Antonino Manus, PwC South Africa. Photo: Karolina Komendera

Across South Africa, water stress is a major problem. We saw it in the Mother City in 2017/18 when Cape Town’s taps almost ran dry. And now we’re seeing it again in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro of Gqeberha where water is fast running out. According to Antonino Manus, PwC South Africa’s water sector operations transformation partner, the situation might be different from province to province but it comes down to two things – quality and quantity. If your water resources are polluted, this makes it more difficult for whoever is downstream to collect and clean it, she explains. And, obviously, this affects the quantity of water that’s available. But this isn’t the only thing affecting water quantity. The amount of water we have is also affected by changing weather patterns and, moving down the supply chain, what we find is that existing infrastructure is not being maintained properly or upgraded effectively so leakages and system failures are inevitable.

For Sheilla Carvalho, director: leading markets at Royal HaskoningDHV, conversations about the amount of water we have need to start with looking at where we’re getting our water from and coming up with ways to increase sources of water. “We have to think about alternative sources because we have an overdependence on surface water. It’s critical to look at groundwater and grey water, water reuse, different ways of harvesting water and we also need to think about different ways of obtaining fresh water through processes like desalination.”