Incorporating climate change into water resources planning for the town of Polokwane, South Africa

Incorporating climate change into water resource planning is crucial to ensuring sustainable growth and development. The aim of this study was to investigate how the proposed steps to incorporating climate change into project planning developed by USAID could be applied in practice using the town of Polokwane in northeastern South Africa as a case study. Two Regional Circulation Models (RCMs) and statistical downscaling from a range of General Circulation Models (GCMs) were used to produce a set of monthly climate scenarios for 2025 and 2050. These scenarios were used to estimate the impact on surface water runoff in the Olifants River catchment and the Letaba River catchment, and groundwater recharge in the Sand River Aquifer. The impact on the potential yields from the existing Flag Bashielo Dam and other proposed dams in the Olifants River catchment were determined using the Water Resources Yield Model (WRYM). The results of the analysis were discussed at a regional stakeholders workshop. The workshop participants concluded that the higher priority for now should be on water conservation and demand management (WCDM) and to consider a phased approach to developing additional storage capacity. The results of this study show that the six-stage process for incorporating climate change into resource planning can be applied in practice and that the potential threat of climate change can give emphasis to existing win-win approaches such as WCDM and phased implementation that should form part of any sustainable water resource planning approach.