Challenges and opportunities posed by a major factor of global change — and creative ways of responding

Online version of a paper by Ted Trzyna published in 2007 by

IUCN (international Union for Conservation of Nature) and the

California Institute of Public Affairs / InterEnvironment

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SECTION 3 OF THE WEB VERSION (WEB PAGE URB-3r)

c.  SOUTH AFRICA’S CAPE REGION

Introduction

The Cape Floristic Region, which covers some 78,000 sq km of South Africa’s Western Cape Province, is the smallest of the world’s six so-called floral kingdoms. The region has some 9,600 species of indigenous plants, of which 7% are endemic (found nowhere else) and 1,406 are listed as facing a high risk of extinction. Like the California Floristic Province described below, it is one of 34 global biodiversity “hotspots” identified by Conservation International (2006). 

In the Cape region, the main threats to biodiversity from urbanization are within the city limits of Cape Town, which also happens to include some of the richest biodiversity in the region. Cape Town includes Table Mountain National Park, described below, and several reserves managed by the South African National Biodiversity Institute, one of which is described below. In addition, the city government administers 22 municipal protected areas and has adopted a comprehensive Biodiversity Strategy (Katzschner et al. 2005).

The population of metropolitan Cape Town has grown rapidly. In 1946, it was about 500,000; now it is estimated to be 3.5 million. Most of the growth is from migration from other parts of South Africa and, more recently, other African countries. Although South Africa’s per capita income is equivalent to U.S. $12,129, there are wide disparities between rich and poor. Among the country’s major cities, Cape Town has the widest such disparities.    

The Cape Floristic Region is one of five regions of the world with Mediterranean-type climates characterized by mild, rainy winters and hot, dry summers. Per unit of area, they face greater immediate threats than any other species-rich regions on earth (Rundel 2002, IUCN 2006d). The other such regions are in parts of Australia and Chile; the California Floristic Province of Mexico and the USA (the subject of another case study in this paper), and in and around the Mediterranean Basin. 

The main threats from urbanization to protected areas in Cape Town are urban infill and encroachment from informal settlements. Crime is also a serious problem. At the edges of the city, and further afield, second-home, retirement, and tourism development is increasing.

Table Mountain National Park

Table Mountain National Park (IUCN Category II) is the most visited of the 22 protected areas administered by South African National Parks. It covers some 250 sq km of land and 1,000 sq km of sea and coastline around the Cape Peninsula. It includes Cape Town’s iconic Table Mountain, which rises 1,100 m above the ocean, and the Cape of Good Hope, which 500 years ago English navigator Sir Francis Drake called “The fairest cape in the whole circumference of the Earth.”

The park was established in 1998 out of a mosaic of lands owned by various public authorities. It is fragmented by privately owned land and bordered by some of the wealthiest residential areas of the city as well as seven “townships” (shantytowns). It is an “open-access park” with only three managed pay points. Visits are estimated to be 4 million annually, with one million paying visitors. The park is one of eight sites that comprise the Cape Floral Region Protected Areas World Heritage Site, established in 2004 (UNESCO 2006a).

Manager Brett Myrdal (2006) sees linking the park to the local economy as his main challenge. Tourism is the “lead sector of Cape Town’s economy,” and the park “protects the backbone” of that economy. The park commissioned the University of Cape Town to do a study of the park’s environmental, economic, and social contributions to the city (Standish and Boting 2006). 

There is a major emphasis on reaching out to the poor. Employment and life-skills training is provided to people from neighboring shantytowns. Land was released for housing to reverse incursions from townships, and the park has a partnership with the city to manage low-income public housing on the park’s urban edge. 

When it was established, the main threats to the park were from invasive species of alien plants and animals. However, invasives are now largely under control thanks to much labor-intensive work paid for by a national employment program and international sources. 

Now, the major threat to the park is crime. Although not all crime is committed by residents of neighboring shantytowns, and certainly very few shantytown residents are criminals, employing such residents for short-term tasks such as fence-building, trail maintenance, and clearance of invasive plants has had the perverse effect of showing them where to hide and what there is to take. The crimes committed are mainly limited to pickpocketing, breaking into visitors’ cars, or stealing park property, but there have also been violent assaults on hikers (IOL 2006). Such incidents are tragic in themselves but, once they get reported in the international press, they can have devastating consequences for places like Cape Town, whose economies are so dependent on foreign tourism. In response to rising crime, the park is deploying dog patrols and visitor safety officers, and closed-circuit television is being installed in high-use areas.

Fire in this ecosystem is a natural phenomenon needed periodically to maintain biodiversity. However, fire is always a problem along any wildland-urban interface. In the Cape region, it is an increasing threat because of arson and climate change (the climate is becoming warmer and drier).

There is crime of a different sort along the coast, poaching of beige abalone (Haliotis midae), a shellfish locally called perlemoen. Although some commercial harvesting of this species of abalone is permitted, most of it is taken illegally, frozen or dried, and exported, almost entirely to China, where it commands high prices for its supposed aphrodisiac qualities. Although local divers harvest the abalone, this lucrative trade is controlled by a crime syndicate based in China which is also involved in selling illegal drugs in South Africa. The urban location makes both illegal activities harder to detect.  Park and other government officials try to control abalone poaching, and confiscate hundreds of thousands of specimens each year. However, some local conservationists believe more could be done by listing the species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known as CITES (WWF-SA 2003). Discussions are ongoing.  

TMNP’s primary partner is Cape Town’s municipal government. The park seeks to help the city meet its own objectives, while the city provides funding and in-kind support. The park is also reaching out to civil society groups, including through an advisory forum that has working groups on different issues.

Myrdal and his colleagues want to have the Cape Town community as a whole understand that the park is “an essential part of Cape Town’s urban economic engine,” and that “urban protected areas are not ‘a lost space for development’ but an ‘asset for the cities that have them, offering potential competitive advantage over other cities.”  

Edith Stephens Wetland Park

Edith Stephens Wetland Park is one of several small nature reserves on the Cape Town lowlands known as the Cape Flats. Once a mosaic of dunes and marshes, the flats are now fragmented by industry, farming, and high-density residential neighborhoods. These neighborhoods include shantytowns without proper supply of water, electricity, or sanitation. In them, unemployment rates are over 40%, and up to 75% of residents live below South Africa’s poverty line, which is equivalent to about U.S. $1.50 a day.

Still, there remain some 1,800 indigenous plant species on the flats, 76 of them endemic to the area. The Stephens Park, now nearly 40 ha in extent, was created in 1955 by what has become the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) to protect an aquatic fern, Isoetes capensis, that occurs only at this site, as well as several other threatened plants. Now nearly surrounded by urban development, the park could have been regarded as a problem. Instead, SANBI saw it as an opportunity.

The park is the base for Cape Flats Nature, a partnership of five organizations: SANBI and Cape Action for People and the Environment, both of them units of the national government; the City of Cape Town; and two NGOs. Founded in 2002, Cape Flats Nature works at several sites on the flats by “building bridges between people and nature; demonstrating benefits from conservation for the surrounding communities, particularly areas where incomes are low and living conditions are poor; and encouraging local leadership for conservation action.” It catalyses on-the-ground conservation management; facilitates access to “outdoor classrooms” for curriculum-based environmental education; encourages use of urban natural areas for recreation and teaching about traditional healing practices; and contributes to job creation through clearing of invasive plant species and encouraging local economic development (CFN 2006). In an article in The Urban Imperative, SANBI’s George Davis (2005) describes the social and environmental context of Cape Flats Nature, how the initiative evolved, and lessons learned. The most critical lesson, he believes, has been the importance of identifying, supporting, training, and encouraging conservation leadership within local communities.     

Behind the scenes in Cape Town, there are controversies over places like the Edith Stephens Wetland Park. These controversies reflect a division in the conservation movement between those who support investing money to save highly endemic species in what are sometimes called “postage-stamp” or “flowerpot” reserves, and those who argue for concentrating on protecting large-scale landscapes, where natural ecosystems demonstrably have a better chance of surviving global change. 

Adam Welz (2006), a graduate student at the University of Cape Town, thinks both small- and large-scale protected areas are important in such urban contexts. The reserves on the Cape Flats, as well as private gardens and other patches of ground planted with indigenous species, are key to movement of insects and birds needed for pollination. Cape Town, he thinks, is a good place to experiment with making the “urban matrix more permeable and hospitable to wild species.” One problem, he says, is that “maps of green and white don’t account for the middle mix.” He draws on the work of Michael Rosenzweig, author of Win-Win Ecology (2003, 1), who promotes “reconciliation ecology” as an alternative to “reservation ecology” and “restoration ecology.” Reconciliation ecology tries to construct new ecological niches to replace those human activity has destroyed.  

Some argue that plant species endemic to small areas of the Cape Flats could easily be wiped out by drought or by winter floods that have become more intense as natural and agricultural land has been converted to urban uses. But in the case of the Stephens Park, and many similar small urban nature reserves around the world, this is almost beside the point. Their function is not only protecting species but reconnecting people to nature. There are many reasons for reconnecting people to their natural heritage. In Cape Town, most of these have to do with the well-being of local people. However, those interested in large-scale conservation, including protected areas far from any city, should take note of another reason: Table Mountain National Park is clearly visible from the Cape Flats, but most people living on the flats never go there. However, they do vote for members of parliament who make important decisions about all of South Africa’s protected areas.

Two other Cape Town initiatives must be mentioned. At its headquarters in the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, the South African National Biodiversity Institute has built a three-story Centre for Biodiversity Conservation which houses offices of South African conservation groups, the world headquarters of the Global Invasive Species Programme, and branches of such international organizations as IUCN, TRAFFIC, and Conservation International, as well as meeting rooms. The idea is that proximity promotes communication and synergy.

In addition, an urban biosphere reserve has been proposed for Cape Town (Stanvliet et al. 2004); this concept is described under São Paolo below.

Web sites

Botanical Society of South Africa: http://www.botanicalsociety.org.za

Cape Action for People and the Environment: http://www.capeaction.org.za

Cape Flats Nature: http://www.capeflatsnature.org

South African National Biodiversity Institute: http://www.sanbi.org

South African National Parks: http://www.sanparks.org