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 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

(when water security is not clear). South Africa is water insecure, and this is well-purported in the NDP’s National Water Security Framework. We cannot therefore make any progress in our SDGs, poverty alleviation or provide jobs for all sustainably.

South Africa’s considerable water harnessing and inter-basin transfer system is a world marvel. It was driven by mining operations over a century ago and remains our main water resource. Due to our unique conditions, most of our return-flows after usage from mining to energy and cities are used by downstream agriculture, industry and cities. This makes our water cycle circular and unique in its scale for such a large country, both in population and surface area.

We should now increase our circularity by increased decentralisation at point of consumption without negatively affecting downstream users. We have had a nationalised water resource since 1998, with government as the sole custodian of water and owner of the major dams, transmission infrastructure and water boards. The government is also the only arbiter of bulk water prices and is the quality and policy custodian while being the regulator in these spaces but not at a local government level. This makes our water institutional and regulatory environments ill-structured for today’s needs and has led to serious water insecurity. The major drives required to instil water security are: 1. Reduce water losses that are currently at 41% on a national average basis in the municipal distribution systems. 2. Reuse sewage for various purposes at standards of quality and prices that are suitable for municipal level. 3. Increase new water resources through desalination of acid mine drainage inland and sea water in the coastal municipalities.

This clearly shows that all the action is at local government level now, which is the least capacitated in technical, human, commercial and financial resources.

If you were the Minister of Water and Sanitation in South Africa, what would be the most important changes you would implement, and why?

The only action required from the Water and Sanitation Minister is to address the three above-mentioned points by developing policy that: 1. Enables local government to manage their water losses and to enforce return-flows legislation that prevents the current catastrophic pollution of our water reserve. 2. Transfers the entire water regulatory functions, including water-use licence management, blue, green and no-drop functions as well as compliance enforcement, to an independent water regulator. This will ensure the sustainable and regulatory certainty that infrastructure investors and funders require as a minimum.

Once these are done, we can attract major private funding as the fiscus is not able to inject the trillion rand or more required for our water infrastructure over the next decade. The private sector has the capacity to engender bankable water infrastructure, where low-carbon footprints with circular technology are further injected into our water security journey.

Benoît Le Roy is an environmental alchemist, with forty years of water, waste and energy engineering experience. He is the CEO and co-founder of the South African Water Chamber that was established to represent the private water infrastructure sector to assist government with implementing the national water and sanitation masterplan. This will not only reindustrialise the water sector, but it will also provide a myriad of skilled jobs and the opportunity to again export water-related products and expertise globally.

From your current position and perspective what would you advise large municipalities and water users to do to advance towards a more circular economy approach to their own water?

Large water users, such as Eskom and the mines, have had circular water management cycles in place for over two decades due to operating in water-scarce environments and adopting best practice. The only mining water issue is the acid mine drainage (AMD), which is a legacy issue from closed and abandoned mines where the latter are legally required to be resolved by government – and are mostly not. There are solutions that are economically attractive in this space once regulatory and policy certainty has improved.

Municipalities are the largest polluters of our water resources. Ironically, sewage has valuable resources such as water, chemicals and energy that can be recovered with well-established technology. In the 1960s, South Africa developed the first ever direct sewage-to-potable water-reuse in Namibia, which is still the global flag ship. Two other South African towns, Beaufort West and Ballito also reuse sewage directly into their potable water systems, although energy and chemicals are not yet recovered and will further enhance the bankability of this circular approach.

The other circular potential is to desalinate saline waters so that the water can be used for all purposes and the brine either returned to its source, in the case of the sea, and beneficiated inland with AMD, which is saline. We are the world leaders in recovering 99% of the water from the brine. This brine has value, such as gypsum for construction materials and other trace elements that, through selective extraction technologies currently being developed in South Africa, can be sold across the globe. Desalination has the potential to decouple our coastal economies completely from rainfall in perfectly circular approaches that will instil the water security we require to prosper.

What would be the potential gains from such changes – to what extent would our picture change in terms of scarcity and abundance of water?

This approach would harness the best capabilities from the public and private sectors and unlock the plethora of circular technologies used globally but that are currently unbankable in South Africa. Why should South Africa’s water sector remain unbankable?

The SA Water Chamber and other supply chain stakeholders are developing an industrialisation masterplan to reinvigorate the depressed water sector so that we can reinstate our exports and generate significant industrial activity while having national water security.

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.