WATER
Applying a CIRCULAR ECONOMY to South Africa’s water use The water crisis is only a constraint if we continue to manage it as a finite stock and in a linear economy. The Green Economy Journal speaks to Benoît Le Roy, CEO of the SA Water Chamber, about managing water, which is infinitely renewable, as a circular economy. GEJ: Please begin by explaining the problem case from a macro perspective for how we handle the water resource in South Africa presently, highlighting the structural and regulatory problems as you see them. BLR: Currently South Africa, like most countries, manages water in a linear fashion mostly, where we capture, abstract, treat and distribute to users and then dispose through the wastewater systems. We have realised as a human race that our resources are finite, and in a rapid growing population we are creating stress on these finite resources. Although critical for life
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and economic activity, water has been largely relegated as a low priority, not only in South Africa but globally. The South African water reserve was deemed as 98% allocated in 2002 when the population count was 46-million, which has increased to an estimated 60-million in 2021. When we add the vagaries of climate change there is no doubt that our water reserve is over allocated, although many are trying to state the opposite. Whichever way we look at our water balance, it has gone from scare to critical. Water is a fundamental human right and economic enabler or disabler
