Dossier: Cape Town and water supply problems: anthropic action, environment and our world today

On next units, concepts such as anthropic action on the environment, nature, misery, development or unequalieties will become always more and more important. On this sense, we will work on the commentary, under the geographer´s point of view, of two recent news about water supply on Cape Town.

1) Spanish: "Ciudad del Cabo, la agonía de quedarse sin agua", El País, Feb, 12th 2018

2) English: "Why Cape Town is running out of water, and who´s next", National Geographic, March 5th, 2018 

Read both texts and answer these questions:

1- Where Cape Town is? Look for some data about it, in terms of location, population, climate and some History. You can include some drawing or photograph (non less than a page).

2- What is the basically the problem on Cape Town? What are the reasons why the water supply is running out?

3- What is said on the texts, about relationship between enviromental problems and poverty? How could be both of them related? Justify your answer.

4- What is the situation of most of reservoirs and lakes around Cape Town? What other cases in the world are similar to these?

5- Imagine some consecuences of this trouble on a big city, such as Cape Town. Could you guess anything like that on Madrid? Write a fact file (about 10 lines minimum) about a day without water on your life.