Water Management Areas
The National Water Act (Act 36 of 1998) made a provision for the establishment of catchment management areas (CMAs) to take responsibility for the management of water resources at a regional level, in South Africa. In 2004, in the National Water Resources Strategy, the establishment of 19 CMA was proposed. After assessing the viability of 19 CMAs, for the National Water Resources Strategy 2 (2013), it was decided that the 19 CMAs should be reduced to nine and they should be linked to the nine water management areas (WMAs) in South Africa. To achieve the aim of combining the CMAs and WMAs, and to improve integrated management, the boundaries of the nine WMAs were adjusted to match the boundaries of the nine CMAs, to fast-track the establishment of the CMAs.
The map below shows the nine WMAs in South Africa, which are the: Limpopo, Olifants, Inkomati-Usuthu, Pongola-Umzimkulu, Vaal, Orange, Mzimvubu-Tsitsikamma, Breede-Gouritz, and Berg-Olifants water management areas.
Source: Source: South African National Biodiversity Institute. Strategic Water Source Areas [vector geospatial dataset] 2013. Available from the Biodiversity GIS website.