The new normal felt decidedly weird.
In Cape Town, I was staying in a small bed and breakfast with a recently remodeled bathroom, all clean lines and gleaming tile. Pretty normal.
But as I lifted a sloshing bucket, nearly full of my shower water, to flush the toilet, a baby gecko the size of a pine needle darted from beneath it and headed toward the drain. All of that was pretty weird.
To avoid a future where ‘normal’ becomes not just weird, but dangerous, we’ll need to push ourselves past the normal responses, including figuring out how we can face the growing risk of nature-based threats — droughts and floods — with nature-based solutions.
But back to that bucket. It held most, though not quite all, of the water from my two-minute shower. The minimalist shower and bucket are products of the water crisis in Cape Town and, at the moment, are just highly recommended actions to save water.
But those recommendations nearly became mandates as Cape Town set a date for “Day Zero” when the taps would be turned off. After Day Zero, public water would only be available at 200 collection points around the city where residents could receive a daily allocation of 25 litres. The typical American uses nearly 400 litres per day, so doing normal daily activities — including not just drinking, but also bathing, washing clothes, cooking and, yes, flushing — with 1/16 of that volume would require a lifestyle far from normal.
The looming threat of Day Zero inspired enough voluntary rationing that the date has been pushed back until 2019 — but only if normal winter rains arrive, which is far from assured.
Far from assured because the concept of normal is eroding before our eyes.
For Cape Town, there is growing concern that the conditions that spawned the current water crisis are not just the bad luck of a rare drought but, rather, reflect a “new normal.”
Research suggests that a warming climate will shift weather patterns in a way that reduces rainfall in winter, the season that delivers the most precipitation to Cape Town. Thus, rather than an unlucky roll of the dice, the current drought may reflect a shift toward drier conditions.
And it’s not just Cape Town: many places in the world are now wondering whether they have entered a new normal — whether for droughts or floods (or both).
For example, Houston, Texas has endured three massive floods in the past three years. Each of these floods was so large that any one of them would be considered a highly unlikely event, something with less than a 1% chance of happening in any given year.
Of course, highly unlikely events do happen. But three of them in three years? When that happens, both mathematicians and non-math types will say, “that is not normal.”
And it’s not. The methods used to estimate how often a flood or drought of a given magnitude should occur rely on “normal” probabilities, derived from the weather data from the past century or so. When a sequence of events occurs that is highly unlikely under that probability, it strongly suggests that normal has, in fact, shifted. For example, many scientists now think that the multiple years of drought in the southwestern U.S. aren’t just a run of bad luck but, rather, reflect a shift to a drier climate for the region.
What does a new normal mean for Cape Town’s water management? Or for cities more generally, in terms of preparing for future floods and droughts?
Peter Gleick, of the Pacific Institute, frames the “new normal” challenge by noting that we are trying to manage “a 21st-century climate with a 20th-century infrastructure and 19th-century laws and policies.”
In other words, if the climate is shifting away from what we know to be normal, so too must our responses. Clearly part of the solution lies with modernizing infrastructure, including fixing leaky pipes and crumbling levees (the American Society of Civil Engineers, in their 2017 report card on infrastructure in the United States gave a grade of D to both water management and flood management systems).
But that’s just a start. Gleick emphasizes that our laws and policies require an even greater overhaul than our infrastructure. That overhaul should include a push to redefine infrastructure for the 21st century.
Going forward, infrastructure can’t only be dams, pipes and levees; it also must include the “green infrastructure” of nature-based solutions, such as healthy watersheds that store and filter water supplies and floodplains and wetlands that help reduce flood risk. The World Water Development Report, released earlier this week by UN Water, emphasizes that nature-based solutions should play a central role in how the world manages water supplies and reduces risks from natural disasters.
For example, in the watersheds that supply Cape Town’s water, restoration of native vegetation can increase available water. Non-native species, such as eucalyptus, are “thirstier” than the natives they have replaced, sucking up through their roots and evaporating an additional 1.4 trillion litres of water per year. This loss is equivalent to 4% of the nation’s water supply (and because non-natives are spreading, the loss could increase to 16%).
Removing non-native plants, and restoring native vegetation, as WWF-South Africa has been doing in the Riviersonderend watershed, is therefore part of the solution for ensuring adequate water supplies — at a cost comparable, or lower, than many other alternatives. The broader effort of clearing non-native vegetation to boost waters supplies has employed tens of thousands of people, an important co-benefit in a country with 26% unemployment.
On the other side of the world, the flood management system for the city of Sacramento, California, designed nearly a century ago, shows that green infrastructure is not a new idea. There, tens of thousands of hectares of floodplain are intentionally inundated to safely convey floodwaters around the city. These managed floodplains also provide the most important remaining seasonal wetland habitat for native fish and birds in California’s Central Valley.
There is great potential to build on these examples and deploy nature-based solutions around the world, as recommended in the World Water Development Report. When nature departs from normal and threatens us with floods and droughts, we too can depart from our normal responses and get nature’s power on our side too.
