TCTA SUBMISSION
ON NATIONAL WATER RESOURCES STRATEGY-2
Prof. Ola Busari
Executive: Knowledge Management, TCTA
Public Hearings on the Draft NWRS-2
Portfolio Committee on Water & Environment, 31 October 2012
Outline
 Purpose of Presentation
 National Water Resources Strategy & TCTA
 NWRS-2 Strategies & Actions in relation to TCTA Mandate
 NWRS-2 Completeness as Strategy
 NWRS-2 Organization & Presentation
 Forward: Constructive Engagement with DWA
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Purpose of Presentation
 Make a submission on the guidance provided in the
draft NWRS-2, in respect of TCTA mandate & work.
 Provide comments & suggestions for improving the
content & organization of the NWRS-2 in general.
 Present a balanced & constructive review of the draft
document.
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National Water Resources Strategy & TCTA
 The National Water Act stipulates that the NWRS ‘is binding
on all authorities and institutions exercising powers or
performing duties’ under the Act.
 Section 7 states clearly that ‘a water management institution
must give effect to the national water resource strategy’ when
performing duties in terms of the Act.
 As the primary implementer of off-budget, bulk water
infrastructure on behalf of the State, TCTA has a significant
reliance upon the NWRS to guide its own business strategy.
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Project operations model
Mandate from the Minister of Water Affairs
Due diligence:
Financing,
costing,
timeline
Obtain project
risk rating, and
competitive
financing (local
and
international)
Type of
funding
Procurement
 BBBEE
 Enterprise
Development
 Local Products
 Contractor dev.
Design
optimisation
Construction
(incl. social
component)
 Skills transfer
 Local
employment
 Job
creation
 Poverty
alleviation
 LED
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NWRS-2 Strategies & Actions in relation to TCTA
Key strategies the TCTA needs to give effect to confirm the
continuing role & relevance of TCTA in four main areas:
 Infrastructure investment: ‘technical strategies’, p129
 Funding practice & revenue: ‘enabling strategies’, p169
 Institutional interface with a new government component:
‘governance strategies’, p194
 International water cooperation, although missing in
‘governance strategies’, p202, is captured in terms of
infrastructure development (p129) & Vaal System (p212)
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NWRS-2 Strategies & Actions for TCTA contd:
key action areas
Priority action areas requiring heightened and direct
business attention and engagement by TCTA identified:
 Urgent finalization of the water infrastructure investment
framework, to be reviewed every 5 years (action #67, p92)
 Development of innovative water financing models by 2013
(action #68, p92)
 Review of the Raw Water Pricing Strategy by 2013 (action
#45, p90)
 Establishment of the government component for National
Water Resources Infrastructure (action #62, p91)
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NWRS-2 Strategies & Actions, & TCTA contd:
key gap area
 NWRS-2 gives good attention to infrastructure development &
funding, under ‘technical strategies’ for infrastructure (p129135) and ‘enabling strategies’ for water finance (p167-171).
 But, in terms of TCTA operations, it is important to map out in
a simple table what specific water resource infrastructure
developments are planned, and where and for what uses.
 Also, sector partners would want to see the financial
implications of the planned actions, as well as the envisaged
funding mechanisms & institutional responsibilities.
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NWRS-2 Strategies & Actions, & TCTA contd:
prioritization of water use
 Increased emphasis is rightly placed on the allocation of water
resources to promote equitable access for improving rural
livelihoods & alleviating poverty: Has progressed slowly.
 As already demonstrated, water infrastructure development
should allow for multiple uses, including household, smallholder agriculture & strategic use, in accordance with policy.
 Prioritizing allocation (p44) needs to take cognizance of the
varying dynamics of water resource availability across WMAs
& the hard trade-offs to be confronted by users as a collective.
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NWRS-2 Completeness as Strategy
 It makes sense that NWRS-2 addresses key points of
progress with the implementation of NWRS-1, while also
pinpointing some of the shortcomings (p xii).
 The articulation of the interface between the NWRS-2 and
both the overarching national development strategies and
other sector strategies is a useful inclusion.
 There is also a great effort to innovate in NWRS-2, bringing in
a more ‘strategy making’ approach, leading to a
documentation of strategies in different dimensions.
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NWRS-2 Completeness as Strategy contd
 Unfortunately, NWRS-2 seems to succumb to a rather
complex strategic framework.
 The document describes 11 ‘core strategies’, 2 ‘detailed core
strategies’, 7 ‘technical strategies’, 4 ‘enabling strategies’ and
4 ‘governance strategies’, aside from ‘spatial perspectives’.
 By any standards of strategy-making, the adopted approach
appears like an over-kill that could make reading difficult.
 Also, the potential for overlapping implementation tasks
among 28 discrete strategies is vast, and will probably serve
as an inhibitor to monitoring.
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NWRS-2 Completeness as Strategy contd
 Articulation of strategies for managing water resources should
be kept as simple as possible, using established (or amended)
strategic themes, especially in sync with Sections 5/6 of NWA.
 Following a macro-situation analysis, it may be considered to
have strategies at max 3 levels: as per familiar water
management themes, spatially (WMAs) & cross-cutting theme.
 And the spatial perspectives (p207-259) would benefit from
further processing of WMA info, including water resource
availability & requirements.
 This simplicity and rationalization should also help minimize
large repetitions of entire paragraphs, e.g. management
challenges (p16 & p46-50), water resource info (p96 & p97).
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NWRS-2 Organization & Presentation
 Organization of the document suffers from what could be the
challenge of weaving contributions form various authors or
coordinating updated versions.
 Evidence: the first seven chapters described on p2 (Structure)
don’t match the contents of those chapters.
 Many of the key strategic actions (p83-93) are commendably
specific and time-bound, but the list of 79 appears unending,
calling for a more logical clustering.
 Long after the key actions are listed, in Part B (p103), each new
strategy is freshly detailed with key issues, vision, operational
objectives and (again) strategic actions (p103-206).
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Forward: Constructive Engagement with DWA
 TCTA views the draft NWRS-2 as an agency of DWA
 TCTA will undertake direct engagement and input
 TCTA looks forward to making further contributions for
improvement of NWRS-2
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Thank You!
TCTA
Telephone: (+27) 12 683 1200
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: http://www.tcta.co.za
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