02-25-2018, 09:03 PM
Much like southern California, South Africa is arid, but Cape Town's most recognizable land mass, Table Mountain, traps onshore breezes coming off warm ocean waters, creating local rains that power rivers and fill underground aquifers. It is an oasis surrounded by desert with a Mediterranean climate.
While conservation in South Africa has been encouraged over the last 2 decades with some success in reduced wastefulness/consumption, officials also made an increasingly common mistake: They assumed future rainfall patterns would resemble the past, or at least not change too quickly.
"It's like driving a motor car and looking in the rear-view mirror," Winter says. "They solved the old problems, but they didn't recognize the risks ahead. Now here comes the juggernaut."
Already, droughts in recent years have helped spark famine and unrest in rural nations around the Arabian Sea, from Iran to Somalia. But water crises are also threatening massive cities around the world.
Already, many of the 21 million residents of Mexico City only have running water part of the day, while one in five get just a few hours from their taps a week.
Several major cities in India don't have enough.
Water managers in Melbourne, Australia, reported last summer that they could run out of water in little more than a decade.
Jakarta, Indonesia is running so dry that the city is sinking faster than seas are rising, as residents suck up groundwater from below the surface.
Full piece: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018...er-cities/
While conservation in South Africa has been encouraged over the last 2 decades with some success in reduced wastefulness/consumption, officials also made an increasingly common mistake: They assumed future rainfall patterns would resemble the past, or at least not change too quickly.
"It's like driving a motor car and looking in the rear-view mirror," Winter says. "They solved the old problems, but they didn't recognize the risks ahead. Now here comes the juggernaut."
Already, droughts in recent years have helped spark famine and unrest in rural nations around the Arabian Sea, from Iran to Somalia. But water crises are also threatening massive cities around the world.
Already, many of the 21 million residents of Mexico City only have running water part of the day, while one in five get just a few hours from their taps a week.
Several major cities in India don't have enough.
Water managers in Melbourne, Australia, reported last summer that they could run out of water in little more than a decade.
Jakarta, Indonesia is running so dry that the city is sinking faster than seas are rising, as residents suck up groundwater from below the surface.
Full piece: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018...er-cities/