PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Water and Wastewater Management
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1550738
This article is part of the Research TopicTackling the Global Water Crisis: Risks, Challenges, and Sustainable SolutionsView all 5 articles
Tackling Rural Water Scarcity in South Africa: Climate Change, Governance, and Sustainability Pathways
Provisionally accepted
Selelo Matimolane1*
Fhumulani I Mathivha2- 1Human Sciences Research Council, Pretoria, South Africa
- 2University of Limpopo, Sovenga, Limpopo, South Africa
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Water scarcity in rural South Africa is an escalating crisis driven by climate change, governance inefficiencies, and socio-economic disparities. This perspective synthesizes secondary data through the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) frameworks, offering a novel lens that bridges macro-policy failures with micro-community resilience, unlike singleframework analyses. Drawing on existing case studies, including Cape Town's "Day Zero" drought and the Greater Giyani Municipality, we highlight both current advances, such as smart metering, rainwater harvesting, and decentralized purification systems, and persistent vulnerabilities, including erratic rainfall, declining dam levels, and under-resourced infrastructure. The IWRM lens exposes gaps in institutional coordination, policy enforcement, and infrastructure investment that undermine equitable water distribution. The SES perspective reveals how rural communities navigate scarcity through informal networks, traditional knowledge, and local adaptation strategies, but also illustrates the limitations of these responses in the absence of state support. We argue that neither top-down governance nor grassroots innovation alone can achieve water security. Instead, sustainable solutions require hybrid, multi-scalar strategies that align regulatory reforms with community-driven resilience.Future efforts must prioritize adaptive infrastructure, context-sensitive technologies, and inclusive governance frameworks to build climate-resilient and equitable rural water systems. South Africa's experience offers instructive lessons for global water governance, demonstrating the need for holistic, systems-based approaches that integrate technical, social, and institutional dimensions. This perspective contributes to a strategic framing for future policy and research aimed at ensuring long-term water security and sustainability in vulnerable contexts.
Keywords: rural water scarcity, integrated water resources management, socio-ecological systems, water governance, climate change adaptation, South Africa, Community resilience, water access equity
Received: 24 Dec 2024; Accepted: 09 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Matimolane and Mathivha. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Selelo Matimolane, Human Sciences Research Council, Pretoria, South Africa
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