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High risk that water demand in Gauteng will exceed available resources

08 April 2025 | Story Andre Damons | Photo Andre Damons

DrSophie-Biskop_ProfFrancois-Engelbrecht — Dr Sophie Biskop from the Department of Geography at the Schiller University Jena, Germany, and Prof Francois Engelbrecht, a Professor of Climatology at the Global Change Institute (GCI), University of the Witwatersrand, at the Southern African Mountain Conference (SAMC).

The severe El Niño drought of 2015/16, which culminated in the Vaal dam reaching an alarming low water level (~25%), prompted scientists to try and predict whether climate change could bring a drought so severe and long lasting that Gauteng could run out of water.

Prof Francois Engelbrecht, a Professor of Climatology at the Global Change Institute (GCI), University of the Witwatersrand, is one of the scientists working on this project and says though they cannot predict a Day Zero drought with certainty, he thinks it is possible that Gauteng might run out of water in the 2030s or 2040s.

“This is the biggest climate change risk South Africa faces”, he said.

Prof Engelbrecht and Dr Sophie Biskop from the Institute of Geography at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, together with other scientists are working on a project involving hydrological modelling to predict and prevent a Day Zero from happening. Dr Biskop presented their research paper titled ‘Projected hydrological futures of South Africa's mega-dam region’ at the second Southern African Mountain Conference (SAMC2025) in March, indicating there is a high risk that the water demand in Gauteng will exceed available water resources within the Integrated Vaal River System (IVRS) under future climate change.

Gauteng may be severely compromised

The IVRS, a large, complex water system comprising water resources of different river basins, and several mega-dams within, has been constructed to secure the water supply of the Gauteng province, the economic hub in South Africa.

According to the researchers, Southern Africa is a water-stress hot spot and is projected to become significantly warmer and likely also drier under global climate change, increasing the risk of devastating hydrological droughts. The IVRS, Dr Biskop told the attendees, is vulnerable to the occurrence of multi-year droughts as experienced between 2012 and in 2016. The alarming low water level of the Vaal dam after a period of drought of 2015/16 provided early warning that water security of Gauteng may be directly and severely compromised in a changing climate. Potential evapotranspiration will increase as a consequence of strong regional warming.

Answering questions

“There is consequently a high risk that the water demand in the Gauteng province will exceed available water resources within the IVRS under future climate change. This raises the question if under ongoing climate change the natural hydrological system (without considering water transfers between dam catchments) can maintain dam levels in South Africa’s eastern mega-dam region, and particularly within the Lesotho Highlands,” explained Dr Biskop.

“To answer this question, the aim of our study is to quantify future water balance changes of several dams under changing climate conditions using the Jena Adaptable Modelling System (JAMS), a software framework for component-based development of environmental models. For this purpose, we build process-based hydrological models for several dam catchments.”

She said an ensemble of high-resolution regional climate change projections is subsequently used as forcing, to generate future hydrological projections. The analysis of projected changes in hydrological system components (precipitation, evapotranspiration, run-off) provides probabilistic estimates of the occurrence of a regional climate change tipping point - when the natural water supply can no longer achieve the full storage capacity of the mega-dams which supply the Gauteng region.

Working to prevent Day Zero

According to Prof Engelbrecht, they are working with the City of Johannesburg, the National Department of Water and Sanitation and Rand Water on this project. Their hope for this research is to create awareness in order to try and prevent Day Zero from happening. They also hope to assist these role players in building resilience and help them prepare for Day Zero. Their work with the City of Johannesburg also includes helping the city to reduce water wastage and change water users’ behaviour as well as formulating a disaster management plan should Day Zero happen.

The Southern African Mountain Conference (SAMC) series is unique as it seeks to integrate science, policy and practitioner sectors for sustainable interventions in southern African mountains. SAMC events are conceptualised by the Afromontane Research Unit (ARU) of the University of the Free State (UFS), the African Mountain Research Foundation (AMRF) and Global Mountain Safeguard Research (GLOMOS), a joint initiative between Eurac Research and the UNU Institute for Environment and Human Security. These three organisations form the Primary Partners, with the SAMC series being implemented by The Peaks Foundation (a non-profit company). SAMC2025 is being held under the patronage of UNESCO.

News Archive

Another boost for sport at the UFS

2005-10-13

A contract formalizing the appointment of Sports Plan (Pty) Ltd was signed by Prof Verschoor and Mr Morne du Plessis in the historic Main Building of the UFS Bloemfontein campus.

The University of the Free State (UFS) has officially appointed Sports Plan (Pty) Ltd, which has former Springbok rugby captain Morné du Plessis as managing director, to manage its Centre for Exercise and Sport Science Services (CESSS) on the Bloemfontein campus.

According to Prof Teuns Verschoor, Vice-Rector: Academic Operations, the appointment of Sports Plan (Pty) Ltd is another step in the implementation of the UFS’s wide-ranging sport strategy to improve sport facilities and elevate formerly marginalized sports such as soccer, hockey, netball, tennis etc.

Sports Plan (Pty) Ltd is the manager of the Sports Science Institute of South Africa and coordinates and manages the national basketball high-performance programme of SA Basketball, as well as the Boxing Academy on behalf of Boxing South Africa.

“It is also actively involved with the sports plans of several tertiary institutions like that of the University of Johannesburg and the University of Stellenbosch,” said Prof Verschoor.

“Sports Plan (Pty) Ltd was also appointed by the Ministry of Sport and Recreation to manage the allocation of sports codes to high-performance centres and to oversee the allocation of monies received from the National Lottery to these centres – this includes the CESSS at the UFS,” Prof Verschoor added.

In unfolding its national sports plan, the Ministry of Sport and Recreation has already identified the UFS-based CESSS as the high-performance testing centre for the national basketball teams whilst the national boxing teams are also earmarked to be trained at the UFS.

“We are glad to be associated with a company of this stature and look forward to work with them in the further development of sports at the UFS,” said Prof Verschoor.

According to Prof Verschoor, the CESSS will act as a centralised body that is responsible for the coordination and management of joint initiatives between professional service providers, research projects and KovsieSport.

“The centre will also coordinate and manage joint initiatives between various academic programmes in different academic subject fields such as sports medicine, bio kinetics, physiotherapy, dietetics, etc. ,” said Prof Verschoor.

These initiatives will help the UFS to become a centre and catalyst of sports development, to become internationally recognised in the field of exercise and sports science research and to become a centre for high quality sports performance enhancement.

Some of the objectives of the CESSS are:

To provide sports science services like to athletes, students, the general public and other stakeholders including certain national sport teams.
To provide the necessary teaching and training facilities and internship opportunities for UFS students in sports related fields of study will also be provided by the centre like human movement science.
To present skills-transfer programmes directed at the broader community like development of skills in various sporting codes.
To continue and extend the current chronic risk reversal programmes presented by the Department of Human Movement Science such as obesity management, cardiac rehabilitation and other lifestyle related conditions.

The centre was founded in 2003 and was until now managed by Dr Louis Holtzhausen, from Kovsie Health and a consultant, Dr Gary Vorster.

A contract formalizing the appointment of Sports Plan (Pty) Ltd was signed today by Prof Verschoor and Mr Morne du Plessis in the historic Main Building of the UFS Bloemfontein campus.

The manager of the centre appointed by Sports Plan (Pty) Ltd is Mr Charles Store, an alumnus of the UFS, previously employed at the Sports Science Institute in Cape Town and by the SANDF at 3 Military Hospital, Bloemfontein.

Media release
Issued by: Anton Fisher
Director: Strategic Communication
072-207-8334
12 October 2005

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