This is a summary of the fourth of five cross-cutting themes outlined in the book Contested Karoo: Interdisciplinary perspectives on change and continuity in South Africa’s drylands, edited by Sherryl Walker and M. Timm Hoffman. For an introductory post summarising all five themes, click here. A post on the last theme will follow soon.
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The land use changes under way in the Karoo have drawn renewed attention to the need to conserve the region’s vulnerable natural resource base, including its unique biodiversity. While preserving biodiversity is globally recognised as a vital issue, translating this into effective measures in marginalised and isolated regions like the Karoo is a major challenge.
The development of protected areas
A major strategy for converving biodiversity has been the development of a protected area network incorporating national parks and nature reserves. Much of the ecological damage to the Karoo was done in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The search for diamonds along Namaqualand’s west coast, the extraction of asbestos around Prieska, the extensive cultivation of marginal lands, and the overgrazing of Karoo rangelands all contributed to high levels of degradation that are still evident in some parts of the region today.
In response, South Africa developed a set of excellent laws aimed at protecting the environment from the worst excesses of unsustainable development. The introduction of systematic conservation planning tools and new environmental legislation in South Africa since 1994 has resulted in a significant increase in the area under formal and informal conservation protection.
Appreciation of the Karoo’s unique environmental and cultural heritage and the importance of preserving this for future generations is growing. However, tensions remain between those who wish to exploit the natural resources of the region through extractivist practices, with minimal attention to its environmental costs, and those who promote less intrusive approaches to economic development, such as conservation, tourism and sustainable livestock production.
In recent years, the ruthless plundering of unique botanical specimens in the Succulent Karoo has opened a new frontline in the battle to protect biodiversity. Significant financial input from the international community, the state and private trusts such as the Leslie Hill Succulent Karoo Trust has resulted in an exponential increase in the area under formal protection
In the Nama Karoo biome, several important large mammal species such as mountain zebra and black rhinoceros have formed the focus for protection efforts, while the expansion of ecotourism and wildlife farming has added significantly to the conservation estate.
Although the initial emphasis in growing the protected area network was on national parks and nature reserves, additional approaches have been promoted. Over the past 20 years, several ‘mega reserves’, in the form of World Heritage Sites, Biosphere Reserves and Protected Environments, have been established. Local farmers are now allowed to graze their herds in the Richtersveld contractual park. And the Gouritz Cluster Biosphere Reserve incorporates different levels of conservation, with core protected zones bordered by areas where sustainable farming can take place.
Private land owners are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of looking after the natural resources on their farms, and a series of stewardship arrangements has contributed significantly to the expansion of protected areas in the Karoo.
Limits to protected area strategy
These gains constitute a major success story for the conservation of the biodiversity of the Karoo. However, there are limits to the protected area strategy. Not all analysts agree that exclusive conservation areas are an appropriate land use option, particularly in a region where poverty and deep-seated inequities around land ownership are so entrenched.
Among others, analysts have raised issues around environmental justice in the Namaqualand region with regard to the exclusion of people from their historic lands and the sealing off of protected areas against other forms of land use.
Livestock losses from the depredations of jackals and caracal are also a source of conflict between conservationists and neighbouring land owners, among others on the borders of the Meerkat National Park.
Across Africa, critics have condemned protected areas as catering primarily to global or national elites at the expense of local people and their needs. There are calls from some quarters to abandon this model of conservation altogether, in favour of strategies which involve the co-utilisation and/or co-management of natural resources by surrounding communities.
In response, conservationists argue that without formally protected areas in the Karoo, large-scale losses in biodiversity will follow as a result of habitat loss from expanded agriculture, mining and hunting, and the illegal trade in plants and animals.
The authors write: ‘The consequences of this loss go far beyond the disappearance of individual, iconic species, and the absence of recreational spaces for middle-class publics: they undermine the foundations of the ecosystems on which human life depends.’
A search for new approaches
Conservationists and the state’s environmental agencies therefore still view the protected area model of biodiversity conservation as having an essential place in the spectrum of options for the long-term protection of habitats and species. However, finding models of conservation that both sustain biodiversity and benefit local people in meaningful ways remains an ongoing challenge.
New policy considerations around the sustainable use of biodiversity that give greater access to the natural resources of protected areas by surrounding communities could influence how conservation land is used in the future.
The study also confirms the importance of working with local knowledge in protecting natural resources, whether inside or outside protected areas. At the same time, the conservation of natural resources has to be recognised as a basic principle of land use, not a sectoral concern of environmentalists in selected sites. This must also mean that all land users need to be held accountable for how they utilise the land over which they exercise stewardship responsibilities.
The authors conclude: ‘This requires far more effective enforcement of South Africa’s environmental management and water legislation. It also requires meaningful mitigation of the historical and future impacts of mining on the environment, which remains woefully inadequate throughout the Karoo.’
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FEATURE IMAGE: Kokerboom, Gannabos, near Nieuwoudtville, 2017. (Stephanie Borchardt)