The author is Director, Urban Conservation Unit, South African National Biodiversity Institute. He is based in Cape Town.

Citation: This paper may be cited as: [Author.] 2005. [Article title.] In Ted Trzyna, ed., The Urban Imperative. California Institute of Public Affairs, Sacramento, California.

This paper follows a few particular threads in the growth of a vision for biodiversity conservation in metropolitan Cape Town. It focuses on some remnant ecosystems on the Cape Flats, the eastern part of the city where poverty and the alienation of people from civic well-being are serious challenges to the establishment of viable protected areas. We talk about a history that provides a backdrop to the current challenges, we explore some of the initiatives that seem to offer hope, and we extract some of the lessons learned during the course of the work. There are many other initiatives pulling in the same direction, driven by dedicated individuals and agencies. And there are many communities anxious to incorporate biodiversity conservation in their lives as a lever for a better future. We hope that Cape Town can contribute to a movement that can find the synergy of a win-win collaboration between biodiversity conservation and sustainable urban development. The real challenge will be to extract the principles that can be applied to other situations and other cities that do not have the advantage of legendary natural beauty and a national park at their core.

It was really only in the latter half of the 20th century that the notion of conserving our natural environment through establishing protected areas took hold (Dixon and Sherman 1990). For the pioneering decision-makers, this was probably driven more by the value of rarity than by a need to be cautious about the environmental underpinnings of human existence. For most of historical time, managers of the human environment have been reasonably confident about the collective technical skills available to manipulate and enhance nature for sustainable provision of resources such as food, water, and other essential services. This confidence is nowhere more evident than in cities, where the skills of planners, architects, and engineers have long been regarded as the appropriate reference set for decision-making in maintenance of the urban human environment.

Although we might never know exactly how dependent we are on the deep workings of nature and the biophysical components that comprise its systems, there is a growing human respect for the complexity of nature that even science is hard-pressed to explain. Over the past couple of decades a new understanding has emerged about human impacts on the global dynamics of climate systems, and on the resilience of dryland systems to the process of desertification. In a later flurry of introspection, we now also start to see reasons for adopting a precautionary approach to the protection of biodiversity.

A danger that we face, however, is that the wisdom emerging at this late stage may not find the appropriate place to take root. Cities are now where the bulk of humanity lives, and they have for decades, centuries, and even millennia, been where the rich and powerful reside. They are where decisions are made about human economies, and they are where debates about governance occur. Leaders in these fields are not traditionally people with much exposure to concepts of biodiversity and its possible role in sustainable human environments. With the growth of modern cities, and the increasing pressures of people on urban environments, it is likely that biodiversity will become an ever-receding and quaint concept in the minds of future-decision makers. In the developing world there is an additional problem of poverty. If direct evidence of nature is absent in any influential way from the lives of the well-off, then the poor are even more prone to this blind-spot. And for Africa it is the state of poverty where the bulk of its citizens are trapped, where the majority of voters subsist, and from whose ranks the future leaders must arise.

Cape Town is known as South Africa’s Mother City. It is the oldest European settlement in the country, and is blessed with a diversity of nature and humanity that make it an exciting place to be. In addition, it is one of only a few cities in the world to boast a national park within its metropolitan boundaries. It is, in general, a city that is very difficult to separate from its natural environment on the Cape Peninsula. For those who know it, the park at its heart is based on Table Mountain, a significant sandstone mountain of 1100 meters altitude, surrounded entirely by metropolitan land and the trappings of city life. The city also has coastal features that are a constant reminder of the natural world and the marine resources that contribute to its economy. And accessible to most Cape Town residents, it is the rich floristic biodiversity that has caught the imagination of many commentators, including the economists who see nature-based tourism as a significant point of economic growth for the city. For the biologist, indigenous plant biodiversity on the Cape Peninsula is measured at more than 2500 higher plant species.

Socially the city is a blend of races and cultures that combine the vibrancy of Africa, the contemplative prayers of Islam, and the savoir faire of Mediterranean Europe. But it is also a place where people have suffered the privations of colonialism and apartheid, and where it is almost impossible not to confront abject poverty on a daily basis. While the pristine uplands of Table Mountain and other well-preserved areas of Table Mountain National Park are a strong draw-card for tourists, the lowlands to the east of the city are in far worse shape. These are the Cape Flats, once an interesting mosaic of dunes and wetlands, but now highly fragmented by a wide range of pressures associated with the footprint of a developing-world city. However, in spite of the impacts of industry, farming, and high-density living – 20 percent of Cape Town’s residents live in informal settlements without proper supply of water, electricity, or sanitation – there remain some 1800 indigenous higher plant species, 76 of them endemic to the area, growing in a broken patchwork of remnant ecosystems. This fragmentation, unfortunately, means that 131 of these species have been listed as rare and endangered, setting an onus for protection on the agencies of conservation. The pressures that undermine their protection are immense.

Of the 3.5 million people who live in metropolitan Cape Town, the poorest live on the Cape Flats. Unemployment rates are upward of 40 percent, and even where bread-winners find jobs, they are relatively insecure, and pay very poorly. Up to 75 percent of residents in these poorer areas live below the poverty datum line of 352 South African Rands (around U.S. $45) per adult per month. Breadwinners in the poorest third of such communities may bring in less than R100 per month (about $13). For Cape Town as a whole, the poorest 40 percent of the population earn less than 4 percent of the total income generated, while the wealthiest 20 percent command 70 percent of this amount (SALRDU 2003).

In this paper we will concentrate on the very special lowland areas of the Cape Flats, and will attempt to address this paradox of biodiversity wealth and human poverty on the Cape Flats in a positive way.

In order to move forward with collective self-knowledge, it is helpful to recognize the history that has delivered us to our current position. The Cape Town conservation ethic has a particular bias in its origin. It has emerged from a caring sector of middle-class society, more recently linked to a Victorian perspective of the role that nature plays in the quality of human life. The value of this perspective, which has also accompanied important scientific endeavors (such as Darwin’s evolutionary model), is not in dispute. The challenge, however, is to extend the conceptual ownership of biodiversity heritage to include the numerous other perspectives that are embedded in the extreme diversity of Cape Town society.

European scientific interest in the unique biodiversity of the Cape goes back a long way, to include contemporaries of Linnaeus. Its history is peppered with eminent explorers and botanists whose mission it was to catalog the biota of the globe and so contribute to a complete knowledge of the natural world. But of course that is not where human interest in (what was to become known as) the Cape Floristic Kingdom began. South Africa’s first people, the hunter-gathering Khoi San, were using and managing the flora and fauna of the region long before Latin binomials started being attached to the Proteas, Ericas, and Restios of the Fynbos vegetation (Davis and Wynberg 1998). With time, however, access to these resources became limited for these hunter-gatherers. Between about 2000 and 1500 years ago the Khoi-khoin pastoralists arrived in the area with their livestock, and proceeded to displace their forerunners. Nevertheless, until the first substantial European settlement was established in the mid-17th century by the agents of the Dutch East India Company, life around Table Mountain was heavily dependent on indigenous biodiversity, and was probably eminently sustainable.

With the establishment of produce gardens to supply ships plying the trade route between Europe and the Far East around the southern tip of Africa, the real impacts of human occupation started. Fruit and vegetable gardens were established by the Dutch East India Company on the better shale-based soils at the foot of the mountain, and where intrusive granite outcrops provided the right substrate, vineyards were planted. The area destined to become metropolitan Cape Town was progressively transformed into a colonial city, catering for European needs and tastes. It is true that not all indigenous biodiversity was dismissed as irrelevant by the settlers. A number of local herbs became part of the medicine cabinet, and even some of the indigenous plants joined the list of species used for dietary input, such as the nectar collected from Protea repens, and the "bitter-almond" fruit of Brabejum stellatifolium. Timber of the slow-growing yellow-woods (Podocarpus species) was favored for building, and these species were the first to be offered protection against over-exploitation as early as 1658 (Karsten 1951). As European colonial history was being written during the Dutch occupation of the 17th and 18th centuries, indigenous people and their custodianship of the local biodiversity were displaced by the settlers and the slaves they imported from Asia. By the time the British took over in the late 18th century, there was little to be seen of the original stewards of the land. Natural land on the mountain and around the city was slowly incorporated into the economic base of Cape Town, with considerable effort going into establishing timber plantations, building dams, clearing land for farms, and developing industrial and civic infrastructure. Fortunately, the middle-class Victorian interest in natural history played its part in slowing the attrition of natural systems, and an underlying appreciation for the spectacular biodiversity of the Cape Town area kept the way open for the emergence of a number of protective actions.

This was some of the background to the establishment of the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in 1913, a scientific repository for living plant specimens that were of interest to botanical scholars of the nearby University of Cape Town. Enthusiasm for the natural history of the Cape Town area was also reflected in the founding of the Cape Natural History Club in the early 1930s by a botanist, Edith Stephens, who was later to ensure the survival of a significant piece of wetland on the Cape Flats by purchasing it and donating it to Kirstenbosch for safe-keeping (more of this later). And countless other actions by citizens with both an intellectual appreciation of biodiversity and access to the corridors of decision-making, contributed to the conservation of the city’s natural heritage.

The broader Cape Town population may not have been specifically excluded from partaking in some of these activities that supported the protection of biodiversity for its own sake. In reality, however, the culture of class-based segregation offered the poorer sectors of society very little access to most of it, and in any case they usually had more pressing survival issues to deal with.

Further alienation of the poorer citizens from the city’s natural heritage came during the era of apartheid, a race-based separatist system instituted by the National Party when it came to power in 1948. Colonial-style segregation then became part of the statute book, and in 1950 the Group Areas Act was promulgated, dictating where people of different ethnic origins may or may not live. The main impact of this legislation on Cape Town was translocation of so-called "Coloured" (people of mixed race) communities away from the mountain where centuries of organic city growth had placed them, and onto the lowlands of the Cape Flats. Formerly, the Cape Flats had been a naturalist’s paradise with its dunes, wetlands, and richness of plant biodiversity. By the time that it became an apartheid dumping ground, much of its natural condition had already been lost to farming, and to land "reclamation" through dumping of builder’s rubble. Invasion by alien vegetation (most notably the Australian Port Jackson willow, Acacia saligna, and in later years by kikuyu grass, Penisetum clandestinum), also played an important role in this degradation. As we will see, there were some remnant systems worth saving, but economic hardship, political disempowerment and a burgeoning crime rate on the Cape Flats left little appetite for local communities to become involved in the appreciation and protection of this nature.

Another piece of apartheid social engineering covered the control of people’s movements through legislation of "influx control." This regulated very tightly the movement of Black people into the area, mostly people from rural Xhosa communities in the Eastern Cape. Cape Town was designated a "Coloured preference area." A small number of Black townships were permitted to be established on the Cape Flats for the sake of providing cheap labor where expedient. All in all there was very little incentive for the second and third class citizens of the Cape Flats to feel inspired about their natural environment.

When the apartheid machinery started falling apart during the 1980s, the Cape Flats became a veritable war-zone. Influx control was abandoned, and masses of job-seekers came flooding into the city in search of work in an attempt to escape the rural poverty that had developed in the apartheid homelands of the Eastern Cape. Informal settlements sprang up on all available land, and at the same time the violent struggle for liberation moved into top gear. Civic needs like housing, education, and even employment often took second place to the political struggle. The conservation of biodiversity was not remotely a contender for the people’s agenda of the eighties.

But as the structures of apartheid crumbled under the combined impacts of civil unrest and economic impracticality, the way was opened for better planning in the city. Thoughtful and dedicated urban planners started to see some light, and gained the confidence to start building a more strategic vision. The die-hard conservationists also hadn’t given up. In a joint effort between the University of the Western Cape, the Botanical Society of South Africa, and the City of Cape Town, a survey of conservation priorities on the Cape Flats was undertaken (McDowell and Low 1990). This was a comprehensive survey of 35 sites, which laid the groundwork for a subsequent study undertaken by the Botanical Society and the City of Cape Town (Maze and Rebelo 1999). This latter report has contributed immeasurably to an exciting new era of conservation planning within what was to become the city’s Integrated Metropolitan Environmental Policy (IMEP). In turn this policy has provided the basis for an ambitious metropolitan biodiversity network that puts protected areas right at the heart of civic awareness (Maze, et al. 2002).

For all South Africans, 1994 marked an almost miraculous turning point away from a course of social meltdown, to a direction in which almost anything seemed possible. That was the first general election in which all South Africans were given the opportunity to vote. Now, a decade later, the magic solutions to poverty, housing, education, and crime remain elusive, but it has been a period of some extraordinarily creative thinking and planning. From the perspective of oppressed communities, biodiversity conservation during the apartheid era was seen largely as an elitist plaything, characterized by trendy bush gear, expensive 4x4s, and White supremacy. But with the return of a democratic voice, claims for a stake in the South African natural heritage are now being articulated, ranging from economic use of exploitable resources to the protection of cultural landscapes. The work done during the dark era by dedicated amateur and professional conservationists also rapidly fell back into perspective, and has become part of the instrumental legacy for the protection of a common biodiversity heritage.

Education has long been seen as a key to the long-term success of environmental protection. A major player in environmental education in Cape Town has long been the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, now part of the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI, which has succeeded the National Botanical Institute, NBI, and has a broader brief). Although in earlier times it served more as an adjunct to curriculum-based Nature Study, Kirstenbosch picked up the challenge during the 1980s to provide a broader experience for environmental understanding. An ever-increasing number of schools were encouraged to visit the botanical garden for this first-hand experience and, in the mid-90s, SANBI launched a dedicated Outreach program. The two key elements to this were: (a) a bus that would annually shuttle up to 20,000 disadvantaged learners to the garden; and (b) an outreach horticulture initiative. In the latter, trained horticulturists engaged with schools in poorer communities to establish indigenous gardens in their grounds, and provided the training for learners, staff and parents to manage these, as well as to take the ethos of greening further into the communities.

This program continues, and is now linked to many other initiatives to extend horticultural skills to other fields. The general movement now includes collaboration with NGOs and community-based organizations busy with the development of food gardens, the propagation of medicinal herbs, and even the establishment of gardens that demonstrate the wide range of useful indigenous plants that could be cultivated on a domestic level. The culture of valuing biodiversity for the economic benefits it can provide plays an important part in its protection. Some of this action is taking place at the Edith Stephens Wetland Park, an amalgamation of city-owned land with the gift that Edith Stephens made to Kirstenbosch in the mid-1950s (see above, and more below, about this site).

South Africa’s economy is not yet strong enough to lift its citizens out of under-development and the hole dug by colonialism and apartheid. Situations of dire poverty are likely to persist for some time to come. One of the primary challenges of the new South African democracy has been to put measures in place that might find the starting point to break this cycle of poverty and disadvantage.

In an early and ground-breaking initiative, the national Department of Water Affairs and Forestry established a program that created jobs, raised environmental awareness, and alleviated poverty, while at the same time addressing one of the most pressing problems threatening the national water supply – the invasion of water catchments by alien invasive plants. This was the Working for Water program. It was launched in 1995 with the aim of creating 18,000 jobs nationally every year for previously disadvantaged and unemployed individuals, allocating 60 percent of these jobs to women, 20 percent to youth (persons under the age of 23 years), and 2 percent to disabled persons. An outgrowth of this program is the Working for Wetlands program, which operates along the same lines of job creation, training, and environmental restoration. Local communities on the Cape Flats are now able to assist with the restoration of endangered wetlands while generating some much-needed income. At the Edith Stephens Wetland Park, engagement in this program has provided work for approximately 20 people for a 3-year period, accompanied by skills training and awareness-raising in local conservation issues. This particular project, implemented by SANBI, is only one of a growing number of similar initiatives in the city to extract economic benefit from actions linked to the maintenance of biodiversity.

In a statement promoting tourism as an arena for economic growth in South Africa, it has been asserted that for every eight foreign visitors, a permanent job is created in the hospitality industry. Cape Town is fortunate to be a prime destination for visitors for a number of reasons. One of these is the highly appealing natural beauty within and adjacent to the city, including the Table Mountain National Park inside its boundaries. The appeal of the Cape Flats might not be as strong for visitors as a cable-car ride to the top of Table Mountain, or standing at the edge of a cliff looking at the pounding surf at the tip of the Cape Peninsula. Nevertheless, the subtleties of finding rare and endangered plant species in remnant wetlands, engaging with traditional healers about the indigenous herbs that are part of their pharmacopoeia, or bird-watching in the dune slacks of the Cape Flats, present real opportunities for a community-driven tourism industry targeting niche-market travelers. These components of a local biodiversity-based economy are starting to emerge as possibilities in experimental tourism routes.

Over the years that local government, the NGO sector, and various other bodies have attempted to establish systems to protect urban biodiversity, a number of tools was set in place for a concerted and synchronized effort. In this section we will tell you about the emergence of a project called Cape Flats Nature, which addresses some of the issues in a creative way, and which provides optimistic lessons for a new approach. The project took shape in response to many efforts that came before it, but most significantly it was enabled by the City of Cape Town’s shaping of its Biodiversity Network (see the discussion above for a profile of the project).

Cape Flats Nature (originally called "Mainstreaming Biodiversity on the Cape Flats" to denote the intention of making biodiversity everybody’s everyday business) could only be launched once a number of items were in place. Its main objective was to set in place a mechanism for the protection of Cape Flats biodiversity by engaging with people rather than erecting fences. It was therefore necessary to have some clearly identified sites of high biodiversity value, as well as some well-motivated local communities who would be willing to provide champions for the cause. The Biodiversity Network provided the former, while the activities of the SANBI Outreach program (and other similar initiatives) had started drawing people into the realm of conservation awareness. The initial scope of the project was to focus on four pilot sites, strategically chosen from the biodiversity network. For sustainability, it was also recognized that a solid institutional basis was necessary. Initially this presented a problem. Differences between potential players and their mandates for either conservation or community development varied so widely that it was difficult to find a starting point. A final mix – and probably not the only combination that would have worked – was influenced by people and organizations involved in the steering and project development process. This process comprised local government (the Environmental Management and Planning Department of City of Cape Town), a conservation NGO (the Botanical Society of South Africa), a conservation funder (WWF-South Africa’s Table Mountain Fund), and an implementing partner (NBI, now SANBI). Since then the project has also aligned itself with a bioregional planning and funding agent (Cape Action for People and the Environment, or C.A.P.E.). This combination of partners has provided a very useful level of synergy, which reaches into a diverse set of institutional corners, and can often circumvent barriers that are bureaucratically impenetrable to insiders.

The project team initially comprised only two people: a project manager and a communications manager. Their first objective was to bridge the people-related gaps that had frustrated many conservation efforts in the past. They were to concentrate on: (1) ensuring that the institutional mix remained in neutral territory and that no issues of turf undermined the common vision; (2) building a forum which allowed communities adjacent to the pilot sites to interact meaningfully with the partners and other public service institutions; (3) finding ways of encouraging communities to enter the forum and assume leadership roles in decision-making about conservation issues; and (4) building bridges for communication about conservation issues between communities still disabled by the impacts of apartheid.

Cognizant of the need to seed community involvement in output-related action, the first exercise by Cape Flats Nature was to conduct a series of participative planning workshops with communities and stakeholders at all of the four pilot sites. During these sessions community ideas and needs were articulated and used as the basis for action plans. The approach appeared to work, and a realistic program of action was drawn up by the project in collaboration with community champions. The plan included all pilot sites, and local organizations were tasked with making things happen.

While the outcome was by no means serendipitous, the modus operandi does reflect, to some extent, grasped opportunities and the harvesting of some "low-hanging fruits." The principle of "starting with what is available and what is possible" was a filter against getting caught in the quagmire of existing problems that were found to sink similar initiatives in the past.

The work done in bringing together the institutional elements of development and conservation may have been a largely systematic process, but the harnessing of community energy was perhaps something that was facilitated by the social renewal following a long and hard-fought liberation struggle. It is also likely that the intervening years of democracy had allowed the negativity of apartheid rule to dissipate, and offered people the opportunity to be more creative about assuming control and responsibility. The process has been both inspiring and productive.

Cape Flats Nature, because of the pivotal role that it is currently playing in facilitating the convergence of city planning and conservation management, is able to provide a yardstick for a number of assessments. Here we provide an analysis of the process under the three headings that have been most meaningful to date.

During the consultation phase, local communities often pointed out that meetings were well known to them, but that little had happened in the past to provide tangible outputs. Over the years considerable effort had been put into the setting up of task teams, committees, and working groups, yet little other than the production of reports and meeting minutes had been achieved. The partnership structure of Cape Flats Nature, and accessibility of seed funding not tied to local government budgets, allowed for the flexible initiation of small but specific activities that focused on public involvement in biodiversity conservation actions. The approach was to start small and keep up the momentum of action, devolving decision-making and planning as much as possible to the community stakeholders. For activities to have an impact and carry forward to further action, they must fit in with agendas set by the community forums. Clear parameters also need to be set to keep activities within the critical realm of biodiversity appreciation and conservation, and not to lose focus by being subsumed in other important development priorities. Flexibility and openness to opportunity are also key factors to maintaining momentum. It is proving to be true that action can also attract further action, and that funding and economic opportunity is often associated with this approach. This principle of leverage is well known in other sectors, and could play an important role in bootstrapping economically viable conservation action in marginalized communities.

With the well-known history of political struggle on the Cape Flats, and the depth to which communities were involved in that often-violent struggle to regain basic human rights, there is a fundamental need in development to concentrate on the most pressing issues of health, housing, employment, and education. The conservation of biodiversity, as has been pointed out, was mostly seen during the struggle years as an elitist issue with little bearing on the immediate goals. Cape Flats Nature has adopted the approach that the time is now right for an open and honest setting of conservation agendas, and to engage community participants by inspiring them to adopt the protection of biodiversity for their own reasons. This could include it being a vehicle for education, an opportunity for involvement in nature-based tourism, job-creation through environmental maintenance, or merely improvement of the natural environment for a better quality of life. From this, an appreciation of biodiversity itself is seen to emerge and take its place in the community dialogue.

Another important aspect of setting agendas is for communities to adopt a problem-solving approach. By clearly identifying environmentally related problems, and then engaging the range of expertise available via Cape Flats Nature, action plans are more easily arrived at than if there were no specific problem to solve. Crime is a problem on the coastal dunes of False Bay, unsustainable use of medicinal herbs is a problem, invasive alien vegetation is a problem for the natural systems, lack of inspiration in the classroom is a problem that exacerbates under-achievement and the hold that gangsterism has over learners. Communities know what they want, and conservation of biodiversity can sometimes provide a starting point for a more complete solution. But the plan must be based on community-made decisions.

Perhaps the most critical lesson learned to date is the importance of developing leadership within local communities, and at all levels. Endeavors that are important for local community life require both inspired champions and efficient managers. If biodiversity conservation is to become a self-sustaining enterprise on the Cape Flats, then it is not sufficient to elicit the gasps of wonder at parasitic plants growing in the dunes, mole-snakes slithering through the grass, or plovers’ eggs camouflaged on little islands in the wetland. Leaders must be supported, trained, and encouraged to initiate action that will ensure the security of those species and their habitats, and to provide community groups with the option of stewardship. It is a long and many-stepped process, involving capacity building, education, and training, at the most fundamental levels. But it also means putting in place systems that can transfer the knowledge and enthusiasm that will provide the necessary popular support-base for leaders to do their work. Establishment of accessible conservation information and environmental education centers are essential, as are youth and teacher training programs supported by public and private foundations. And an open space system maintained by local government is the spatial framework within which this must happen. All of these are necessary investments to secure a future for biodiversity on the Cape Flats.

Many areas important for biodiversity conservation lie beyond the boundaries of protected areas. Biodiversity, apart from its role as a key functional component of the environmental matrix, biodiversity can also be of immense benefit as an agent for reconnecting people to their living environment and to their social responsibilities for its maintenance. An important challenge to the agencies of environmental protection – official, NGO, and informal – is to bridge the gaps in understanding, and to drive the empowerment of local communities for participation in the process. The remnants of natural systems in urban areas are often those most at risk of attrition into a state of unrecoverable degradation, and people can be the most effective buffer.

The ongoing suite of Cape Town initiatives, of which only a few strands are referred to in this paper, is providing a number of lessons from which conclusions can be drawn.

It may seem an unfair advantage that Cape Town has over most other cities, but its natural beauty and the obvious value that its biophysical attributes provide are perhaps object lessons for urban conservation in general. The underlying truth is that people appreciate nature for many reasons, and – given the opportunity – will find many ways to draw on it. This includes drawing on it as a resource that generates income for the local economy and enhances the quality of the local environment. The key is the community-engagement process. This needs to fit in with the appropriate social dynamic, and must draw community-controlled structures into the process of stewardship. An apparent advantage of having biodiversity conservation on local-community agendas is that effective community control over this usually less politically contested item can provide for better co-operation and collaboration between political factions and interest groups. Linking this civic involvement to outcome-based actions reinforces the positive cycle of drawing upon biodiversity as a force for social cohesion. Nature trails, for instance, will have domino effects for environmental education, crime reduction, ecosystem service provision, and civic pride. Elevating natural areas with special features to the status of formal protected areas can then start to play a role in local economies with regard to tourism, and contributions to natural heritage status.

It must be recognized, however, that there is a clear action-based starting point for whatever pathway is chosen. From the Cape Town experience, it is clear that a formal catalog of biodiversity resources, established by agencies with the necessary standing, provided the appropriate launching pad for many of the actions that followed. For cities that do not have the advantage of urban national parks such as Table Mountain in Cape Town, Tijuca in Rio de Janeiro, or Santa Monica Mountains in Los Angeles (McNeely 2001), the road might be longer, and the need for good marketing of biodiversity as a social need greater. It is probably the role of international conservation agencies to proactively drive this process until there is enough substance to ignite local public demand for biodiversity-based sustainability.

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Maze, K.E., and A.G. Rebelo. 1999. Core Conservation Areas on the Cape Flats. FCC Report 99/1. Botanical Society of South Africa, Cape Town.

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Roberts, D., M. Mander, and R. Boon. 2002. An urban challenge: Conserving biodiversity in the Ethekwini Municipality, KwaZulu-Natal. In Pierce, S.M., R.M. Cowling, T. Sandwith, and K. MacKinnon (eds.). Mainstreaming Biodiversity in Development. The World Bank, Washington, 79-87.

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