Day Zero, Conference of Parties and Climate funding.... Are they just buzz words?

Welcome to the penultimate post in this series! Before I begin, I want you to consider these questions. Did you know that the World Health Organisation estimates that 2 billion people globally lack access to safe water (Perez et al., 2015)? Or that Africa is the world's fastest urbanising continent? Both were just as shocking to me. Therefore, this blog will first delve into an African urban case study of The Cape Town Drought and then into discussions of COP 27. 

Figure 1: Residents queueing to collect water from the Kalk Bay Spring, Cape Town. 

South Africa primarily relies on rainwater to meet demand. This is becoming increasingly difficult in light of climate change. Rains have become unpredictable with an increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. The Cape Town Drought lasted between 2015 and 2018 and was made three times more likely by anthropogenic climate change (Trisos et al., 2022). Water sales contributed to 14% of the city's total revenue; thus, the drought had huge economic shocks. The residents resorted to alternative water sources, as shown in Figure 1. It consequently led to the municipality considering a broader diversity of the water supply; however, the threat of 'Day Zero', where water supplies are largely switched off, still looms. 

COP 27, hosted in 2022, was framed as the African COP as it was held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt (Williams et al., 2023) and was the fifth COP to be hosted on the continent. It played a significant role in highlighting the unequal impacts of climate change. Africa has disproportionately suffered despite doing little to contribute to anthropogenic climate change (Lukoye et al., 2022). Therefore, the important launch of the African Cities Water Adaptation Fund (ACWA) out of COP 27 was an extremely positive step forward for water management across urban Africa. 

The ACWA is the key funding organisation with the goal to finance $5 billion worth of urban water reliance solutions and infrastructural projects to over 100 African cities within the next decade. The money will be split between grants and direct investments. This innovative fund will also be combining both public and private finances to ensure the most efficient solutions. The effort will enable city leaders to access and distribute funding. This is of the utmost importance due to their local knowledge and presumed personal connection to the metropolitan area. In reality, the solutions manifest themselves as integrated governance, watershed management, increased sanitation infrastructure and wastewater management (Alayza et al., 2022). 

Yet again, I must caveat this blog post. This is in no way the overarching solution to the water crisis across Africa. Nor may this be an appropriate solution for all of Africa, for example, the four small island nations. There can be no homogenous solution; perhaps there is no solution at all. However, I do think it is important to highlight when progressive work has been done. It provides hope and shines a positive light into the dark and distressing conversations that currently engulf the climate change conversations.