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What-If

Explore what could change.

Choose a place, a documented issue and one of its documented interventions, then set how far it goes.

ILLUSTRATIVE SCENARIO — NOT A SCIENTIFIC PREDICTION. Built from documented causes, impacts and solutions plus general qualitative patterns. It contains no modelled numbers.

3 · Intervention
PilotScaledTransformative

Adopted across much of the area, with dedicated budgets and enforcement.

Illustrative scenario

What if Cape Town took a scaled approach to “Demand management and pressure control”?

Starting point · documented

WaterSeverity: High
Drought and municipal water security in Cape Town

The 2015-2018 drought brought the city close to shutting off its municipal supply.

The intervention · documented

Demand management and pressure control

Tariffs, restrictions, leak repair and network pressure management to cut consumption and losses.

Achieved a very large, sustained reduction in city water use during the crisis.

Schematic direction of change

Supply and demand measures can act within years, while groundwater, rivers and wetlands often take much longer to recover.

Schematic, unitless illustration: relative pressure over time without the intervention compared with the intervention in place. Not based on measured data.NowLonger term →Relative pressure (unitless)
Without the intervention With the interventionSchematic shape only — no data, units or dates.

Causes this could address

  • Demand growth and distribution lossesPopulation growth and losses from ageing pipe networks raised baseline demand before the drought.

Impacts that could ease

  • Near shutdown of municipal supplyThe city planned for a day when most taps would be closed and residents would collect water from distribution points.
  • Economic disruptionAgriculture in the surrounding region faced restrictions and job losses, and tourism messaging was affected.

Wider reach at higher intensity is an assumption of this illustration.

How change might unfold

  1. Near term

    Operational gains such as reduced losses or new storage begin to show.

  2. Medium term

    Supply becomes more reliable in ordinary years if measures are sustained.

  3. Long term

    Aquifers and ecosystems recover slowly, if extraction and pollution stay below recharge and assimilation.

Faded stages are less likely to be reached at scaled intensity.

What this would not change

Rainfall variability and drought remain; interventions change how well the system copes, not the weather.

What it depends on

  • Sustained funding and institutional capacity
  • Consistent enforcement and monitoring
  • Local stakeholder support
  • Participation of affected communities

ILLUSTRATIVE SCENARIO — NOT A SCIENTIFIC PREDICTION. Built from documented causes, impacts and solutions plus general qualitative patterns. It contains no modelled numbers.

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