Drought: The silent killer threatening our future

With geopolitical crises – from Ukraine to the Middle East – piling up, it is easy to see the world ending in the bang of nuclear war… but the planet is more likely to expire strangling and whimpering to death through climate events.

And one of the worst of those – despite the media images of floods and storms – is likely to be drought.

Scientists say record-breaking droughts are becoming a new normal for billions of people – costing more than $300 billion (about R5.4 trillion) each year – but that few countries are taking the threat seriously.

As South Africa sits in the middle of what looks like a drought, we are a prime example: generally speaking, we don’t conserve the precious resource either in the way we use it or, more importantly, in the way we allow the infrastructure which transports it to crumble.

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There are two sets of people who need a drastic mindset change in our country: politicians and bureaucrats and ordinary citizens.

Make no mistake, water is a critical resource.

Wars have been fought over it and, in the decades ahead, more blood will be shed, inside countries and between nations, about who has possession of it.

Let’s not make matters worse.

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