Working for Water

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Working for Water aims, among other things, to preserve the characteristic fynbos landscape

Working for Water (abbreviated: WfW ) is a South African government program for the removal of non-native plants. The program aims to regulate the water balance by removing unwanted plant species, protecting endangered native species and reducing poverty by primarily giving jobs to the long-term unemployed in the program. Since its establishment in 1995 by the responsible Department of Water Affairs and Forestry , more than one million hectares have been cleared of invasive plant species and around 20,000 people have been given work each year. With the start of the program, the South African government provided an annual budget of 480 million rand , with a term of 20 years. According to Andrew Balmford , Professor of Conservation Biology at Cambridge University , the program is said to be the largest program to combat invasive species in the world.

background

South Africa has an unusual variety of plants. With more than 20,000 species, the number of species found is roughly twice that of Europe. Two thirds of the species are endemic - they are not found anywhere else in the world. However, more than one in eight plant species is threatened. The reason for this high level of threat is, in addition to the conversion of natural areas by humans, primarily invasive plant species . These invasive plant species have a predominantly (but not exclusively) negative effect on fauna and the water balance.

A total of around 9,000 plant species have been introduced in South Africa. Of these introduced species, 200 species have proven to be problematic. These are mainly trees and bushes. These species include introduced pines such as the Monterey pine that invades the fynbos , various eucalyptus and opuntia that spread in the arid grasslands. In some coastal areas, pastures have proven to be problematic. The program is justified by the high damage that these 200 species in particular cause in South Africa. Investigations at the beginning of the program were able to show that invasive species had already spread to more than 100,000 square kilometers, one twelfth of the area of ​​South Africa. The water requirement of these plants was estimated at three cubic kilometers per year.

Effects of introduced species as a long-term problem

Most native plant species have a dormant period during the dry season. The introduced plant species recognized as problematic, on the other hand, are largely characterized by very extensive root systems and reach the groundwater better than native species. They grow taller than native plants and thus provide the regular bushfires with more food, which in turn means that they burn more intensely and, above all, hotter, which has a negative effect on the germination capacity of native plant seeds. The greater damage caused by these more intense brush fires also results in more erosion when the fire is followed by heavy rainfall.

The considerable soil erosion rates due to previous intensive cultivation, such as the cultivation of external crops ( e.g. Black Wattle ( Acacia mearnsii )), had an increasingly recognizable ecological and economic effect since the 1920s. The then Native Economic Commission explicitly addressed the deterioration in agricultural productivity, especially in the reserves, in its 1932 report. Based on the national economic view that was widespread at the time, one began to react to this situation with means of legislation ( Soil Erosion Act , 1932 and Native Trust and Land Act , 1936 as well as other laws).

The effects of water consumption by introduced tree species were discussed in South Africa as early as the 1920s. As early as the 1930s, the South African hydrologist Christiaan Lodewyk Wicht began to investigate the influence of pines and other tree species on the water level of rivers. In an article from 1937, he drew up a root cause analysis comparatively early on in relation to the complex interplay between forest stand, natural water balance, afforestation and their importance for the preservation of forest and agriculturally usable soils by reporting on a research project in the Jonkershoek area .

Since the work of Christiaan Lodewyk Wicht, the problem of the steadily growing water demand in South Africa on the one hand and the effects of afforestation measures and spreading invasive plants on the other hand on water production and its quality have been scientifically investigated. In the 1970s it was finally concluded that a stand of pine trees can reduce the water level in rivers by half.

In the area of ​​today's Mpumalanga province , individual rivers fell completely dry after the grassland was replaced by a mixture of pine and eucalyptus. The results of these long-term investigations suggested that invasive plant species penetrating the mountains of the Cape is seriously endangering the available water supply. At that time, the South African government had already reacted and regulated by law that invasive plants that settled in the vicinity of approved plantations were to be removed. From 1970 to 1974, invasive plant species were removed in large-scale programs over an area of ​​350 square kilometers. Research has confirmed the positive effects of such removal programs.

Creation and execution of the program

Working for Water emerged in the 1990s as a result of an initiative by fynbos ecologists. The ecologists compared the costs of building a dam with the costs of an intensified program to eradicate invasive species and were able to prove that the costs per liter of water obtained were 14 percent lower than what could be obtained by building a dam. In 1995 they succeeded in convincing the Minister for Water Affairs, Kader Asmal , of this idea. A key argument was that the program could create thousands of jobs. In June 1995, the South African Cabinet first approved $ 7 million to begin such a program. Within a few months, the program was expanded as it was seen as an appropriate means of addressing unemployment in the country. For Working for Water, people without training who had been unemployed for a long time were specifically employed. Around half of the positions were given to women. Most of the people who worked for Working for Water came from rural structurally weak regions where otherwise no work could be offered.

In the first eight months, 6,000 people were employed in the program and 300 square kilometers were cleared of invasive plants. The program was also accompanied by targeted advertising measures. Everyone in the program wore yellow T-shirts and a PR campaign publicized the program to a wider audience. Very soon the program received additional funding from foreign donors such as the World Bank . For the period 1996-1997 the annual budget available for this program was $ 19 million; in 1998 it had increased to $ 54 million. In 2010 the budget of the program was for the first time USD 100 million, and 8,000 square kilometers were cleared of invasive plant species every year. Of these 8,000 square kilometers, around a fifth were subjected to such a treatment for the first time, while newly grown invasive plants were removed from the remaining area.

The practices used to eradicate the invasive plants include mechanical, chemical and biological methods. A total of around 300 projects in all South African provinces are involved in related activities. This includes the removal of unwanted plants through laborious manual labor, mechanical work in the bark area and trunk injections, forms of biological control (curbing the reproduction rate) and the use of herbicides.

criticism

One of the things that Balmford criticizes about the program is that the effects and successes are not measured systematically enough. Another cost driving factor is that fire is only used to a very limited extent when removing unwanted plants. The low wages paid in the program and the limitation of employment to a maximum of two years hinders the development of know-how among those employed in the program. There is very little evaluation of how this program contributes to improving the employment situation in the long term.

literature

  • Andrew Balmford: Wild hope: On the Front Lines of Conservation Success. The University of Chicago Press, London 2012, ISBN 978-0-226-03597-0 .
  • Yvonne Baskin: A plague of rats and rubbervines: the growing threat of species invasions . Island Press, Washington DC 1997, ISBN 978-1-559-63519-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Republic of South Africa, Department of Environmental Affairs: Working for Water (WfW) program . on www.environment.gov.za (English)
  2. ^ Academy of Science for South Africa (ASSAf): Working for water. Inaugural Research Symposium: August 19-21, 2003, held at Kirstenbosch, Cape Town . at www.journals.co.za (English). with a link to: Ian AW Macdonald: Recent research on alien plant invasions and their management in South Africa: a review of the inaugural research symposium of the Working for Water program . In: South African Journal of Science, Vol. 100 (2004), pp. 21-26
  3. ^ A. Witt (Plant Protection Research Institute): Realistic approaches to the management of Prosopis species in South Africa . Pretoria 2005, on www.dfid.gov.uk (English; PDF; 438 kB).
  4. ↑ Andrew Balmford, 2012 Pos. 1280th
  5. ↑ Andrew Balmford, 2012, item 1254.
  6. ↑ Andrew Balmford, 2012 Pos. 1420th
  7. ↑ Andrew Balmford, 2012 Pos. 1426th
  8. ↑ JE Holloway, RW Anderson et al .: Report of Native Economic Commission 1930–1932 . Pretoria 1932. u. a. P. 180 ff.
  9. ↑ PC Lent, PF Scogings, W. van Averbeke: Natural Resource Management and Policy in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa: Overview Paper . Agricultural and Rural Development Research Institute, University of Fort Hare, Alice 2000, ISBN 1-902518-64-0 (PDF, English).
  10. ^ Henning Dahl, Jens Jakobsen, David A. Raitzer: Wattle Eradication via the Working for Water Program, Compared with Wattle Utilization and Management for Makomereg, South Africa . Copenhagen 2001, pp. 1–3 (PDF document pp. 5–7, English).
  11. ↑ Christiaan Lodewyk Wicht: Research on forest influences work beeing done at Jonkershoek . In: Farming in South Africa, October 1937. online at www.digi.nrf.ac.za (English).
  12. ^ Penny Pistorius, Stewart Harris: Heritage Survey: Stellenbosch Rural Areas. Jonkershoek, 02.15b . Stellenbosch Heritage Foundation, October 2006. at www.stellenboschheritage.co.za (English; PDF; 499 kB).
  13. ↑ Ben du Toit: Long-term ecological sustainability of wattle plantations . In: RW Dunlop, LA MacLennan (Ed.): Black Wattle the South African Research Experiance . Pietermaritzburg, Institute for Commercial Forestry Research. 2002, pp. 135–144, here p. 141 (PDF; 682 kB, English).
  14. ↑ Andrew Balmford, 2012 Pos. 1325th
  15. ↑ Andrew Balmford, 2012 Pos. 1400th
  16. ↑ Andrew Balmford, 2012 Pos. 1409th
  17. ↑ Andrew Balmford, 2012 Pos. 1,432th
  18. ↑ Andrew Balmford, 2012, item 1436.
  19. ^ Jan Hendrik Venter, National Department of Agriculture: Invasive species and the Working for Water program in South Africa . at www.fao.org (English).
  20. ↑ Andrew Balmford, 2012 Pos. 1549th
  21. ↑ JISC: bibliographic evidence . (English)
  22. ↑ JISC: bibliographic evidence . (English)

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