Unsustainable South Africa : environment, development and social protest

Unsustainable South Africa attempts to analyse the largest and most revealing environmental and development projects and policies of South Africa.
It argues that during the first period of democratic rule in South Africa, until the Johannesburg Summit, Pretoria's attempts to improve environment and development failed miserably.

Water management poses a challenge to the South African government and society for its main problems for environmental management are water scarcity, the maldistribution of water, pollution of water sources structural damage to water ecosystems and substandard or non existent sanitation. These conditions are an inheritance from the apartheid era. But is further exacerbated by postapartheid policies and the natural conditions in South Africa such as erratic rainfall patterns and periodic droughts. The poor are hardest hit by these circumstances because of the unequal distribution of South Africa's water across the population. The minority white population use most of South Africa's available water. Other factors influencing the availability of water are pollution and environmental degradation. The aforementioned unequal distribution also applies to water-borne sanitation. This is only available to about one third of black South Africans and caters mostly to white South Africans. Johannesburg exemplifies this unequal distribution.

South Africa also knows a multi-phase water supply infrastructure project designed to divert rain water and run off from the Senqu/Oranje river througha series of five dams and tunnels across the mountains of Lesotho to the urban and industrial heartland of South Africa, hundreds of kilometres to the North. This book proposes alternatives to the megadams known as Lesotho Highland Water project. It also pays attention to social and ecological problems associated with the LHWP within Lesotho.

The trend in practically all countries consists of the commodification and privatization of water. The UN promotes public-private partnerships. The tendency to privatization invariably puts pressure on low-income people to drop out of the system. There is at the same time a trend towards decommodification through a world water treaty that advances a global water resolution and leads towards alternative conceptions of water management.