The Governator is heading to Cape Town in 2019 — and fans can thank the drought.
Movie star and ex-governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger‚ now a climate change activist and philanthropist‚ will be the keynote speaker at the W12‚ Future of Water conference in May.
Conference spokeswoman Angelique Edwards said it was the first event of its kind to bring together key stakeholders from the 12 global cities predicted to run out of water over the next 24 months.
“Cape Town is the first major city on the planet to be teetering on running out of water‚” she said.
“Unfortunately‚ politicians… did not factor climate change into their resource planning and management‚ so we are behind the curve and on the back foot. It is up to all stakeholders to act and adapt so that the future of the city is preserved.”
The aim of the conference was to create the first “major city best practice water protocol” for a day zero scenario.
The conference‚ in Stellenbosch‚ is being hosted by Save Our Schools‚ a non-profit organisation‚ and the Cape Town and the Western Cape Convention Bureau‚ part of Wesgro.
The three-day event‚ at M’Hudi Wine Estate‚ is expected to attract up to 1‚500 delegates‚ and Wesgro CEO Tim Harris said a key objective was to encourage active citizenship.
“The conference will give us the platform to create new partnerships and facilitate possible investments into locally based businesses dealing with the water crisis and water-related technologies as we continue to build on our resilience as a province and emerge from the worst drought in over 100 years‚” he said.
Cape Town’s drought experience would be a key feature at the conference‚ and SOS executive director Shelley Humphreys said: “The drought was never about a specific date‚ but about essential behavioural change‚ now and forever.”