“Everybody’s cup of tea”
NGO of the Day: Environmental Monitoring Group
By Nicky Furniss
This year the rooibos tea farmers of the Suid Bokkeveld exported 18 tons of
tea and quadrupled their income. From poverty and marginalisation to a
successful co-operative and promises of a sustainable and eco-friendly
livelihood, the Heiveld Co-operative is a success story not only for South
Africa but for The Environmental Monitoring Group, which had an active part to
play in its success.
Situated at the western edge of the South Africa’s Great Karoo plateau, the
Suid Bokkeveld region with its winter rains and acid soils provides ideal
conditions for the growth of rooibos tea. Despite being renowned for producing
high-quality and flavoursome tea, the farmers have been discriminated against
because of their skin colour, and poor access to markets has compounded the
issue of severe poverty in the region.
In 1998 the Northern Cape department of agriculture forged a relationship
with EMG, a Cape Town-based NGO that serves as a facilitator between policy
decisions and the people affected by them: “Our work is orientated towards
people. We ask where they want to get to, what they’ve got to get there and
what their collective vision is,” says Noel Oettle, the manager of the EMG’s
rural livelihoods programme of which the rooibos project forms part. According
to Oettle, poverty is voiced as the community’s main concern and rooibos
growing as one of its key resources.
The farmers however had poor access to land, markets, finance and support
services and were being overcharged for processing costs.
With EMG’s help the community identified a number of opportunities for
improvement, but was unsure how to go about realising them. An exchange visit to
Wupperthal (a successful tea-growing community) and Namaqualand (where a number
of successful community-based tourism businesses were being run) was organised
to provide the farmers with examples of viable strategies. On their return the
farmers collectively agreed to establish their own initiatives to enhance their
incomes.
The Heiveld Co-operative was formed out of this and the farmers have been
registered as organic rooibos tea producers (no chemicals are used and most of
the harvesting and processing is done by hand) and fair trade links have been
established with the Netherlands and Germany. The co-op has developed its own
cloth bag packaging, which not only adds value to the raw product and saves on
expensive packaging, but provides employment for women of the community who make
the bags on hand-operated sewing machines.
Now that the co-op has had some success the community is building an
environmentally friendly tea processing facility and is promoting the
development of its members as ecofarmers.
Even though EMG has had a large part to play in the success of the co-op,
Oettle emphasises that local community members have shaped each stage of the
process: “This is the Suid Bokkeveld’s project, we might be facilitators but
it’s not our project, it’s theirs.” This is a sentiment which seems to
best exemplify EMG’s role in community empowerment.
The EMG was established in 1991, at a time when governmental changes appeared
imminent and a change in environmental policies more probable. What started as
an informal group of like-minded people has now grown into a fully-fledged NGO,
which aims to encourage environmental policies and practices that address
environmental injustice and promote sustainable development.
According to Stephen Law, the director of EMG: “The developmental path of
any country is dependent on the resources nature makes available to them.
Sustainability will never happen unless people understand their role in managing
the environment.” EMG thus views its role as educative and facilitative to
empower people to take charge of their own environment, so that the right to a
healthy environment can be enjoyed by all.
EMG sees its role as building bridges between decision-makers and citizens.
Because of the broad nature of its work, EMG is involved in a range of projects
and deliberately strives not to focus exclusively on one area or issue: “They
are all important, all parts of sustainable development. We get involved in the
ones which we feel we can do some good,” says Law. Despite EMG’s broad
focus, it has four key focus areas.
In addition to Oettle’s rural livelihoods programme, EMG’s trade and
environment programme aims to build links between civil society and
policymakers.
EMG runs a water justice programme to engage national and regional processes
relating to the management of freshwater resources. EMG was recently involved in
trying to act as a facilitator or switchboard between local communities and the
World Commission on Dams. “We ran workshops and brought dam-affected
communities from other parts of Africa together. We tried to build solidarity
and networks.”
EMG has spent the last year encouraging other NGOs and organisations to
attend the Global Forum: “We provided information on the issues and gave
advice on how to prepare.” EMG organised the summit’s Stimela train to
transport participants from Cape Town to Johannesburg and raised funds to
provide accommodation and food for delegates.
For Law, it is too early to measure the consequences of the summit: “It’s
not so much about the impact the Global Forum has on Sandton; the legacy is more
about the contacts and plans people make together. What they take away with
them, that’s the legacy of the Global Forum.”
And the expected impact of EMG: “We’re in it for the long term. We don’t
expect overnight changes, but no amount of effort put into awareness building is
ever lost. It might not be enough or aimed in the right direction, but it’s
never wasted.” -- Witsnews
More WSSD news
|
