Swimming pools and watering gardens require a lot of water.
Tom Merton | Ojo Pictures | Photographic images
Improper use by wealthy people – including using swimming pools, gardening and washing cars – is a big part of the city’s water problems, according to A new research calls for a new way to solve the problem.
Published in the journal Nature Sustainability this week, the peer-reviewed study looked at the South African city of Cape Town, which has experienced severe drought in recent years.
For the study, researchers divided the urban population of Cape Town into five social groups and then modeled water use.
“Although only 1.4% and 12.3% of the population, that is, elite groups and middle class groups use half (51%) of the water consumed by the entire city, ” they said.
“The homeless and low-income families make up 61.5% of Cape Town’s population but consume only 27.3% of the city’s water.”
The consequences of such inconsistencies are significant, according to the review.
“Overall, these results support the argument that water use in diverse urban areas such as Cape Town is becoming unsustainable due to excessive use of among the right social groups,” he said.
“Specifically, the water cannot be used because in the short term, it does not use the water available for the population of the city.”
In the long term, the report describes what it calls illegal exploitation as a natural threat to the state of local water sources.
The report’s abstract stated that Cape Town, with its “highest metropolitan area,” served “as an example to demonstrate that the elite’s lack of water use can increase to urban water problems at least as much as climate change or population growth.”
The study, led by Elisa Savelli at Uppsala University in Sweden, proposes a new way to manage water resources based on “changing the way of life, limiting the use of water for utilities and redistributing income and water resources.
The research comes as water continues to make headlines. According to the United Nations, 2 billion people will not have access to safe drinking water services in 2020.
Hannah Cloke is a hydrologist at the University of Reading in the UK and is the lead author of the study.
“We have shown that social inequality is the biggest problem for the poor to access water for their daily needs,” he said in a statement.
More than 80 major cities worldwide have been affected by water shortages in recent years, he said, adding that research has shown how the problem “could be more the quality of time between the rich and the poor in many parts of the world.”
“This shows the interrelationships between social, economic and environmental inequality. Ultimately, everyone will suffer unless we develop effective ways to share water in cities,” he said.