Freshwater Challenges Of South Africa And Its Upper Vaal River

This book promotes better understanding and awareness of South Africa' significant water problems by describing the country's and especially the Upper Vaal River’s water resources. It is a “go-to” book for students, professionals and regular citizens when information is required regarding the country's and more specifically the Upper Vaal River’s freshwater resources. It highlights the major problems and risks which need to be addressed and give a realistic and true representation of the current water affairs.

The book presents an interdisciplinary systematic evaluation of increasing water stress and scarcity over the globe and specifically South Africa. South Africa is used as the prime example as the country is experiencing similar water challenges in terms of availability and quality as most regions across the globe. Water availability is predominantly used to illustrate water scarcity however, continued degradation of the world’s freshwater resources, by a multitude of natural and anthropogenic factors, have consequently exacerbated water stress and scarcity due to it being of insufficient quality for various uses. The increase of water scarcity through both natural and anthropogenic factors has in turn led to water being viewed as an increasing risk within all spheres. Water as a source of conflict has come to the forefront especially within regions which struggle to meet the increasing demands from different water users and trying to achieve future sustainability of the resource. The increase of water scarcity and stress as well as the continued pressure of population and economic growth has brought various new challenges into play. This book focuses on water as an increasing risk over the globe and specifically South Africa by reviewing both water availability and quality, evaluating water as a global and national risk. The book concludes by focusing on current limitations, necessary strategic actions as well as possible policy-related changes which may be required to adapt to future water challenges and to lessen water as an increasing risk.

This book comprises the proceedings of the International Perm Forum “Science and Global Challenges of the 21st Century” held on October 18th – 23rd, 2021, at Perm State University, Perm, Russia. Global challenges, which determine the main trends in the development of social and economic life in the XXI century, require the integration of specialists in various fields of knowledge. That is why the main principle of this edition is interdisciplinarity, the formation of end-to-end innovation chains, including fundamental and applied research, and the wide application of smart innovations, networks, and information technologies. The authors seek to find synergy between technologies and such fields as computer science, geosciences, biology, linguistics, social studies, historical studies, and economics. The book is of interest to researchers seeking nontrivial solutions at the interface of sciences, digital humanities, computational linguistics, cognitive studies, machine learning, and others.

The book provides a critical evaluation of South Africa’s freshwater resources to illustrate the way in which its freshwater resources, water access, services and infrastructure have continued to decline over the past three decades. The continued decline of water governance, management, water service delivery, dilapidated water infrastructure, dysfunctional local governments and overall excessive water degradation is illustrated and emphasized using real-life examples and case studies from various contexts within the country. The main argument of the book is that South Africa’s freshwater resources have declined to such an extent that it can be described as a predicament. Questionable water governance decisions and reactive water management practices have led to no improvement and/or increased degradation of freshwater resources. An overall lack of service delivery exists across the country, in various contexts, leading to further water and social decline. An inter-disciplinary evaluation of South Africa’s current water predicament is provided, major water crises are prioritized, and suitable recommendations are given to transform its predicament into problems which can be addressed. Suitable background information is given to emphasize the necessity of good water governance, management, and service delivery. South Africa’s freshwater resources are evaluated with specific focus on the decline of informed water governance, management, service delivery and water quality. Factors requiring urgent attention are determined and suitable recommendations and/or actions are provided. An evaluation and overall synthesis focused on the transformation of the predicament into problems is provided. Primary water problems are prioritized according to urgency and suitable recommendations are given to assist in transforming the country’s current complex water predicament into “simpler” water problems. Political will, collaboration with researchers, stakeholders, non-governmental organizations, and cooperation of civil society is required. South Africa’s already scarce freshwater resources and decaying infrastructure will persist and possibly collapse if no major actions or interventions are implemented.

The scholarly theme of the book lends itself to the discipline of earth and atmospheric sciences, with a specific focus on water-climate studies. The book is a scholarly discourse by researchers in the natural sciences, including Hydrologists, Climate Scientists, Environmental Engineers and Water Scientists. The purpose of the book is to address the limited complementarity between the water and climate studies; which is crucial in promoting scientific research that informs policy decisions and implementation of water security plans. The chapters were selected to represent water-climate models and policy research conducted in different river basins in the arid and semi-arid environments. Therefore, the water-climate management tools highlighted in this book include General Circulation Models (GCMs), Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), Africa Flood and Drought Monitor (AFDM), Extreme Precipitation Events (EPEs), R ClimDex, Mixed strategy game models, Standard Precipitation Indices (SPIs), Water Evaluation and Planning System (WEAP), Penman Calculator, and Saturated Volume Fluctuation (SVF).

This book offers a broad and global level description of the current status of wastewater use in agriculture and then brings the readers to various places in the MENA Region and Europe to explain how some countries and regions have addressed the challenges during implementation. On a global scale, over 20 million hectares of agricultural land are irrigated using wastewater. This is one good, and perhaps the most prominent, example of the safe use potential of wastewater. Water scarcity and the cost of energy and fertilisers are among the main factors driving millions of farmers and other entrepreneurs to make use of wastewater. In order to address the technical, institutional, and policy challenges of safe water reuse, developing countries and countries in transition need clear institutional arrangements and more skilled human resources, with a sound understanding of the opportunities and potential risks of wastewater use. Stakeholders in wastewater irrigation who need to implement from scratch or improve current conditions, find it difficult to gather the necessary information on practical implementation aspects. The main objective of this book is to bridge that gap.

This book comprises select papers presented at the International Conference on Trends and Recent Advances in Civil Engineering (TRACE 2018). The book covers inter-disciplinary research and applications in integrated water resource management, river ecology, irrigation system, water pollution and treatment, hydraulic structure and hydro-informatics. The topics on water resource management include technological intervention and solution for climate change impacts on water resources, water security, clean water to all, sustainable water reuse, flood risk assessment, interlinking of rivers and hydro policy. The contents of this book will be useful to researchers and professionals working in the field of water resource management and related policy making.