With water management currently a vital issue in Limpopo and other drought-ravaged provinces, the recent announcement that two government departments will combine to educate young people on environmental, water and sanitation issues, has been widely welcomed.

In line with an existing programme known as Vision 2020, the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) will broaden the scope of its cooperation with the Department of Education (DE), in order to include environmental education as an Outcomes Based Education (OBE) subject in schools.

Since 2001, Vision 2020 has promoted topics such as efficient water use, water quality management, health, hygiene and awareness of alien invasive plants, but this was always regarded as an addition to curricular courses in schools

Grade seven learners will now be the target group, and the idea will be to equip them with water resource management skills, which they will then hopefully transfer to their families and communities, in order to change mindsets towards water conservation and sanitation issues. The programme will aim to help communities understand that water is a scarce resource in South Africa, which must be used and managed responsibly.

DWAF Deputy Director-General Jabu Sindane said this week that the department would continue to provide teacher and learner education material on environmental issues in South Africa's indigenous languages. Since South Africa was a water-scarce country, it was imperative that the country preserved water, especially in view of the fact that population growth was putting a strain on the existing water resources.

Education Department spokesperson, Ms Phumelele Tloubata, said the move was significant, because it would employ education as a tool to prevent ecologicial degradation in the future.