertaken and possible case sites where stormwater can be linked to water supply explored and assessed to develop a decision-support tool to aid in the assessment of landscape-level and subterranean WSUD options.

The project is being led from University of Copenhagen with most research activities based in South Africa and directed through project team members from the Future Water research institute at the University of Cape Town.

The following researchers and students have comprised the resources on the project to date, with an additional postgraduate student and a project manager (to manage the construction activities in Mitchell’s Plain and at UCT) expected to join the team at the beginning of 2021.

• A/Prof Lise Byskov Herslund, University of Copenhagen (Project leader)
• Prof Marina Bergen Jensen, University of Copenhagen (Project team member)
• Prof Peter Engelund Holm, University of Copenhagen (Project team member)
• Dr Kirsty Carden, University of Cape Town (Project team member)
• Prof Neil Armitage, University of Cape Town (Project team member)
• Dr John Okedi, University of Cape Town (Project team member)
• Dr Patience Mguni, University of Copenhagen (Postdoctoral research fellow)
• Dr Amber Abrams, University of Cape Town (Postdoctoral research fellow)
• Mr Craig Tanyanyiwa, University of Cape Town (PhD student)
• Ms Julia Mclachlan, University of Cape Town (PhD student)
• Ms Bettina Anja Käppeli, University of Copenhagen (Masters student)
• Ms Aa’isha Dollie, Resilience Consulting (Research assistant)