Cape Town water resilience profile

Alongside the development of the City Water Resilience Approach, a unique opportunity exists to introduce resilience as an integral component of Cape Town’s approach to water resource management. Adopting a resilience approach helps stakeholders look at whole systems and how they impact on each other, particularly when parts of the system are struck by shock events.

Viewing water in the context of the economy, urban development, ecosystem health, and the empowerment of stakeholders allows water leaders to examine water through multiple lenses at the same time, and to better understand the intersections between systems.

The Cape Town Water Resilience Profile provides a comprehensive assessment of water management in the city. It evaluates the wide ranging factors that impact water management and service provision, and assesses the impacts of water on all Capetonians. In this, the Profile builds on other recent work initiated by the City. It explores key themes first presented in the Cape Town Water Strategy of 2019, which captures many lessons from the drought, and makes a firm commitment to a ‘whole-of-society’ approach to make Cape Town a truly water sensitive city by 2040.

This document describes the assessment process and its results, identifying strengths that can be leveraged and built on, as well as those areas that can be improved upon to ensure water security in the city going forward. Based on these conclusions, it identifies initial opportunities for translating initial analysis into new interventions that build water resilience. Ultimately, insights from the assessment will translate into tangible new actions that build Cape Town’s water resilience.