What Cape Town can learn from Australia’s millennium drought

As Day Zero looms and the South African city gets set to run out of water, experts say lessons learned during Melbourne’s brush with a similar fate may help avert a global crisis

[...]

In Australia, the millennium drought, which parched the country for the first decade of the new century, left cities such as Melbourne a year away from running out of water.

This experience has put the country, and institutions like the University of Melbourne, at the forefront of cross-disciplinary research into water security.

“Experts overseas expect Australia to be one of the first developed countries to be really hit by climate change in terms of drought,” says Candy. “We already have been. The world is watching to see how we deal with climate change – either how badly or how well.”

Her own research in modelling future scenarios around food security and greenhouse gas emissions points to one major recommendation: the wholesale switch from fossil fuels to renewables in energy generation.

[...]