The Upper Orange River Water Resources Affected by Human Interventions and Climate Change

Abstract

The major problem in the study area is the unlawful water abstractions for irrigation use. In South Africa, indications show that about 240 million m3/a of illegal water use is due to unauthorised withdrawals or violations of water use licenses. The status of water use for irrigation in the Orange-Senqu Basin also shows that insufficient information exists such that work needs to be done to understand the potential for increased efficiency of water use, taking into account issues pertaining to crop type, soil type and technological options. Studies like this one could also shed light on the potential impact of climate change on water use in the basin as this area may well experience significant impacts from rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns. The processes of validation and verification will determine the extent of existing lawful water use. The use of remote sensing techniques (satellite, aerial photographs, etc.) could be employed to determine if the volume of water use registered by irrigators is accurate, i.e. valid and that the volume of water use registered is lawful (verification). Currently, ecological requirements for the river mouth are met through releases from Vanderkloof Dam and amount to just 290 million m3/a. However several recent studies including the Gesellschaft fur International Zusammenarbeit - Integrated Water Resources Management (GIZ – IWRM) study highlight that this is based on a fairly outdated methodology. The more recent Lower Orange Management study found a high level estimate of ecological requirements to be in order of 1 062 million m3/a.