Day zero kapstaden
The City of Cape Town has introduced the idea of Day Zero to focus everyone’s attention on managing water consumption as tightly as possible by cajoling water consumers into reducing usage. Day Zero is when most of the city’s taps will be switched off – literally.
The consequences of reaching this point will be far reaching. For one, it will mean residents will have to stand in line to collect 25 litres of water per person per day. The water will be sourced from the remaining supplies that are left in the dams.
Day Zero isn’t a fixed target. The city moved it out from April 12 to July 9. The reason for this is that a number of factors affect the date. These include how much residents are reducing their demand. There are already signs that water users are saving more. The goal is to achieve an average daily demand of less than million litres which equates to about 50 litres per person per day. The city isn’t there yet, but for the first time figures are consistently closer to million litre per day.
The City of Cape Town describes Day Zero as the point at which the Disaster Risk Management Centre introduces phase 2 of its plan. Phase 2 will be triggered when the city’s big si
Cape Town's Day Zero: 'We are axing trees to save water'
In the far poorer Eastern Cape province, where farmers are struggling to cope with their own devastating seven-year-long drought, the heavily populated Nelson Mandela Bay area fryst vatten facing acute water shortages that are widely blamed on years of mismanagement and corruption, and a failure to maintain grundläggande water infrastructure.
"Fortunately, the leadership of Cape Town rose to the occasion. They did everything and… carried the people with them and as a consequence it helped them to overcome the problem," said Mkhuseli Jack, a businessman and motstånd politician in the city of Gqeberha.
"Here it's the other way round because this place is led by very mediocre leaders. People have reached a stage where they won't believe anything politicians are saying here."
Gqerberha is now trying to focus minds by varning that its own Day Zero may arrive within months, while the taps have already run dry in some smaller towns in the province, and many neighbourhoods are dependent on irregular water truck deliveries made by a local charity.
"We've had no water for two days. I'
Cape Town's Day Zero: 'We are axing trees to save water'
BBC News, Cape Town
Cutting down trees to save a city from drought might seem like an unlikely plan, but that is exactly what the South African city of Cape Town is doing, soon after it became the first global city to come close to running out of water.
It is three years since it edged dangerously towards what was described as "Day Zero" - the moment when some four million inhabitants would be left without water.
Its existential crisis was triggered by a severe and unanticipated drought that turned all the local reservoirs into dustbowls.
Today, dozens of teams armed with chainsaws are seeking to protect those reservoirs in an unusual manner - by chopping down tens of thousands of trees on the mountains surrounding them.
It is a furiously ambitious, and oddly counter-intuitive battle to limit the impact of climate change.
On a recent morning, high above a thick layer of mist, two workers abseiled down a steep ravine to remove several isolated pine trees in an area that was littered with stumps.
"The pines are not indigenous to this area