Peter Johnston, University of Cape Town Much has been written about the ongoing drought and critical water shortages in the city of Cape Town. Residents are bracing themselves for Day Zero – the moment at which most of the city’s domestic taps will run dry. But there’s also a great deal to worry about beyond… Read more »
I was asked to write a short piece for an independent Russian (!) media outlet—to be translated—to contribute to answering the title question from a climatological perspective. I’ve been asked to post this to the blog here, having made adapted it slightly for a more South African audience: It is important to distinguish between the… Read more »
With the Western Cape drought now making international headlines on the BBC, the New York Times, and elsewhere, CSAG staff are receiving daily requests for interviews and information about the drought both locally and internationally. The world is now watching to see if Cape Town will be the first major city to actually run… Read more »
Ah, what a drama! Armageddon cometh! We are going to die! If not of disease and agony of thirst, then surely of bad smell, dirty clothes or from the hand of thy neighbour, who, at some stage of desiccation, will transform zombie-style into a Mad Max styled warrior armed with a post-apocaliptic, serrated water bucket…… Read more »
This blog is an extended version of the article published in GroundUp The nature of Cape Town’s water crisis remains a hotly contested issue. There is drought, of course. But there are also possible other reasons brought up in the public discourse, particularly in the social media, such as population and water demand growth, unreported… Read more »
By Ntanganedzeni Ramugondo How do you take “it” easy in a world moving so fast? What do you even take? Everybody wants in but not everybody wants in. Clearly everyone has an opinion, but what we can all agree on is that we all benefit from a clean healthy low carbon concentration world…. Read more »
When I was asked to write a blog that might contribute to a platform of knowledge and skills to address complex social and environmental problems, I had been grappling with several such problems in my own life. To note two in particular; the protests at the University of Cape Town (UCT), calling for free higher… Read more »
Piotr Wolski has produced a tool to assess the current and projected state of the Western Cape Dams: The “Big Six Monitor” The “Big Six Monitor” – http://cip.csag.uct.ac.za/monitoring/bigsix.html shows the amount of water in the major Western Cape Water Supply System (WCWSS) dams currently and in the recent past. Additionally, it shows the storage… Read more »
By Piotr Wolski Originally published by GroundUp Journalists and the general public are asking many questions about the Western Cape drought. What is meant by a drought? Why is the drought happening? Where exactly is the drought occurring? Is this drought caused by climate change? Could it have been predicted? Should we not expect it… Read more »