Waterway Restoration in Cape Town, South Africa

The rivers and wetlands in the City of Cape Town, South Africa, provide valuable services for city residents. Waterways supply freshwater from nearby Table Mountain, regulate waterflow, improve water quality, support biodiversity, and are popular areas for recreation, tourism, and fishing.

However, urban development, change in land use, and pollution have degraded and polluted the city’s waterways, limiting its ability to regulate and supply water. Climate change has also led to greater rainfall variability, with both drought and flooding projected to worsen.

As a result, the city has developed its Water Strategy, aiming to become a water-sensitive city by 2040, as well as a Green Infrastructure Programme and a Livable Urban Waterway Programme (LUW). Through the LUW Programme, Cape Town is rehabilitating waterways and their catchments across the city, using water-sensitive design and nature-based solutions.

The study area for this project lies in two adjacent catchments of the LUW Programme, the Diep/Sand River and Zeekoe catchments. Our report will analyze the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of the sought interventions. Namely, widening and opening existing canals, creating retention ponds, extending and establishing wetlands, setting up community gardens and educational areas, designing and upgrading walkways, installing litter traps, revegetating and landscaping riverbanks, removing invasive species and replacing them with appropriate indigenous alternatives.

Our assessment will look at two potential futures: a no action/business-as-usual scenario, and a scenario in which the nature-based infrastructure interventions are implemented. This will help communities and decision-makers understand the social, ecological and economic consequences of continued ecosystem deterioration, and show the value of investing in NBI.

We are working with our partners, C40 Cities Finance Facility, and the City of Cape Town to assess these scenarios.