National Water Resource Strategy - Third Edition (NWRS-3).

This third edition of the National Water Resource Strategy (NWRS-3) builds on the previous editions from 2004 and 2013, outlining a strategic approach to sustainable and equitable water resource management. It emphasizes the protection, development, and efficient use of water resources while ensuring access supports economic growth, poverty reduction, and job creation. The Strategy focuses on good governance, improved resource management, and institutional strengthening through measures such as water reuse and offsetting. Key priorities include equitable water distribution, authorization processes, financial support for emerging farmers, and initiatives for local economic development. Additionally, the Strategy highlights the need to enhance skills and capacity in the sector, ensuring institutions are adequately staffed and resourced. Strengthening regulatory capacity to improve compliance and enforce standards is also a critical component of the document. Compared to the previous editions there are new key areas such as (i) alignment with the Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Africa’s Agenda 2063; (ii) focus on the Integrated Water Quality Management ensuring infrastructure compliance and pollution reduction; (iii) support for technological advances in new knowledge and real-time data acquisition for Water Resources Management (WRM); (iv) National Groundwater Strategy (NGS) which aims to achieve an integrated and sustainable utilization of groundwater resources through a groundwater governance framework; (v) development of standard operating practices to strategically audit the status of compliance of water sector institutions with regards to their WUA conditions and self-regulation requirements; (vi) alignment with the National Water and Sanitation Master Plan (NW&SMP) as the “execution arm” of the NWRS-3.
The NWRS-3 sets out how South Africa will achieve the following overarching goals (i) that water must be protected, used, developed, conserved, managed, and controlled sustainably and equitably; (ii) that water and sanitation must support development and the elimination of poverty and inequality; (iii) that water and sanitation must contribute to the economy and job creation. Within these goals are focus areas related to increasing water supply, reducing water demand, managing effective water and sanitation, regulating the water and sanitation sector, redistributing water for transformation, promoting international cooperation, managing water and sanitation under a changing climate, improving raw water quality, and protecting aquatic ecosystems and maintaining and restoring ecological infrastructure. For each focus area, the document outlines the background, including the context and initial challenges, along with the guiding principles for interventions, strategic objectives, and planned actions.