Johannesburg - Experts have weighed in on the drought facing the country.
Dr Bob Scholes, a systems ecologist, says that climate change is a contributing factor to the heatwave but not the main cause of it.
“We had heatwaves long before climate change started. It is the rising baseline temperatures in SA that have risen just over a degree Celsius over the last century,” said Scholes.
Scholes said it was because of this that there would be a probability of more heatwaves more often.
He said the El Nino phase in southern Africa was what was keeping the stagnant air over the interior, hence the heatwave.
“There will be more heatwaves not so much in intensity but in frequency. Unless we address this, we will experience more of these. It will go from every 10 years to every 5 years to every year”.
Scholes said unless mitigation actions were taken to reduce greenhouse gases, things could get worse.
“There will be negotiations at the UN Paris Climate Change Conference on mitigation and adaptation actions. It will make no real difference if only one country is working towards change, it has to be done collectively globally,” he said.
According to Dr Muchaparara Musemwa, an environmentalist from Zimbabwe, the drought being experienced has changed the way we understand climate change.
“We have grown on being set on a time and climate change - we expect rain but it's not happening,” he said.
Musemwa emphasised that the issue of drought is definitely there, and has become a challenge to those affected by it.
“People in rural areas have become desperate. Farmers are coping variously because they have put mechanisms in place. Things have become more expensive. The more politicians speak about it, the more prices will increase”.
While he believes is that the country is bound for more possible droughts in the future, he emphasised the importance of using water sparingly as well as organisations and governments responding to the crisis and assisting to alleviate the problem.
The Star