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Whacking Wattles for Water - the South African Working for Water Project
An innovative integrated approach to social and environmental rehabilitation
Produced and edited by Lil Haigh of the Institute for Water Research Rhodes University, (Chair, Albany Working for Water Project Steering committee) from material supplied by Caroline Hanks of the Working for Water National office, Cape Town, South Africa.
What is an alien invasive plant?
Since the seventeenth century, movement of people around the globe to colonise new countries has increased exponentially. These early colonists took with them their familiar plants and animals and introduced them into new continents. These "attendant colonists" became an increasing problem in their translocated areas: they had no natural predators nor diseases to control their rate of propagation or growth, and in those areas where the climate was ideal, their propagation was rapid, likened in many instances to an invasion. 161 introduced plant species have become invasive in South Africa. Other countries are experiencing similar problems with aliens species, some originating in South Africa.
If uncontrolled, the problem will double within 15 years. These alien invasives are the single biggest threat to plant and animal biodiversity through habitat destruction.
These plants have the following negative impacts:
- They result in a loss of biodiversity and ecosystem resilience because they out-compete indigenous flora and in doing so reduce complex ecosystems to mono-cultures destroying habitats for both plant and animals
- Through increased evaporative transpiration rates these thickets of aliens reduce the amount of ground water thus reducing the volume of water that reaches our rivers. They also
dry out wetlands and riparian areas that in turn increases the erosion from these areas.
- They lead to the loss of potentially productive land, and the loss of grazing potential and livestock production.
- They can result in the poisoning of humans and livestock.
- They serve to increase the costs of fire protection and damage in wildfires because the stands of invasives are both more dense than natural vegetation and the wood more resinous, creating hotter fires.
- They result in an increased level of erosion, following fires in heavily invaded areas, as well as the siltation of dams.
What Is Working For Water?
Working for Water was launched in 1995 by the South African Government as a multi-departmental public works programme, in an effort to tackle the problem of invading alien plants while at the same time addressing unemployment among less skilled people, focussing mainly on rural women, the youth and the disabled.
Working for Water aims to enhance water security, improve ecological integrity,
restore the productive potential of land and promote sustainable use of natural
resources, and to invest in the most marginalized sectors of South African
society.
Since its inception, Working for Water has seen many benefits accrued both to
the environment and the people involved with the project.
Since 1995, working for water has seen:
· Increased water security with enhanced streamflow and improved water quality, more productive wetlands, estuaries and water tables;
· Rehabilitation of degraded land with a strong emphasis on Land Care by the Departments of Agriculture and Land Affairs, to secure the sustainable productivity of land;
· Conservation of biodiversity and catchment integrity and the reduction in the frequency and intensity of fires and floods;
· Development of secondary industries based on the cleared wood, and
· Empowerment of people through the labour-intensive approach to the work, with the programme having employed over 42 000 people by the end of the 1998/9 financial year.
Since 1995, 169 114 hectares have been cleared and a further 184 302 hectares cleared as follow-up rehabilitation work was done on 7 955 hectares. This is a significant step towards the management and control of invasive alien plants, which continue to spread at an exponential rate. Valuable lesson have been learnt on approaches to clearing and replanting. Some of the results of the clearing operation have highlighted the resilience of natural vegetation, especially in wetland areas where in areas which had been colonised for 30 to 40 years, wetland plants have reappeared as soon as ground water levels have risen and marshes have reappeared. In other areas the devastating results of long-term invasions have been highlighted by the slow recovery, which has to be aided by replanting of indigenous grasses. This has created an awareness of the difficulty in obtaining sufficient seed of the correct species of indigenous plants.
The most immediate danger to the success of the environmental rehabilitation programme, is the will among government and other funding agencies as well as landowners to sustain the follow-up programme. It is expensive and will be long-term, most likely much longer
than the life span of the initiators of the project. This is because the seedbed of these alien plants are both long-lived and large. Re-growth can take on frightening dimensions if not removed regularly on an annual basis. The land rehabilitation and erosion control projects, especially in wetland areas is a valuable aspect of the programme which should yield much benefit in terms of water security and the reduction of flood damage of riparian areas.
The Working for Water programme. It provides the ideal platform to train people in a range of work-related and general life skills including machine operation, gabion construction, driving, first aid, sexual education including AIDS awareness, teamwork, supervision, personal financial management and business management skills. Training is a critical component of the programme, it provides the dignity of doing valuable work as well as the certification that allows workers a far greater chance of securing future work. In the 1998/99 financial year, a total of 70 500 person days were spent on training.
The programme had employed 56% women in its workforce by the end of the last financial year, and has as its goal that 60% of wages should go to women. This promotes both corrective action (50% would not correct the imbalances), and the focus on wages rather than numbers is an acknowledgement of the inherited position where there is a disproportionate number of men in senior positions (earning higher wages).
The ultimate aim is to arrive at a situation where empowered workers can form viable business units that can tender for work resulting from the Working for Water Programme. It will also result in such people being able to tender for other work through having developed generic management and entrepreneurial skills. All of this ensures a level of sustainability within the programme once external funding sources have been depleted.
The programme is making a significant contribution to overcoming the old racial barriers in the country by actively seeking to build multiracial teams to tackle what is a very real problem. The overall relevance of this component can be summed up in terms of its contribution to the government's Masakhane campaign. Communities from which employees are drawn are being empowered to make payment for services, and to better understand the benefits of working towards significant environmental improvements.
Working for Water is a developing example of how partnerships can be crafted at the inter-departmental level in government and of how to promote the governance that helps heal the wounds of the past.
Working for Water, although not without its problems, has certainly been one of the most successfully integrated environmental and social rehabilitation projects undertaken by the new ANC government of this country.
In the 2000/1 financial year, the programme had 313 projects across South Africa, run as integrated initiatives. There were 22 718 people employed at the end of the financial year 2000/1 (this includes management). Of these, 17 266 people were funded from Poverty Relief funds.
On a regional basis, the following employment figures apply:
Province Total jobs created
Kwazulu-Natal 7 043
W Cape 3 690
E Cape 2 871
Partnerships 2 182
N Province 1 638
NW/ Gauteng 1 380
SANP 1 247
Mpumalanga 1 101
N Cape 965
Free State 202
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