WISA • CHAIR’S COMMENT
TAKING A DECENTRALISED APPROACH 2020 was a year of intense disruption and change. As we enter 2021, we are offered an opportunity to reflect on our current systems and consider new, innovative and alternative solutions to some of our most pressing challenges. By Dan Naidoo
M
any of our water and sanitation solutions to date have focused on a traditional, centralised approach. This is often driven by a belief that working at scale reduces unit costs and offers easier and cheaper operation. The result is massive infrastructure spend and long-term implementation. But this poses several challenges. First, in our current constrained economic climate, the massive costs of large infrastructure roll-out prohibit these projects from
being implemented. Risk is also a major factor for investment, and with local government’s risk factor currently very high, securing funding sources presents a major challenge due to poor payment for services. In addition, the long-term nature of these large projects means that the people who need services have to wait several years before the implementation phase is reached. Added to this, connecting many of South Africa’s outlying rural and peri-urban areas to a
Dan Naidoo, chair, WISA centralised system is simply not practical or cost-effective. Bigger is not always better; unfortunately, we often forget about the smaller, easier projects that can assist with water supply and sanitation. The Covid-19 crisis has shown that decentralised water solutions can be implemented. However, it is now vital that we focus on sustainable, off-grid solutions and plan accordingly for these in order to deliver services to the more than 3 million people who still do not have access to a basic water supply service and the 14.1 million people who do not have access to safe sanitation.
Changing attitudes
Decentralised water and wastewater treatment technologies and off-grid sanitation technologies have progressed significantly in recent years. In many cases, these technologies are just as good as their large-scale counterparts and,
8
JAN/F E B 2021
