Western Cape warns of hotter summer as El Niño strengthens, and hands farmers the list
Premier Alan Winde has warned Western Cape farmers to prepare now for a hotter summer, higher fire danger and more pressure on water, with El Niño expected to strengthen in the coming months. The warning follows a fire season in which more than 200 000 hectares of the province burned. Winde asked landowners to clear vegetation, maintain firebreaks, manage cut material and remove invasive alien plants, all of which have been the owner’s legal duty since 1998. The province’s own list of what it will do carries no amounts and no dates.
What Winde said
Winde gave the warning at NAMPO Cape in Bredasdorp, speaking to farmers, producers, agricultural organisations and municipalities.
He said preparation cannot wait until summer is upon us, and that farmers, producers, organisations, municipalities and government must all be taking the steps now that reduce risk and protect livelihoods.
He said it does not matter where you live in the Western Cape, everybody has a role to play in reducing risk and keeping communities safe.
For those living and working in the higher fire risk areas, Winde said now is the time to act. He named 4 jobs: clearing vegetation, maintaining firebreaks, managing biomass, which is the cut material left lying on the ground, and removing invasive alien plants.
The season behind the warning
The weight behind the warning comes from the season that has just ended, when wildfires affected more than 200 000 hectares of land across the province.
Winde said recent climate related disasters had shown exactly why authorities, farmers and communities need to prepare before extreme conditions arrive.
Land that burned last season is land where the fuel is already growing back, and the same summer wind comes over it every year. That argument for preparation stands on its own, without any reference to the Pacific Ocean.
What El Niño actually means here
The provincial government says the El Niño Southern Oscillation is a global climate cycle driven by changing ocean temperatures in the Pacific, and that it can influence weather thousands of kilometres away. It says the cycle is currently in an El Niño state and is expected to strengthen in the coming months.
The statement then includes a line that carries more weight than the headline does. It says El Niño’s strongest effects in South Africa are generally felt in the summer rainfall regions.
The Western Cape is not a summer rainfall region. It gets its rain in winter.
What the province is saying, then, is that a cycle whose clearest effect on this country lands elsewhere could still push temperatures up here, raise the fire danger and add strain to water resources that are already tight. That is a fair thing to say. It is also a weaker claim than the headline version, which is that El Niño is coming for the Western Cape.
The part that has never changed
The 4 jobs on Winde’s list are not new and they are not a fresh demand from this government.
The National Veld and Forest Fire Act has required every owner whose land can burn to prepare and maintain a firebreak on his side of the boundary since 1998, and to have people and equipment ready to fight a fire.
There is good reason for that. The owner controls the fuel on his land and earns the income off it, and in the weeks before the season, when the work has to be done, he is the only person who can get to it. Handing that job to the state would put the cost of protecting a private asset onto every taxpayer, including people who own no land at all, and would remove the owner’s reason to do anything.
The same Act applies to the state, because the state is a landowner too.
The one job that crosses fences
The fourth job on the list does not work like the other 3.
A firebreak is the owner’s and the cut material on his land is his, but invasive alien plants seed across boundaries. A farmer can clear his ground properly, at his own cost, and be reinfested from state land, from the strip of council ground beside the road, or from the farm next door that somebody walked away from years ago.
That is why alien clearing has national programmes attached to it and firebreaks do not. On the fourth job, a farmer’s money only holds if the people upstream and next door spent theirs, and the ground up there mostly belongs to the state.
What the department has committed to
The Western Cape department of agriculture says it will now work with industry on measures aimed at limiting the impact of the cycle on farms and farming communities.
Those measures are strengthening conservation agriculture, improving how efficiently water is used in irrigated areas, prioritising assistance for dryland production areas, improving risk management and preparedness systems, and providing support to agricultural workers.
They are the correct things to be working on, and this province does have a decent record on disaster coordination. But set that list next to the one the farmer was handed. A firebreak has a width, a date and a name attached to it, and anyone can drive out in January and see whether it was cut. Strengthening and improving carry no amount, no deadline and no way to check in 6 months whether any of it happened.
The standard the state sets for the landowner is a good standard. The state should be able to meet it on its own ground.
What adaptation cost the last time
Agriculture, Economic Development and Tourism MEC Ivan Meyer said farmers have already demonstrated their ability to adapt to difficult climate conditions, and pointed back to the drought of 2014 to 2016. He said the response now should recognise the seriousness of reduced rainfall, higher temperatures and pressure on water resources.
Farmers did get through that drought, and they will do their part again this summer. They got through it by taking on debt, culling stock, pulling out orchards and vines, and carrying losses that never came back.
Adaptation is not a renewable resource. A farmer who survived the last drought by spending his reserves goes into this one with less behind him, and a warning issued in September does not change that.
Every farmer in the Overberg will have his breaks cut before the season starts, because the law says so and because his own ground burns first if he does not. The question left over is who drives out to check the other side of his fence.
