Drought is becoming an ever-growing stress to cities. More people are moving to cities at the same time as rainfall is becoming more variable and droughts growing in intensity and frequency. Although dams and reservoirs are critical, soft infrastructure is just as important. Cape Town in South Africa and Santa Cruz in the USA are two cities who stared drought in the face and turned to external help to solve their problems.
In 2018, the South African city of Cape Town was gripped with fear of 'Day Zero' — the day in which the taps were potentially going to be turned off, following three years of anaemic rainfall. At the height of the Day Zero restrictions, residents were limited to 50 litres of water use per day — about the equivalent of a five minute shower.
In their bid to avert a water disaster, the City of Cape Town convened the Water Resilience Advisory Committee (WRAC) in 2017, bringing in external experts to help address the crisis.
