Anthony Turton

Gold, Scorched Earth and Water: The Hydropolitics of Johannesburg

Johannesburg is an unusual city because it is one of the few major cities of the world that does not lie on a river, a lake or a seafront. Since the discovery of gold in 1886, Johannesburg has grown from a dusty mining town to a major urban and industrial conurbation that houses and sustains a quarter of the total population of South Africa, accounting for 10% of the economic activity on the entire African continent. Water supply to Johannesburg is done by Rand Water, which is credited with sustaining the largest human concentration in the southern hemisphere that is not located on a river. This poses major challenges to engineers because the geology associated with the gold-bearing reef is also associated with the watershed between two major international river basins in Southern Africa, the Orange and the Limpopo. Having been classified as pivotal basins in the Southern African Hydropolitical Complex, these two river basins form the strategic backbone to the economies of the four most economically developed countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region—South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe. In order to sustain the urban and industrial complex in what is best described as the Greater Johannesburg Conurbation, massive Inter-Basin Transfers (IBTs) are necessary, posing a challenge to the notion of a river basin as a fundamental unit of management within the framework of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM), because in essence every river basin in South Africa is now hydraulically connected to every other river basin, with this pattern starting to cross international borders in an increasingly complex web of transfer schemes. This supports the notion that the management of water in transboundary river basins is now starting to impact on the political relations between states, which is the essence of the rationale behind the emerging Southern African Hydropolitical Complex.

Water and Security in Sub-Saharan Africa: Emerging Concepts and their Implications for Effective Water Resource Management in the Southern African Region

Africa has 63 river basins that cross the international political borders demarcating the 48 countries making up the African continent (Pakenham 1991: 15). Each of these river basins is shared by between two and ten states and this feature poses several strategic implications for the future economic development aspirations of the countries concerned. Significantly, large areas of Africa are arid or water scarce, where the spatial and temporal distribution of surface water is tightly controlled by the interplay between sparse and erratic rainfall and high evaporation rates. In these areas, the availability of surface water seldom matches the water needs of the respective countries and greater reliance is placed on water drawn from underground aquifers for domestic, agricultural, and industrial use (UNESCO-ISARM 2004: 4). In the extremely dry areas of North Africa, every country re-lies heavily on water drawn from the large shared aquifer systems that characterize this region. Here, the “Great Man-Made River Project” in Libya provides a classical example of this dependence, where the large volumes of water drawn from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer (shared by Chad, Egypt, Libya, and Sudan) contribute over 90 % of Libya’s national water budget (Kuwairi 2004: 8). The dilemma posed by the erratic availability of water in many African countries has prompted re-searchers to pose two interrelated questions. First, will governments go to war over scarce water re-sources as the finite limits of available supplies are approached? Or will they choose instead to cooperate in the development of joint water management schemes in order to optimize benefits to all? In the context of post Cold War Sub-Saharan Africa, more and more countries are engaging with their neighbours to share their common water resources (Turton 2003a: 32). Increasingly, this process is taking place though sets of negotiated water-sharing regimes that are most easily understood within the frame-work of a Hydropolitical Complex. The best example of this in sub-Saharan Africa is the Southern African Hydropolitical Complex, where water-sharing agreements between states are now a prominent feature of the international relations of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. Indeed, such is the importance of these agreements that water resource management is now widely considered as a driver of regional cooperation in its own right (Heyns 2002: 158, 176; Ramoeli 2002: 107; Turton 2003b: 281). In this chapter, we argue that the answer to the dilemma posed above requires an understanding of two critical elements relating to the strategic access to water in the context of water and security in subSaharan Africa. The first element concerns security of supply (of water), with the hydraulic mission of the state being aimed at achieving this fundamental development objective as a foundation for economic growth, social wellbeing and political stability. The second element relates to the need for each state to choose an appropriate strategy or mix of strategies that will achieve and sustain a high level of security of supply. In our analysis, we explore the relevance of the Southern African Hydropolitical Complex, both as an analytical concept and as a possible mechanism for building and sustaining inter-state cooperation, and thereby avoiding possible conflicts over water.

The Southern African Hydropolitical Complex

The literature on international river basin management has recently undergone an upsurge in high quality empirical research, with a number of distinct schools emerging. Examples of this include the outputs of the team working on the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database (TFDD) under Aaron Wolf at Oregon State University; the research into global water regimes by Ken Conca and his team at Maryland University; the group working at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO) under the capable leadership of Nils Petter Gleditsch; and the efforts by Peter Ashton and his team working at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the African Water Issues Research Unit (AWIRU) in South Africa. This chapter will focus on specific outputs of these four efforts by using the Southern African Hydropolitical Complex (SAHPC) as a case study example. The first output is the finding by Wolf et al. (2003:29) that 17 international river basins are at risk, 8 of which are in Africa. The second is the conclusion by Conca and his team that there are some doubts on the emergence of an international regime for the management of transboundary river basins that is based on a converging set of core normative elements, via a global-framework or a basin-cumulative path (Conca and Wu 2002; Conca et al. 2003; Conca 2006:106). The third is the finding by Gleditsch et al. (2005) that where endemic water scarcity occurs in a shared river basin, there are substantial long-term incentives for the investment in water management measures to avoid conflictual outcomes.

Editorial: Setting the Scene—Hydropolitics and the Development of the South African Economy

South Africa is a complex country with a history that is as rich as it is convoluted (Van Vuuren et al., 2007). Significantly, it has an industrialized economy, and is also one of the most economically diverse, water-scarce countries in the world, its population having adapted well to the largely semi-arid climate. This fact, in addition to the fundamental vulnerabilities that characterize South Africa’s aquatic ecosystems, needs to be understood by the new generation of water resource managers if they are to engage successfully in sustainable and effective water management. A defining feature of South Africa is that it is part of a region that has the lowest conversion of mean annual precipitation (MAP) to mean annual runoff (MAR) in the world, a characteristic shared only with Australia (McMahon, 1979; O’Keeffe et al., 1992). The continental average for the conversion of MAP to MAR is 20%, i.e. one-fifth of the water that falls as rain eventually ends up as streamflow, a fact that is skewed because of the tropics at the centre of the continent. Most of the southern African region ranges from 10% to 15% MAP to MAR conversion, while the rest falls considerably below this key-defining ratio. Rivers with such a low conversion ratio are known as ephemeral streams and are episodic in nature with unique ecosystems and management challenges of their own (Jacobsen et al., 1995; Pallet et al., 1997; Seeley et al., 2002). In the case of South Africa, economic growth and development is fundamentally constrained by water resource availability as the country only has an average annual precipitation of 480 mm. This is a startling fact when one takes into account that in 2004 approximately 98% of the national water resource had already been allocated at a high assurance of supply level (NWRS, 2004). This situation leaves little margin for error if sustained economic growth is to be the norm in future. The southern African region is also characterized by development that is spatially skewed; indeed, it has two distinct features that make it globally unique in this regard. First, all of the development requiring water is found in areas far removed from the rivers that support them. This geographic disconnect between water resources and the economic development that sustains the population has given rise to the need for complex inter-basin

WATER AND SOCIAL STABILITY: THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN DILEMMA

This paper will attempt to highlight some of the fundamental development-related problems that are confronting the Southern African region at present. The range of the problem is wide, but one aspect stands out as significant the dilemma arising from the environmental sustainability of current economic development initiatives vis-x88-vis social stability making this an issue increasingly likely to affect regional stability in the early part of the 21 Century. In this regard water is a key indicator of where we have been and where we are headed. This paper will present some of the latest research that is being done at AWIRU regarding water and social stability. It will be argued that two potential future scenarios exist. The first results from an end condition that has been defined as water poverty (Turton & Ohlsson, 1999), which is likely to result in ecological collapse in conjunction with a high level of social instability. The second results from an end condition that has been defined as structurally-induced water abundance (Turton & Ohlsson, 1999), which is likely to result in ecological sustainability in conjunction with a degree of social stability. Clearly the latter is the policy objective that ought to be striven for, yet the current data available tentatively suggests that this is not the case.

The Strategic Role of Water in Alleviating the Human Tragedy Associated with HIV/AIDS in Africa

The continuing HIV/AIDS pandemic is not simply a health issue that calls for commitment from governments to provide assistance in the form of anti-retroviral treatment to infected individuals. Instead, it is a development problem that affects the whole fabric, structure and future of many African societies and there is a high and growing probability that massive political, ecological and social changes will occur during the next few years. Efforts directed at minimizing the destructive social crises and maximizing the potentially constructive outcomes of the pandemic have recognized the indispensable role that the provision of wholesome supplies of water and appropriate sanitation services have in strengthening the ability of communities to withstand the impacts of increased AIDSrelated mortality, and helping to ensure a longer life for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Hydropolitics and Transboundary River Basin Management Nuances in the Southern African Development Community

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) region covers 14 sovereign states (Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC], Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe), two of which are islands (Mauritius and Madagascar). The 12 mainland African states are linked by 21 river basins that cross international political borders, 15 of which are considered to be the most important in terms of socioeconomic development. The SADC region is characterized by a specific hydrological regime, arising from the fact that the majority of the area lies between the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone and the Southern Ocean, both of which drive different patterns of weather and precipitation. To further complicate matters, the two dominant weather systems are also mediated by the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which introduces a further element of unpredictability into the equation. This biophysical characteristic is superimposed onto a set of countries, each with different developmental trajectories, different political histories, differing legal systems that reflect previous colonial legacies and diverse natural resource endowments. The ending of the Cold War has resulted in an attenuation of localized theatres of political instability, which in turn has meant that the SADC region is now set to grow economically into a more integrated regional grouping, possibly along similar lines to that of the European Union (EU).

Megaconferences: View from Southern Africa

As part of a global survey to evaluate the impacts of megaconferences in the water sector conducted by the Third World Centre for Water Management in Mexico, the African Water Issues Research Unit was commissioned to undertake a regional survey of the Southern African region.1 The overarching objective of this study is to evaluate whether or not global megaconferences, often highly criticized and expensive by their nature, do have a marked effect upon local realities within the Water Sector, how they are perceived by the regional water community and what we can do to improve their impact and standing globally. This report highlights the most interesting things that came out of the questionnaires, and does therefore not treat all the subjects asked about in the actual study. It is to be seen as a contribution to the debate about the nature and future of megaconferences based on empirical research. As such it is intended to spark further discussion, rather than provide conclusive answers.