Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Conley, Alan H.
• Midgley, Desmond C.

Titel

National water management in the Republic of South Africa — Towards a consultative partnership with diverse users in a semi-arid country

Ist Teil von

• Journal of hydrology (Amsterdam), 1988-01, Vol.100 (1), p.473-487

Ort / Verlag

Amsterdam: Elsevier B.V

Erscheinungsjahr

1988

Quelle

Elsevier ScienceDirect Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• A resourceful holistic water management strategy has been developed for ensuring equitable provision of adequate quantities of water of satisfactory quality at acceptable risk and affordable cost to a wide international range of competing user groups subject to adverse physical and hydrological factors and under rapidly changing social conditions. Scarce resource allocation strategies, based on scientific studies and supported by modern data processing facilities, focus primarily on supply, demand and quality. Supply management implies creation of the best combination of affordable elements of infrastructure for bulk water supplies from available runoff, groundwater, re-use, imports and unconventional sources, sized to meet determinable requirements with appropriate degrees of assurance, coupled with continuous optimization of system operation. Demand management seeks optimum allocation of available supplies to towns, power generation, industry, mining, agriculture, forestry, recreation and ecology, according to priority criteria determined from scientific, economic and socioeconomic studies. Quality management strategies relate to the control of salination, eutrophication and pollution from both diffuse and point sources. As the combined demands of complex First and Third World societies and economies on the available resources rise, increasing attention has to be paid to finding practical compromises to facilitate handling of conflict between legitimate users having widely divergent interests, aspirations and levels of sophistication. For optimum joint utilization, the central regulating authority is striving to forge a consultative partnership within which to promote, among the widest possible spectrum of users, enlightened understanding of the opportunities and limitations in handling complex international, social, political, legal, economic and financial issues associated with water development. These cannot readily be resolved by the methods of traditional hydrological sciences alone.