Drought is one of the most frequent and devastating phenomena that occur in the country and yet from the government’s reaction, you would think of it as a surprise.
Drought is often viewed as an event rather than a process, which explains the response to drought being reactive instead of proactive.
Unlike other weather-related disasters that make headlines from immediately visible damages, droughts are simmering disasters whose impacts gradually accumulate with time.
Droughts are generally associated with the failure of seasonal rains, levels of which are unpredictable, unevenly distributed, and decreasing as a result of global warming.
This then feeds into South Africa’s water scarcity, and round and round the vicious cycle continues.
Did you know?
South Africa’s per capita water availability is one of the lowest in Africa, making access to clean water a problem in many areas of the country, including Cape Town, something that led to Cape Town’s ‘Day Zero’ in 2018.
One of the root causes of the country’s vulnerability is its dependence on rainfall for its economic and social development. The country receives a mean annual precipitation of 497mm/year, almost 50% less than the global average of 860mm/year.
South Africa’s Vulnerability to Drought
What makes South Africa especially vulnerable to drought is that over 80% of the RSA’s land surface can be classified semi-arid to arid, with only 18% being dry sub-humid to sub-humid meaning the country experiences extreme water stress.
Other reasons include:
The country’s high climatic variability, South Africa is already a severely climate stressed country, ranked 96 out of 182 countries in terms of climate change vulnerability.
Poverty and inequitable development in rural areas: due to South Africa’s structural inequality, the country is significantly more susceptible to the effects of drought and heat waves. This leaves certain communities in a precarious position, as they are just one severe weather event away from falling into complete poverty.
High dependency on rainfed agriculture. The Northern Cape’s reliance on rain-fed agriculture has seen years of serious drought devastate its agricultural sector.
Weak infrastructure to manage resources and recover from disasters.
We have to be quite clear that what we are experiencing is due to the increasing greenhouse gases. The earth’s temperature is going to increase, is increasing, has indeed already increased, and if we don’t do anything, this is just going to become worse for human life.
Pattern Of Drought
Because of its creeping or slow onset nature, the impacts of drought accumulate over a long period of time; consequently, it is difficult to recognize both the onset and end of the event.
Each drought episode also differs from all previous events in its intensity, duration, and spatial extent, and because of its long duration, droughts usually have multiple and migrating epicentres.
Impacts associated with drought are non-structural and, therefore, do not capture the imagination of the media and policy makers until those impacts reach devastating proportions, as we have seen in recent years in many countries throughout the world, including recent droughts in South Africa.
In the country, recorded droughts have been experienced since the early 1800s in both the winter and summer rainfall regions of South Africa and have inflicted major socioeconomic damages.
South Africa has also experienced below-average rainfall during all decades of the past millennium except the 1950s and 1970s, with worsening trends in frequency and duration of drought in recent times.
The time lag between the beginning of a period of water scarcity and its impact on socio-economic and/or environmental assets is referred to as the timescale of a drought.
As a result, drought indices usually consider short-term droughts (three months or less), medium-term droughts (lasting 4–9 months) and long-term droughts (12 months or more).
Conditions Shaping The Onset Of Droughts
A man collects water at an almost completely dried up well in Tharaka Nithi County. This is the only well used by all the villagers nearby to collect water. The drought is visible in the surroundings.
© Peter Caton / Greenpeace
The reality of the drought cycles that ravage South Africa is that climate change is worsening the drought crisis.
The South African drought cycles have a noticeable ‘natural’ component: they are partly caused by geophysical phenomena that make the continent’s humidity fluctuate.
Unfortunately, in addition to these phenomena, emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities have led to serious droughts amplified by global warming.
As the atmosphere gets warmer, the relative humidity in the Southern African region decreases and the drought period becomes longer and more severe.
The country continues to experience a decline in rainfall events that drastically affect water supplies, resulting in longer and more intense droughts; a trend likely to recur in the future.
Major Drought Events in South Africa In The Past Century
South Africa has experienced several major drought events over the past century, impacting agriculture, water resources, and the economy. Some notable droughts include:
The Great Drought (1930s): This drought, also known as the “Great Depression Drought,” occurred during the 1930s and was one of the most severe droughts in South Africa’s history. It led to widespread crop failures, livestock losses, and economic hardship.
The 1982–1984 Drought: This drought was one of the most severe in recent history and lasted for several years. It had significant impacts on agriculture, particularly in the Western and Northern Cape provinces, and resulted in water shortages in urban areas.
The 1991–1992 Drought: This drought affected large parts of South Africa and was particularly severe in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, and Free State provinces. It led to crop failures, water shortages, and increased food prices.
The Millennium Drought (2000s): This prolonged drought affected various parts of South Africa from around 2000 to 2005. It resulted in water restrictions, crop failures, and livestock losses, particularly in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces.
The 2015–2018 Drought: This drought, often referred to as the “Cape Town water crisis,” was particularly severe in the Western Cape province and threatened to exhaust the city’s water supply. It led to strict water restrictions, public awareness campaigns, and efforts to increase water resilience.
These drought events underscore the vulnerability of South Africa to climate change and the importance of proactive measures, such as water conservation, improved irrigation techniques, and drought-resistant crop varieties, to mitigate the impacts of future droughts.
But more than anything it drives home the importance of South Africa’s government being a climate leader on the continent.
Tackling the climate crisis head on by showing leadership in a more systemic shift away from fossil fuels and to renewable energy, protecting biodiversity and uniting Africa around a future that starts to pull us away from the deepening climate crisis will mitigate extreme weather frequency from floods to severe drought in the long term.
What Exactly is Drought?
It might be good to get our definitions in check early on.
Drought is a weather condition, an extended period of dryness, characterized by a prolonged period of abnormally low rainfall, leading to a shortage of water.
Droughts happen regularly and vary in magnitude and frequency with their severity increasing as each drought happens. For context, these are the different types of droughts:
Meteorological Drought: occurs when current precipitation levels deviate from some “normal” amount over a period of time, using monthly, seasonal, or annual scales.
Hydrological Drought: refers to the effects and impacts that precipitation deficiencies (including snowfall) have on surface or subsurface water supplies.
Agricultural Drought: refers to the soil moisture needs of a certain crop at a specific time and to how aspects of meteorological or hydrological droughts affect agricultural output.
Socioeconomic Drought: This refers to direct and indirect impacts of drought on human activities.
Causes of Drought
Mega Water Users, The Coal Industry, Are Contributing to Drought Conditions In South Africa
Higher temperatures and diminished rainfall, which can be attributed to climate change are wreaking havoc in two of South Africa’s largest economic sectors — agriculture and energy.
Yet in the face of this growing crisis, South Africa’s leaders continue to display unyielding allegiance to the nation’s water-guzzling coal sector, whose 50-plus billion tons of coal reserves fuel 90 per cent of the country’s electrical generating capacity and provide a third of its liquid fuels. Coal also generates hundreds of millions of metric tons of climate-changing carbon emissions annually that aggravate South Africa’s warming and drying.
Without a doubt, the South African coal industry is chief and smack in the middle of this drought and water crisis that is being experienced in South African cities.
Out of all industrial production, the coal industry represents one of the greatest demands on freshwater resources. The entire coal supply chain, including extraction, washing, coal-fired power and coal-to-chemical consumes enormous quantities of water.
For things to change, South Africa must shift its economy to one that discourages carbon emissions and resource waste and instead encourages conservation.
El Niño’s impact has been erratic for SA commercial grain farmers
Lack Of Water Resource Management
Water resource management is crucial for food and ecological security. Despite the importance water assumes in overall human development, it is among the most mismanaged resources, especially in the context of South Africa. Neglect of this important resource has resulted in severe food security problems at the household level and environmental degradation of enormous proportions.
In South Africa, almost everyone is affected by the mismanagement of water resources, hence those living in poor areas are the most affected as they do not have access to potable water and proper sanitation.
Inadequate water management practices and infrastructure can exacerbate drought impacts by reducing water availability and exacerbating water stress. Poor infrastructure for water storage, distribution, and management can lead to inefficiencies in water use and allocation, further worsening drought conditions.
Solutions to water problems depend not only on water availability, but also on many other factors such as: the processes through which water is managed; competence and capacities of the institutions (private and government) that manage them; prevailing socio-political conditions that dictate water planning; development and management processes and practices, supply management appropriateness and implementation status of the existing legal frameworks.
The government, the Department of Water Affairs must:
1) Facilitate the proper management of the nation’s water resources; provide a framework for the protection, use, development, conservation, management and control of water resources for the country as a whole.
2) Provide a framework within which water will be managed at regional or catchment level in defined water management areas.
3) Identify water-related development opportunities and constraints.
Deforestation Exacerbates Droughts in South Africa
Deforestation is visible, and with no replantation, the scene is very chaotic.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, an estimated 62 percent of precipitation occurs over land as a result of evapotranspiration from lakes and wetlands and dense vegetation, particularly forests, which pump groundwater into the sky. The moisture then condenses and falls as rain.
Only about 38 percent of the precipitation is generated over oceans and seas.
Hence forests are needed to build resilience in the natural ecosystem. They are a buffer against extreme droughts.
Deforestation disrupts local ecosystems and reduces transpiration rates, which play a crucial role in regional precipitation patterns.
The loss of vegetation cover contributes to soil drying and exacerbates droughts’ intensity and duration. Addressing land degradation through sustainable land management practices is essential for enhancing ecosystem resilience and mitigating the impacts of drought in South Africa.
The Climate Crisis Is Exacerbating Drought Conditions In Many Regions Of South Africa
Just as climate change has worsened many extreme weather events, it has also impacted droughts. The excess heat now trapped in the climate system draws out more moisture from soils, thereby worsening drought conditions.
Climate change exacerbates droughts by making them more frequent, longer, and more severe.
Today’s climate change, driven by increased emissions of heat-trapping gases, is playing a major role in the increasing severity of drought through its influences on both rainfall and evaporation.
Here are the three main ways that climate change is influencing droughts:
How climate change contributes to drought:
Warmer temperatures enhance evaporation, which reduces surface water and dries out soils and vegetation. This makes periods with low precipitation drier than they would be in cooler conditions.
Climate change is also altering the timing of water availability. Some climate models find that warming increases precipitation variability, meaning there will be more periods of extreme drought. This creates the need for expanded water storage during drought years.
Climate change is making certain regions drier. In some areas, droughts can persist through a vicious cycle, in which very dry soils and diminished plant cover absorb more solar radiation and heat up, encouraging the formation of high pressure systems that further suppress rainfall, leading an already dry area to become even drier.
Why Droughts Are So Devastating
The Impacts Of Drought
Dwindling water supplies at Theewaterskloof Dam, an earth-fill type dam located on the Sonderend River near Villiersdorp, Western Cape, South Africa, around 100km east of Cape Town.
© Kevin Sawyer / Greenpeace
It’s important to remember that the impacts of drought spread through all facets of the economy because of how close all sectors are linked.
Drought disrupts the normal activities of people that depend on the natural environment for food and income, and thus the impacts often last for some time after the drought has ended.
The way climate-related disasters impact on people’s lives is highly differentiated across South African society.
Drought is one of the hurdles that may prevent South Africa from achieving the Millennium Development goals (MDGs), especially those related to poverty eradication, attainment of food security and promotion of environmental sustainability.
Household Purchasing Power Falls Sharply
Droughts hit household wallets hard, making it tough to afford basics like food. They also cut jobs in farming areas, leaving families with less money coming in. Plus, they can cause water and energy shortages, pushing up utility bills for everyone.
Even industries not linked to farming feel the pinch as costs rise, passing the burden on to consumers. Despite government help like subsidies, keeping up with expenses during a drought is a real challenge, testing families’ ability to make ends meet.
Livestock Prices And Casual Labor Wage Levels Are Both Decreasing
Droughts bring about a twofold blow for livestock prices and casual labor wages. When the land dries up, there’s less food for animals, so farmers often have to sell their livestock for less money. That means fewer profits for them and less money to pay workers.
Plus, with crops failing, there’s less work to go around, so casual laborers might find it harder to get jobs and may have to accept lower wages just to make ends meet. It’s like a chain reaction—less food means lower livestock prices, and fewer jobs mean lower wages, all because of the drought.
Drought Causes Inter-Communal Conflict
Inter-communal conflict usually rises in drought-affected areas as pastoralists trek further afield with their animals looking for water and grazing.
Land use conflict leads to longstanding tensions between herders and landowners. This then causes increasingly organised and violent attacks, heightening intercommunal tensions. Cattle theft and banditry usually also increase.
Why does it matter? The increase in violence shows how climate shocks such as droughts can magnify local tensions or conflict, particularly harming those who earn an income through agriculture. Droughts also accelerate environmental degradation, which in turn intensifies disputes over land and water.
Causes Deaths Of People, Livestock And Wildlife
Droughts can be deadly for humans, animals, and wildlife alike. When water becomes scarce, people can suffer from dehydration and heat-related illnesses, especially in areas where access to clean water is already limited.
Livestock face similar struggles, often dying from thirst or lack of food as pastures dry up and crops wither. Wildlife also suffers, with habitats shrinking and food sources disappearing, leading to starvation and increased competition for resources. Additionally, droughts can exacerbate conflicts over water and land, further endangering both human and animal lives.
It’s a harsh reality where survival becomes a daily battle against the relentless grip of a parched landscape.
Causes The Deterioration Of Human Health Due To Malnutrition And Poor Access To Quality Water
Drought means hunger and malnutrition.
Droughts kill thousands and thousands of livestock – a source of food and income for communities of rural regions. Children end up not getting enough milk and what animals remain are too thin and sell for little in the markets.
Droughts can seriously harm people’s health by causing malnutrition and making it hard to find clean water. When crops fail due to drought, it means less food is available, which can lead to malnutrition, especially for vulnerable groups like children and the elderly.
Without enough water, people may have to drink dirty or contaminated water, risking water-borne diseases.
During droughts, staying healthy becomes a real challenge. Some drought-related health effects occur in the short-term and can be directly observed and measured.
However, the slow rise or chronic nature of drought also can result in longer term, indirect health implications that are not always easy to anticipate or monitor.
Drought Leads to Food Insecurity Concerns
This is one of the biggest associated impacts of drought as the level of food usually reduces during a drought thereby increasing the vulnerability of people.
Food insecurity can be defined as the inability of people to access adequate food for their needs, and is one of the most serious impacts of drought. Many South African households experience continued food insecurity and malnutrition.
Droughts have significant and long-lasting effects on the agricultural sector of South Africa. Food security is one of the most important concerns resulting from drought as much of the country’s hunger is related to highly variable rainfall, especially in rural areas.
The population of South Africa is heavily dependent on agriculture for food supply and livelihoods. Droughts therefore usually have a crippling effect on agriculture and tend to increase vulnerability to such changes.
Increased Vulnerability/Risk & Reduced Resilience of Communities
Farmers show their destroyed maize crop following a drought. Malnutrition and hunger are widespread
The most vulnerable are the rural poor who depend on agriculture and livestock for their livelihoods. One clear consequence of the recurrent droughts is the escalation of poverty and food insecurity among dryland communities.
This has set in motion a range of social problems, e.g. the dismantling of family ties, child abandonment and school drop-out (especially for girls), which have far-reaching implications for the country’s development.
More vulnerable communities, such as those living in rural areas, as well as those who earn their living from the agricultural sector, experience the impacts of drought first hand.
Every time a drought occurs in South Africa these vulnerable populations and farmers are exposed to the devastating effects of drought. These effects alter the livelihoods of particularly vulnerable groups such as resource-poor farmers.
The more vulnerable a community is, the greater the physical and economic costs that will usually be required when a drought occurs.
El Niño-induced drought hits Southern Africa's agricultural sector
Increase In Food Prices
Farmers in Kenya are effectively applying ecological farming practices that are increasing their ability to build resilience to and cope with climate change.
Another impact of drought on the economy is the increase in food prices, which has major implications for food security.
Maize is a very important staple food and is seriously affected by price volatility during a drought.
The price of basic food tends to increase during droughts as supplies become scarce. Larger farms are also able to exacerbate rising prices as they release less stock to drive the price up to increase profits, while hurting the consumer who has to pay more for their food.
Malnutrition and hunger for some of the most vulnerable members of society also occur during periods when food prices increase as they cannot afford the higher prices of food.
Water Scarcity
Drought and water scarcity are a recurring feature of climate change. As South Africa’s climate continues to warm, drought and resulting water scarcity will increase in duration and severity.
In these periods of climate stress and drought, reduction in rainfall is leading to a reduction in reservoir levels and an increase in the plight of rural communities.
Water shortages are a major threat to women especially since in most parts of the world, management of the household and welfare of the home are in the hands of women, willingly or unwillingly.
During periods of water scarcity, collection and fetching of water from distant sources then becomes a huge burden on the womenfolk, irrespective of age.
Women in several rural and even urban households have to face hardships because of lack of easy access to water for domestic uses.
In the urban areas, many are faced with local water restrictions that prohibit them from watering gardens and lawns and washing cars.
Water scarcity as a result of drought can impact communities in many ways, as they can lead to:
Reduced water availability for households and businesses
Warmer river temperatures, affecting fish and aquatic life
Impacts on groundwater levels
Reduced crop quality and smaller harvests
An increase in agricultural pests
Desertification
The scorching effect of droughts also leads to environmental degradation – desertification and bio-diversity loss.
The negative impact of drought on the environment cannot be over-emphasised. Desertification and loss of biological diversity are some of the challenges of the 21st century, and South Africa is not spared by these phenomena.
Although unsustainable use of natural resources is widely accepted as the root cause of such problems, there is no doubt that drought plays an accelerating role in the processes of desertification and biodiversity loss.
Only 14.3% of South Africa’s land is under closed canopy forest. Any further loss of forest cover would thus be a tragedy.
What Worsens The Impacts?
Complex and seemingly bureaucratic hurdles limiting action are shown to be cumbersome factors that impede and continue to frustrate effective drought response in the country.
Drought conditions frequently require government intervention in the form of emergency food relief, often supported by large amounts of donated food aid. Distributing relief food to stricken communities.
While nobody can dispute the benefits of doing this in emergency situations, widespread use of this response in drought management is highly debatable: not only does relief food tend to keep the receiving communities in a state of absolute dependency, but it also comes at a tremendous cost. The country could have put in place a much more effective and sustainable system to address long-term food insecurity in the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands.
The Devastation Of Drought
High global greenhouse gas emissions are putting the world on a path toward unacceptable warming, with serious implications for development prospects in South Africa.
Limiting warming to 1.5° C is possible, however doing so would require unprecedented, rapid and far-reaching transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities.
For Africa, which has experienced more frequent and more intense climate extremes over the past decades, the ramifications of the world’s warming by more than 1.5° C would be profound.
Every bit of additional warming adds greater risks for Africa in the form of greater droughts, more heat waves and more potential crop failures.
Without urgent adaptation measures to curb global warming, South African cities and towns will be hard hit, leaving millions exposed and vulnerable to climate change.
These incidents are not isolated or new.
Recent disasters such as the Western Cape drought, illustrate just how susceptible our cities and towns are to these dangers.
Failure to cope with these changes in climate may result in significant deprivation, social disruption and population displacement.
We Can Still Change Course
Water deficits are fast becoming the new normal.
If we continue to emit heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere at unprecedented rates the threats from droughts will continue to pile up. We must act now to slow down climate change and mitigate the worst impacts.
If we take concrete steps to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees celsius instead of 2 degrees celsius by the end of the century, we could avoid doubling the level of global water scarcity.
Climate change is expected to lead to greater drought severity in most regions, so without significant improvements to how policymakers manage droughts, the world is on a path to even greater losses in economic growth and development gains due to these prolonged dry shocks. Droughts can widen the poor-rich gap in low and middle-income countries, with significant and long-term impacts on farms, firms, and families.
South Africa is facing huge political decisions around the allocation of water. If investments were shifted to essentially ‘water-free’ renewable energy technologies such as solar power and wind energy, this would drastically reduce the water required for electricity generation by coal, deliver sustainable electricity to all South Africans, create jobs, and help avoid water insecurity and conflict.
Heat waves are more frequent and dry spells last longer. Crop yields are decreasing, and livestock losses have become more frequent. Food insecurity and food prices have increased, while vector and waterborne diseases have grown in frequency and intensity.
In a country that is among one of the most climate-vulnerable nations in the world, where many people are poor and where levels of inequality are high, these effects of climate change remain to be a critical challenge.
