Strategic Water Source Areas
South Africa is ranked amongst the most water-scarce countries in the world...
with a mean annual rainfall below that of the global average. This makes water the most critical natural resource in South Africa and a vital element for sustainable economic growth.
The Strategic Water Source Areas (SWSAs) cover roughly 8% of South Africa’s land surface area and are located on the Eastern Seaboard. These account for the entirety of the country’s water source.
The total size of South Africa’s water source areas is 12.32 million hectares. A number of these areas extend and are shared with Lesotho and Swaziland; approximately 1.91 million hectares in Lesotho and 0.93 million hectares in Swaziland.
Water is South Africa’s most critical natural resource and is a vital element for sustainable economic growth. Water supports sustainable development through agriculture, industry and household consumption. It is important for a country in a developmental state such as South Africa to ensure its water supply through efforts that build water security. This can be achieved by ensuring that SWSAs continue to deliver water of the appropriate quality and quantity through maintenance, rehabilitation, protection and mainstreaming efforts.
Strategic Water Source Areas (SWSAs) are the flagship Ecological Infrastructure defined as areas of land that either:
- Supply a disproportionate (10% of land delivering 50% of SA's water) quantity of mean annual surface water runoff in relation to their size and so are considered nationally important. These support half the population, two-thirds of the economy, often in major centres some distances away and provide 70% of water for irrigation.
- Have high groundwater recharge and where the groundwater forms a nationally important resource; or,
- Meet both criteria.
South Africa has mapped 22 surface strategic water source areas spread across five provinces: KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Western Cape, Eastern Cape, and Limpopo.
The total size of South Africa’s water source areas is 12.32 million hectares. A number of these areas extend and are shared with Lesotho and Swaziland; approximately 1.91 million hectares in Lesotho and 0.93 million hectares in Swaziland.
Water is life. Clean water and sanitation underpin healthy lives and communities. Water drives job creation and economic growth. We need partnerships for living landscapes to achieve more clean water from our land. Partnerships that unlock benefits for people, water and ecosystems and that recognise the connections between healthy ecosystems, healthy lives, economic growth, and job creation, between catchments and cities, between catchment management and maintenance of built infrastructure, and between our land and water. Healthy ecosystems in SWSAs including rivers, wetlands and land, help assure the quantity and quality of water flowing into our dams. Investing in maintaining and restoring SWSAs is a low risk and high return strategy for climate change adaptation. It is a form of ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change.