Five lessons from Cape Town’s Day Zero Crisis for Better Urban Water Resilience

If you’re working on urban water resilience, you must read Rolfe Eberhard’s new paper on behind-the-scenes conflicts that stoked the Day Zero crisis. Rolfe argues a breakdown of trust and communication failures within the decision-making system exacerbated the crisis.  Here are five essential lessons for cities facing water stress:

Start working to build trust and the conditions for sound water management decisions before a crisis happens.

Crises put systems under significant stress, and if trust is already low, rational decisions will be difficult to make. This is especially important for decisions related to water because these decisions often need to be made years in advance.

Establish emotional resonance to build trust.

Technical experts and politicians often speak different languages. Technical experts need to find a way to communicate with political leaders and the public to build trust and understanding and foster evidence-based decision-making.

Be transparent, accessible, and accountable.

Politicians must ensure the public has access to clear and timely information about rainfall, dam levels, water usage, and other relevant data. This helps to build trust and can lead to changes in consumer behavior.

Engage with the public.

The Cape Town crisis showed water management is no longer something that can be handled by a small group of technical experts. Cities need to engage with the public in a meaningful way.

Engage proactively in regional water systems.

Cities are almost always part of a larger regional water system. Cities need to be proactive and collaborative to manage regional water systems with other stakeholders.