South Africa is a water-scarce country and the current drought conditions are not making it any easier on the locals or farmers.
Apart from old infrastructure that is causing massive leakages all over, there are also various other threats to the water sources, including:
Alien Plants – Invasive black wattle and pines out-compete natural indigenous plants on various landscapes, thereby reducing the natural biodiversity and destroying ecosystems. Alien plants also use an estimated 7% of South Africa’s available water resources.
Coal Mining – South Africa gets its power from coal, but coal mining causes acid mine drainage (AMD) when water reacts with sulphides in the ore rock; this creates sulphuric acid which can dissolve toxic metals more easily than neutral water, creating major health problems for humans, livestock and fish in the rivers. Crops that are irrigated with this acidic water also suffer.
Climate Change – Climate Change is set to hit South Africa harder than countries further north, and higher temperatures mean that plants will require more watering, evaporation rates will increase, algal blooms are more likely to destroy dams and there will be more droughts in the Western and Northern Cape. Kwazulu Natal and Gauteng will experience more intense rainfall, resulting in erosion and flood damage.
Fires – Fynbos, savannah and grasslands need fire as part of their natural life cycle, but there is a currently a high frequency of fires, resulting in the natural ecosystems not having sufficient time to recover. The higher intensity of the fires also means that the soil is eroding more easily and ending up clogging rivers and dams.
Land Degradation – Over-used and poorly managed land results in nutrients and soil being lost and contaminating rivers and wetlands. This can occur due to poorly managed crop agriculture and putting too much livestock on certain tracts of land, which results in riparian areas being trampled and biodiversity being lost. This land cannot recover from the inevitable droughts and floods.
Over cultivation of mono crops like sugar use more water than the natural vegetation, thereby reducing the amount of available water in rivers, wetlands and aquifers. Pine and wattle plantations also use far more water than natural vegetation cover does, reducing stream f lows.
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