The National Groundwater Strategy for South Africa

The paper provides an outline of the recently published National Groundwater Strategy and of the approach to its implementation. According to the National Water Resource Strategy, development of groundwater resources will be crucial for sustaining water security in the light of increasing water scarcity in South Africa. Already groundwater’s role in South Africa has undergone a major change during the water sector transformation post-1994, from an undervalued resource and a ‘private water legal status’ to a source of domestic water and general livelihood to more than 60% of communities in thousands of villages and small towns country-wide. However, there are major concerns that local groundwater resources are very poorly managed and that major aquifers are under pressure in many locations through over- abstraction, declining water levels and water quality degradation. In the light of these general challenges, there has been a recognition, world-wide, that, with increasing level of groundwater development, there has to be an incremental institutional path, moving from technical development of the resource to groundwater management and ultimately to groundwater governance as part of IWRM. This is the path South Africa is intending to follow in the development of a national groundwater strategy initiated in 2015. At the heart is an agreed strategic framework of groundwater governance and a stakeholder-driven process to roll out the framework over the next 10-20 years. Appropriate governance is particularly important for groundwater, because of its ubiquitous nature and relative ease of local access. Focus on local stakeholder involvement will be essential. Thus major issues that will have to be addressed from the beginning to encourage stakeholders to be more willing to contribute to the management efforts include proper valuation of groundwater, scientific understanding and accessible data and information and broad-based education to build social support for management. The strategy framework will address three essential levels, namely the local action level, the national/regional regulatory, planning and institutional development level and an enabling policy level. A major challenge at the enabling level is the present lack of a well-capacitated national groundwater champion to guide and coordinate the overall roll-out process. Different ways for a much greater involvement of the groundwater sector as a whole are suggested. A risk-based approach is proposed to achieve increased focus and levels of management for more stressed aquifers on a priority basis. This must be seen as a major paradigm shift from national management to facilitated local level participative management of groundwater resources within the overall IWRM framework.