This year, South Africa will observe World Water Week under the ominous cloud of the Cape Town water crisis, and the stark reality of long-term water scarcity in South Africa and beyond its borders. The spotlight on water is at the heart of all conversations in South Africa with questions mainly being raised around sustainable water management, government’s role in the securing access of clean water for all citizens, and the future we face with alarming rates of drought and other weather extremes around the world.

On the occasion of World Water Day, Greenpeace Africa’s Senior Climate and Energy Campaign Manager, Melita Steele, said, “Day Zero is a sign of the times. Millions of South Africans live with Day Zero every day, because they don’t have access to water. Water scarcity is a massive problem, and it is not going to go away. Greenpeace believes that the 2002 UNESCO General Comment that ‘the human right to water is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity. It is a prerequisite for the realisation of other rights’ goes to the heart of the matter.

“The days of mega water users like Eskom and coal mines having unlimited access to water at the expense of the people of South Africa must be over. We must change the narrative around water, and we must defend our right to water at all costs.

“The fact of the matter is that the water story in South Africa is not a good one. Our Department of Water Affairs and Sanitation has for all intents and purposes collapsed. Demand is going to exceed supply in the long term, and it will be difficult to close the gap. All government departments, including but not limited to the Department of Water and Sanitation, must put water at the centre of decision making, and must firmly prioritise water for people over business and profits.”

According to the South African Human Rights Commission, there has been an increase in complaints relating to the right to water between 2012 and 2016, which is tied to insufficient or lack of basic service delivery. This is likely to worsen unless people’s right to water is protected and put first. Water is a basic human right.

In the recent report, “A delicate balance: Water scarcity in South Africa”, it is indicated that as the forces of climate change, urbanisation, population growth and industrialisation collide in SA there needs to be a comprehensive and aggressive push from the South African government to restore balance to the water sector. With this responsibility comes an important opportunity. This makes it clear that a fundamental shift related to water is required to avoid devastating consequences in the future.​

Professors Bruce Rittmann and Mark van Loosdrecht are named the 2018 Stockholm Water Prize Laureates for revolutionising water and wastewater treatment.

Their pioneering research and innovations have led to a new generation of energy-efficient water treatment processes that can effectively extract nutrients and other chemicals – both valuable and harmful – from wastewater.

Mark van Loosdrecht is Professor in Environmental Biotechnology at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. Bruce Rittmann is Regents’ Professor of Environmental Engineering and Director of the Biodesign Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology at the Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University, USA.

On receiving news of the prize, Professor van Loosdrecht said: “I’m very excited and pleased! This is a recognition not just of our work but of the contributions microbiological engineering can make to the water sector”

In its citation, the Stockholm Water Prize Nominating Committee recognises Professors Rittmann and van Loosdrecht for “pioneering and leading the development of environmental biotechnology-based processes for water and wastewater treatment. They have revolutionised treatment of water for safe drinking, and refined purification of polluted water for release or reuse – all while minimising the energy footprint”.

The professors’ research has led to new processes for wastewater treatment currently being used around the globe. “Traditionally, we have just thought of pollutants as something to get rid of, but now we’re beginning to see them as potential resources that are just in the wrong place,” says Professor Rittmann. In his research he has studied how microorganisms can transform organic pollutants to something of value to humans and the environment. “We’re in the middle of a paradigm shift, with more and more focus on how we can create resources, using microbial systems,” he says.

Professor van Loosdrecht’s work echoes this sentiment. His research has led to increasingly common wastewater treatment processes that are less costly and more energy efficient than traditional methods.

“With current technology, you can already be energy neutral and there is a lot of research on how to become energy positive. Especially in developing countries with unstable electricity supply and limited access to funding, this is very important. If we could build a wastewater plant that is self-sufficient in energy, that would make sewage plants feasible in many more places,” says Mark van Loosdrecht.

“Together, Professors Rittmann and van Loosdrecht are leading, illuminating and demonstrating the path forward in one of the most challenging human enterprises on this planet – that of providing clean and safe water for humans, industry, and ecosystems,” says SIWI’s Executive Director, Torgny Holmgren.

H.R.H. Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden will present the prize to Professors Rittmann and van Loosdrecht on behalf of H.M. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, Patron of Stockholm Water Prize, at a royal award ceremony on 29 August 29, 2018, during World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden.

World Water Day, celebrated globally on March 22, is a good time for Ghanaians to reflect on the risks of degradation to which the nation’s water bodies are exposed, as agriculture, industry, towns and cities all compete for their share and pollute water in the process.

The theme for this year – “Nature for Water” – calls attention to an underappreciated solution for this growing threat. While the conventional response is to sink more money into “built” infrastructure (like dams, reservoirs and formal irrigation schemes), research in Ghana and other countries suggests that “natural” infrastructure (such as wetlands, floodplains and watersheds), when properly managed, can also help improve the availability of water, while sustaining the livelihoods of the many people who depend on these natural resources.

Our research in northern Ghana’s Talensi and West Mamprusi Districts clearly demonstrates the multiple benefits of diverse natural infrastructure. Through a “participatory rural appraisal,” we captured the views of local communities on these issues, taking note of the differing perspectives of both women and men. Our aim, through the WISE-UP to Climate project, led by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), was to develop evidence-based knowledge that can support better management of natural resources, which are vital for communities in the face of climate change and population pressure.

Where nature has both material and spiritual value

Centering on three communities located along the White Volta River, our study found that they depend on five distinct types of natural infrastructure: protected forest, shrubs and woodlands (degraded forest), ponds, the White Volta River and seasonal floodplains. These interconnected features of the landscape provide various “ecosystem services” (benefits from nature), some of which depend on seasonal water flows. Annual floods occurring between July and September, for example, increase soil moisture content and deposit fertile soil along the riverbanks, thereby enhancing crop production after the floodwaters have receded. The floods also fill ponds on the floodplains, restocking them with fish. In the dry season, residual moisture around these ponds provides water for grass that supports livestock grazing.

The communities are therefore highly dependent on the river, and its seasonal changes shape their livelihoods. Their keen appreciation of the surrounding ecosystems is evident in local beliefs and customs. Under traditional land tenure, for example, the “Land Priest” or “Earth Priest” (Tindana) has symbolic responsibility for major decisions about all natural resources. Ponds and the surrounding trees – key features of the region’s natural infrastructure – are considered to be the abode of ancestors. One example is the “grandmother crocodile pond” at Arigu, a village in Pwalugu of the Upper East Region. The pond has strong spiritual significance, based on a local legend that a female ancestor of the chief was transformed into a crocodile after her death. Her reincarnated spirit and that of her progeny continue to reside in the pond in the form of crocodiles.

Both men and women living in communities along the river benefit from ecosystem services. While men focus on activities requiring high capital inputs, such as river fishing with nets and boats and irrigated farming, women are more involved in collecting wild fruits, vegetables and nuts, predominantly for home consumption. Men are also moving into cash-making activities, like the collection of wild honey and sheanuts.

Natural infrastructure thus provides the foundation for local livelihoods, supporting the primary means – farming, fishing and livestock – by which communities obtain cash income and food. This infrastructure also serves as a social “safety net” near the end of the long dry season, when food supplies and income from agricultural products have dwindled. To cope with this critical “lean” period, communities collect a wide variety of wild fruits and sheanuts, which they are allowed to collect in small quantities from the protected forests and woodlands. They fish in ponds only at the end of the lean season, when the fish have grown to a considerable size and when villagers are most vulnerable to hunger. This traditional collective approach ensures maximum benefits for women and men.

Natural resources under pressure

Better knowledge about the benefits of natural infrastructure can help communities and local authorities do a better job of managing these resources. This has become particularly urgent in the face of mounting pressures from two sources: climate change and direct human intervention.

Climate change has led to a later start of the rainy season, forcing farmers to delay planting on the floodplains. By thus shortening the growing season – which falls between the start of the rains and the first major floods – this delay increases the risk that floods will occur before harvest, damaging or destroying crops.

The human pressures include over-exploitation of forest resources and the effects of built infrastructure on ecosystems that depend on natural river flows. As more water is allocated through built infrastructure to hydropower and irrigation, the natural flow regime will be affected. Though aimed at fostering much-needed economic growth, built infrastructure, depending on how it is managed, could have both positive and negative impacts. By storing flood flows, dams can reduce damage from extreme floods. However, by reducing the magnitude of smaller, beneficial floods they can also reduce the benefits that these floods bring to local livelihoods.

The Bagré Dam, built in the early 1990s upstream from the study site in Burkina-Faso, has had both positive and negative effects on ecosystem services. By ensuring a steady flow of water throughout the dry season, it has enabled farmers to irrigate crops and obtain water for domestic use, when other sources (like wells) have dried up. Natural floods as well as emergency releases of water for dam safety near the end of the rainy season have led to loss of life and major crop damage due to the uncontrolled nature of the floods. Increased cooperation between the authorities in Burkina Faso and Ghana in recent years has considerably reduced the damage from extreme flooding.

It is envisioned that construction of the planned Pwalugu Dam in northern Ghana for hydropower, irrigation and flood control, with a storage capacity larger than that of the Bagré Dam, will have a significant impact on water flows. While the new dam should further help manage extreme floods, its impact in also reducing the magnitude of medium to large floods could harm rural livelihoods. The challenge for dam operators is to release water from the new dam in a timely manner, providing flows of sufficient magnitude and frequency to maintain ecosystem services but without resulting in large, damaging floods. This is a key part of the wider issue of carefully managing the tradeoffs between the benefits from hydropower and irrigation, on the one hand, and those provided by natural infrastructure, on the other.

By Marloes Mul and Laetitia Pettinotti (Mul and Pettinotti are researchers of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Ghana and the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) in Spain respectively)