“Dynamics and determinants” Presentor; Mr. Elias Mkhwanazi Email: eliasndonga@gmail.com Rits Hotel, 21-23 August, Cape Town, South Africa. Environmental Monitoring Group, 2009 Brief summary: Rainwater harvesting (RWH) refers to the collection and storing of natural rainwater from rooftops or any other way for human related activities. These activities reduce the burden on the domestic supply within which people rely upon. The popularity of water harvesting and utilization is its decentralization nature located in proximity to and supply of good water to the end user who is mostly the poor populace in the country. This symposium is to open a space for debate and discussion about RHW relevant policy frameworks and a myriad of legislation governing their application. In South Africa the neoliberal economic system is to be under scrutiny as it is said to be negative effects of the end user thus the symposium would take liberty in engaging on this subject. The symposium will look at what is being used in South as RHW storages and explore that further. Introduction “Water the lifeblood of universe web of life” R ooftop, surface and groundwater form part of important source in South Africa. In the last South Africa Water Caucus (SAWC) meeting held 4-6 April 2009 in Durban delegates visited areas around Kwa-Zulu Natal province, and had an edutour at Inanda which included having a meeting with a company which was given a tender by the council through national government funding, to manufacture fero-cement tanks for households which met certain requirement in terms of length of the rooftop gutters and the wall height. People commented about the safety features, life span and storage cy apacity and so on. This was part of the urge to continue learning and growing along the way. The lesson learnt was that water is resources which needs to be used wisely and communities together with government can be bring about solution to water scarcity problems. The rationale for organizing the symposium T his symposium comes as a response mechanism to the current problems South Africa is facing; the government has built dams and is planning to build in the next 20 years, more dams and turn them into catchments without minding the adverse effects this would have had on environment. The dams built are costly and prone to flooding, poor maintenance, and earthquakes and with short lived lifespan. Well, of course some of these dams are built for many good reasons and purposes ranging from; farming, industry, agribusiness, mining, government activities and also for domestic consumption. Well there are other sources which complement the water use and are; underground water, wetlands, and rivers and so on. The emphasis is on wetland is due to the fact that policy in place do not prove to ne progressive even when the need is so much apparent and unavoidable, also that when the government thinks of putting RHW rural area are given priority as if the urban populace does not have the same problem. This undermines the geographical politics of the urban citizen affected and their needs as well as if their in another trans-frontier borders. The dynamics around RWH is that you will need a prepared surface area from which rainwater is collected. The catchment can refer to the rooftop area of household, building and ground area. What would determine the quality and quantity relies mostly on the space and resources available within the country and at household level. Caution in SA is that rooftop made up of asbestos or painted with lead based paints, roof from over- hanging trees for bird and animal’s shelter should be avoided as this may contaminate the collected water. There are problems especially with regard to asbestos as many houses have got them dating back from apartheid poor housing policy. The storage can vary from a small jar/tank for household uses to a large masonry/cement concrete tank for community use to natural depression/basins/dams/ for village use. The collected water is then used for domestic use after preliminary screening. Concerns are plastic tanks are very expensive especially for rural areas. In some other developing countries, it has been reported that their cost is 2to3 times that of the brick fero-cement tanks of similar capacity. The other option is to look at other low cost storage like G1 sheet tank which rust and impart undesirable taste to the stored water, after a certain period, or other tried low cost option that are in the market or used in rural set ups for now. The symposium will need to look at best-practice-model that promotes easy to put, accessible and cheap catchment whilst not compromising the health and livelihood of the beneficiaries. This symposium will have to consider forms of good maintenance, successful case studies and lessons for future projects. The global situation and scenarios M ore than 1 billion people in the world lack access to clean and affordable water. Furthermore, approximately 2, 4 million of people lack proper sanitation service which by far and large contributes to many diseases and increased mortality rate. As of now, over 5 million people, mostly children, die each year of preventable water borne disease such as cholera, diarrhea, and dysentery. This growing divide happens amid the concerns that widening gab between those who have access and those who don’t should be bridged. This growing crisis is primarily due to environmental crisis, public debt, urban population, poor rural infrastructure, and the increase in poverty and inequality attributed to policies of trade liberalization, privatization, de-regulation and corporate invasion of public goods through globalization. Other contributory factors are the international instruments and finances houses which time and gain prescribe to developing country, the so called Third world government, what to do and how do it. They are among others World Bank (WB), International monetary fund (IMF) and with a backing from their government like USA they get bilateral agreements to provide service and goods to their counterpart government partners. These governments together with their corporate claim that the only way to ensure effective service delivery is to increase tariffs on water pricing, impose full cost recovery policies and private water. The symposium will need to do a critique of these of service delivery, the cut back in spending for service delivery by government as part of its social contract (to provide and maintain service within the tax base) and come with a recommendation on what best model should in terms of community beneficiation scheme. These benefits should include communities who were moved away/evicted from their ancestral land as to pave way for development of water reserves. The situation in South Africa N eedless to say to say the newly elected government in 1994 democratic election inherited the enormous debt from its predecessor, and had to come with some kind of intervention. The debt is coupled with huge backlogs in service delivery and infrastructure development for water, electricity and sanitation. According to the report (water supply and sanitation in South Africa, internet g1, 2009) there are about 15 million people who were without safe water and about 20 million without adequate sanitation. However a satisfactory progress is said to have been made so far, as that situation has improved. An extra effort is needed to have these backlogs covered is indispensable if the government want to improve health and people livelihood. SA is one of the few countries in the world that enshrines the basic right to sufficient water in its Constitution, stating that, s27 “Everyone has the right to have access (…) sufficient food and sanitation and water”. (Constitution of the Republic of South Africa). The question is how this progressive socioeconomic rights is going to be realized as it time and again act retrospectively (refer Mazibuko and Phiri v Johannesburg water case where the judge ruled that government is not obliged, it can only do this within limited resources) The report provides significant problem as financial sustainability of investment and the lack of access to sanitation. Key features noted were: Institutional arrangement between tiers of government in relation to water service and water provision, Strong linkages between water supply and sanitation and water resources management through Water Boards, A strong government commitment to high service standards and to high levels of investment subsidies to achieve those standards, A policy of free basic water and saniation, Relatively stable and successful private sector participation in water supply, A strong water industry with a track record in innovation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply and sanitation in South Africa 5/9/2009) According to Edward Cottle (water privatization in South Africa; presentation in Copenhagen EU SADC Conference, pg 1) of the Johannesburg based Rural Development Service Network presentation at the Copenhagen EU SADC civil society conference , privatization has bad consequences for water provision in South Africa as it leaves many poor communities without access or may even cause them to lose that access in future. The two reasons for lowered access to water privatization are two fold. First, the ‘’full cost recovery’’ model means cutting water to those not paying water bills. Property and evictions from residents’ homes can be a part of the legal process to recover debt from customers. Furthermore he said (pg1), that, “since 1994 over 10 millions South Africans have had their water and 2 million South African have been evicted from their homes from not paying water bills” (Edward Cottle, pg1). These concerns are further exacerbated by the lack of government political will and not paying attention to sanitation target (as stipulated in Millennium Development Goal, 2015), also not paying attention to government ability to sustain current funding levels. Benefits of having RHW They are not costly to built and install, They are do it yourself (DIY) activity, They are having long life span, They can be put anywhere and in any climate conditions, Contribute in water use and reduction of the user’s bill, The user has to fill them in a rainy season and use for a long time. The symposium has to look at other benefits the RHW might have and provide other successful cases as part of learning curve. Current Challenges T he challenge is how we should be adapting to these new environments and resists climate change, because without reliable water sources we will definitely not survive. Thus it is important to re-think about the existing relationships between human kind and the rest of other living organism. For us to deal with the major challenges of: Backlogs in basic services Poverty and unemployment Transformation of our organisations and society Bringing into the mainstream of political, social and economic life, those previously disadvantaged, but in particular, the women with whom we need to work together. At this moment tariffs have generally increased, for example a township in Beaufort had seen increase of more than 600% between 1994 and 1996 when privatization was introduced. Similar trends have been noted in other parts of the country. In some areas, people resorted to drinking unsafe water which led to the cholera outbreak in year 2000 for example in KZN over 120 000 people got infected and 290 people died during these outbreaks. Also in Delmas, an area in Mpumalanga province, 200 babies died due to neglect of water spillage into water treatment plant. It is against this background that rainwater-harvesting project is proposed not as solution to water scarcity, but rather as one of the ways through which we could sustain our water resources to the future. The Environmental Monitoring Group and the Coalition for Environmental Justice has embarked on rainwater-harvesting initiative. The call for the symposium T his brief suggests that we can not just go on building dams without considering these adverse impacts and other existing options such as rainwater harvesting, underground storage, protection of wetlands, water conservation, protection of rivers, big dams and prevent water pollution etc. The energy foot print of water needs also be correctly looked at, municipal water have to be fall in a catchments to a dam, purified, pumped to different users and households and all this takes energy and money to happen. Rainwater harvesting will require no dams, no purification (for the specific uses envisaged), no pumping or pumped using solar or wind energy and this will contribute positively to climate change mitigation and adaptation thus helping us to resist climate change. CONCLUSION “Let us solace and weep our bosom empty and find means towards redress” T he symposium need to develop a comprehensive vision and probable strategy where all people in SA are provided with adequate, safe, appropriate and affordable water and sanitation services by a well-capacitated, vibrant, environmentally sensitive, accountable and unified water sector and institution. The anticipated results of his forthcoming symposium are to look at how we Encourage greater participation of civil society in the water sector Ensure gender issues are given high priority in our program and that participation of women are entrenched in policies, practices and projects Use appropriate approaches and technologies when planning and implementing water and sanitation projects Protect our precious water resources and the environment which sustains these resources PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT 1