Development and assessment of an integrated water resources accounting methodology for South Africa: Phase 2

Water plays a key role in the social and economic wellbeing of a country (Colvin et al., 2008). Globally, there is an increasing demand for water due to population and economic growth. This increase in demand, together with the pollution of water resources and climate change, has resulted in increased water scarcity in many catchments. Molden et al. (2007) state that, globally, 1.2 billion people live in catchments where the utilisation of water resources is no longer sustainable, resulting in physical water scarcity. A further 1.6 billion people live under conditions of economic water scarcity, where lack of infrastructure limits access to available water. Both physical and economic water scarcity are prevalent in South Africa. The National Water Resources Strategy (DWAF, 2004b; DWA, 2013) indicates that there are many key catchments in South Africa where demand equals or exceeds supply. Water storage infrastructure is already highly developed and there are limited additional economically feasible sites for dams and inter-catchment transfer schemes (DWA, 2013; DWS, 2015). The current status of water resources in South Africa thus requires a change in emphasis from infrastructure development to better water management, resulting in more effective and efficient use and allocation of water resources. It is widely recognised that good water management is strongly dependent on the availability of good data and information. This is also true for successful cooperative governance and stakeholder participation (Lemos et al., 2010). Difficulties in describing complex water resource systems in a simple yet sufficiently comprehensive manner are also a constraint (Karimi et al., 2013a). In summary, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Water Council (WWC) (FAO and WWC, 2018) state that good water governance will require “a clear understanding of hydrological processes, more and better-quality data, and a means of interpreting it for a wide range of professionals across the water and water-using sectors, to provide a common understanding and agreement on the means of improving water management.”