The sustainable management of water resources is required to avoid water scarcity becoming widespread. This article explores the potential application of a social-ecological framework, used predominantly in the fields of ecology and conservation, as a tool to improve the sustainability and resilience of water resources. The “red-loop green-loop” (RL-GL) model has previously been used to map both sustainable and unsustainable social-ecological feedbacks between ecosystems and their communities in countries such as Sweden and Jamaica. In this article, we demonstrate the novel application of the RL-GL framework to water resources management using the 2017/18 Cape Town water crisis. We used the framework to analyse the social-ecological dynamics of pre-crisis and planned contingency scenarios.

We found that the water resources management system was almost solely reliant on a single, non-ecosystem form of infrastructure, the provincial dam system. As prolonged drought impacted this key water resource, resilience to resource collapse was shown to be low and a missing feedback between the water resource and the Cape Town community was highlighted. The collapse of water resources (“Day Zero”) was averted through a combination of government and community group led measures, incorporating both local ecosystem (green-loop) and non-local ecosystem (red-loop) forms of water resource management, and increased rainfall returning to the area. Additional disaster management plans proposed by the municipality included the tighter integration of red and green-loop water management approaches, which acted to foster a stronger connection between the Cape Town community and their water resources.

We advocate the wider development and application of the RL-GL model, theoretically and empirically, to investigate missing feedbacks between water resources and their communities.

为了避免水资源短缺，需要对水资源进行可持续管理。本文探讨了主要用于生态和保护领域的社会生态框架的潜在应用，该框架可作为提高水资源可持续性和复原力的工具。以前曾使用“红圈绿圈”（RL-GL）模型来绘制瑞典和牙买加等国家的生态系统及其社区之间可持续的和不可持续的社会生态反馈。在本文中，我们演示了使用2017/18开普敦水危机，RL-GL框架在水资源管理中的新颖应用。我们使用该框架来分析危机前和计划中的突发事件的社会生态动态。

我们发现，水资源管理系统几乎完全依赖于单一的非生态系统形式的基础设施，即省级大坝系统。由于长期干旱影响了这一关键水资源，因此显示出对资源崩溃的抵御能力很低，水资源与开普敦社区之间缺乏反馈。通过将政府和社区团体领导的措施结合起来，避免了水资源的崩溃（“零日”），将水资源管理的本地生态系统（绿环）和非本地生态系统（红环）形式结合在一起，以及返回该地区的降雨增加。市政府提出的其他灾难管理计划包括将红色和绿色环路水管理方法更紧密地结合在一起，

我们主张在理论上和经验上更广泛地开发和应用RL-GL模型，以调查水资源及其社区之间缺失的反馈。