It is widely known that South Africa, and in particular the Western Cape, suffers from water scarcity. This reality underscores the critical need to prioritise the conservation of freshwater ecosystems and their catchments to ensure a sustainable supply of water for both biodiversity and human consumption. The provision of water is categorised as one of the ecosystem services offered by natural freshwater ecosystems.

The Western Cape has just emerged from, in some areas, up to an eight-year drought cycle. This is linked to bigger global oceanic and climatic conditions. The poor rainfall resulted in low freshwater flows in the rivers and very little freshwater reaching the estuaries which are the receiving environment of the freshwater flows left in the rivers after abstraction and use in the catchment.

The 22nd March, is World Water Day and the theme for 2018 is 'Nature for Water' which encourages us to find solutions in nature to the challenges we face with water shortages. In South Africa, this day forms part of National Water Week which is from 18 March to 24 March in 2018. In this article we look at some of the ways in which CapeNature has been fulfilling the mandate to find nature-based solutions to the shortage of water in the drought-stricken Western Cape.