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City Water Resilience Approach Framework Implementation

Solution Overview

Cape Town became the first city to apply the City Water Resilience Approach (CWRA) to embed urban water resilience into the city's systems, following the severe 2014-2017 drought.[4] This framework-based assessment tool was developed in Cape Town and became available for deployment in cities around the world in 2019, performing the necessary function of assessing changes in the urban water system during the implementation of the Cape Town Water Strategy.[6] The approach helped the city move from a reactive, crisis-management mode to a more proactive and strategic approach to building water resilience.[2]

Technical Components

The City Water Resilience Framework (CWRF) includes a set of resilience goals, sub-goals and indicators, categorised across four dimensions: infrastructure and ecosystems, health and wellbeing, planning and finance, and leadership and strategy.[5] The framework was co-created through research and a robust peer-review process with eight partner cities and consultation with global experts.[5] Using this framework, both a 'city characterisation' report mapping Cape Town's water resources and identifying elements impacting water resilience, and a 'water resilience profile' detailing a series of actions that the city can take to address these, were created.[4] The approach adopts a nature-first ethos, prioritising interventions that don't rely on hard infrastructure where natural factors can play a role.[4] The CWRA includes five key stages towards developing a city's water resilience: understand the system, assess urban water resilience, develop an action plan, implement the action plan, and evaluate, learn and adapt.[4]

Implementation Details

Cape Town joined a group of 100RC member cities, including Mexico City, Miami, Amman, Greater Manchester, and Thessaloniki in developing the City Water Resilience Framework in 2018.[6] The framework was developed by engineering consultancy Arup and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.[6] A Water Resilience CoLab was hosted in Cape Town in September 2018, during which local stakeholders engaged with stakeholders from Addis Ababa, Los Angeles and Mexico City and formulated several concrete actions that form part of the city's strategy.[6] The City conducted a full assessment of Cape Town's water resilience using the CWRF, providing information on the city's relative water resilience strengths and vulnerabilities.[6] The City committed to repeat the CWRF assessment every three years to determine changes, which will be used to inform future decision-making.[6] Evidence from the application of CWRF in Cape Town and Greater Miami and the Beaches informed the cities' key water planning and strategies by integrating water resilience factors and activities.[5]

Benefits and Impacts

The CWRA was applied in Cape Town in the aftermath of the drought to help the city learn from the experience and to build a more water-resilient future.[2] The resilience assessment highlighted the city's strengths in areas such as water conservation and demand management, but also identified weaknesses in areas such as the diversity of water sources and the integration of water and land use planning.[2] Based on the findings of the assessment, the city developed a water resilience action plan that includes a range of actions, such as diversifying the city's water supply through the development of new sources, including groundwater, desalination, and water reuse.[2] The Cape Town Water Strategy of 2019 captures lessons from the drought and makes a firm commitment to a 'whole-of-society' approach to make Cape Town a truly water-sensitive city by 2040.[4] Cape Town is striving to be a water sensitive city by 2040 that optimises and integrates the management of water resources to improve resilience, and enhance competitiveness and liveability for the prosperity of its people.[4]

Climate Adaptation Relevance

During the 2014–2017 drought, the overall dam levels supplying Cape Town dropped from 92.5 to 23%.[7] Annual rainfall in the Western Cape had been steadily decreasing in the last few decades, with 2017 having the lowest annual rainfall since 1933.[7] Low levels of rainfall led to the worst drought in the region since 1904.[7] Cape Town released its notice of 'Day Zero' in January of 2018, originally predicted to be in April 2018, when dam levels would hit 13.5% and citywide water rationing would be enforced.[7] At that point, taps would shut off to residents and water distributed through communal standpipes, limited to 25 l per person per day, as per the World Health Organization's minimum short-term emergency survival recommendations.[7] Analysis of the physical data finds only a slight direct relationship between rainfall and dam levels (r2 = 0.3), suggesting a more complex narrative for the decrease in water supply, including increased water use and management decisions.[7] During the same time period from 1996 to 2017, Cape Town's dam storage capacity only increased by about 15%, and rainfall remained highly variable.[7]

Business Analysis

Cape Town's Resilience Strategy includes an action to become a water-sensitive city as part of its Connected, Climate-Adaptive City pillar.[1] The strategy also includes an action to build a data-smart city as part of its Capable, Participatory City pillar.[1] The City of Cape Town serves as both water services authority and water services provider, responsible for providing water and sanitation services to residents and businesses in its jurisdiction.[3] The Breede-Gouritz Catchment Management Agency is responsible for water resource management at a catchment level for the catchments that supply Cape Town with water.[3]

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