Presentation short abstract

In examining the ongoing feasibility studies, pilot projects, and demonstration sites that serve to keep desalination relevant in South Africa despite steep trade-offs, this paper reveals how scoping activities pave the way for desalination PPPs and preclude alternatives in water supply development.

Presentation long abstract

South Africa is notorious for issues of both water and energy: insufficient water infrastructure continuing from the apartheid era and energy loadshedding that has become nearly mundane in its frequency. Seawater desalination as a solution to improve water access seems clearly inhibited by insufficient water and energy infrastructure alike. Yet, desalination has been a persistent theme in the South African water sector since the early 2000s, and seems all the more attractive coupled with national policies to further encourage public-private partnerships (PPPs). Whilst the overall state of desalination in the country is still in its infancy, the dream is kept alive by a myriad of feasibility studies, pilot projects, and demonstration sites. Existing research has demonstrated that even simply scoping out desalination projects can lead to a path dependency that narrows the overall field of water supply planning (O’Neill & Boyer, 2023). Understanding infrastructures as always ‘incomplete’ (Guma, 2022) adds a dimension of fortitude and persistence to this lens, reminding us to take such seemingly small-scale efforts seriously for their potential broader implications. Coupled with South Africa’s longstanding issues with insufficient water infrastructure, lack of municipal funds, and desire for further private sector investment, this means that projects currently deemed as infeasible could haunt the water sector for long to come. This paper argues that ongoing scoping activities serve to keep the desalination option on the table despite steep implementation barriers: paving the way for future desalination PPPs whilst precluding alternative futures for water supply development.