Stewardship, natural resource management & land reform

1. Stewardship, natural resource management & land reform Workshop on Land Reform, Land Trusts and Stewardship Co-ordinated by Conservation International and SANBI 20th November - Pretoria Rick de Satgé

2. Presentation overview • Policy and strategy initiatives • DLA’s attempts to integrate environmental planning into land reform • National Settlement & Implementation Support Strategy • Land and Agrarian Reform Project (LARP) • Case sketches • Mtakatye (Eastern Cape • Schmidtsdrift (Northern Cape)

3. DLA Environmental Guidelines • In 2001 a joint DLA/DANCED project produced Policy and Guidelines on the Integration of Environmental Planning into Land Reform and Land Development • Guidelines highlighted that environmental sustainability (both bio-physical and socio-economic) had not enjoyed adequate attention • Proposed introduction of an Environmental Decision Support Tool as an integral part of project assessment and planning procedures

4. Follow up measures • Guidelines tested in 2005 and the Environmental Evaluation Unit (UCT) developed an Environmental and Sustainability Assessment Tool • Designed to provide an integrated natural resource baseline highlighting environmental opportunities and constraints as a basis for a management and monitoring plan

5. Assessment • Guidelines remain unimplemented • Institutional fragmentation where natural resource management is concerned • Plethora of legislation administered by different departments • Emphasis on the development of resource assessment tools and legislative compliance while development and support of local institutions to manage rights and resources neglected

6. Introducing the SIS strategy

7. Starting points • The review of post transfer support to Restitution and Redistribution programmes highlighted: • Inadequate budget and prioritisation of this key function • International experience indicates that the cost of land purchase should amount to between 30% and 40% of total support package • Land reform dominated by quantitative targets (hectares transferred and claims settled) rather than qualitative results • Lack of clarity on the farming systems that should result from land reform

8. Starting points • Narrow conception of the scope of support required • Inadequate conceptual and institutional framework for integrated planning and settlement support • No clarity about whose responsibility this should be • Poor intergovernmental relations limit the co-ordination of effective support

9. SIS strategy provides a framework for integrated planning and support • Distinguishes between front end services needed by land reform projects • Social • Institutional • Environmental • Economic • Back office support to create an enabling environment at local, district, provincial and national scale

10. The strategic approach • Reframing land reform as a joint programme of government, the private sector and civil society - coordinated by DLA in partnership with DoA and located within the District IDP • Drawing on DPLG guidelines for joint programme management gazetted ito IGRFA • Area based planning • Developing designated support agencies and partnerships at District Municipal scale

11. Project scale front end services

12. District level support services

13. Assessment • Elements of the SIS strategy have informed the Land and Agrarian Reform Project (LARP) – a recent DLA/DoA partnership • However it appears that key aspects of the strategy including: • Land rights determination and management • Dedicated support for CPIs • Development of functioning common property resource management regimes • Integrated natural resource management have yet to find a home • In our view these are prerequisites for effective stewardship programmes

14. Case sketches Mtakatye Schmidtsdrift

15. Land reform in different settings • Land reform takes place in vastly different institutional settings • State owned communal areas • Privately owned land which has been redistributed or restored held by a CPA or a Trust • Forestry areas • Protected areas • Municipal commonage • State owned land acquired through PLAS • Labour tenants and occupiers on commercial farms

16. Mtakatye, Wild Coast

17. Mtakatye background • A communal area on former Transkei Wild Coast • A former betterment area – limited arable land • Pockets of declared and ‘chief’s forests’ • Most people cultivating homestead gardens • Declining yields and soil fertility • Perception that land in the forests more fertile than home gardens • Early 1990’s people invade and clear portions of declared indigenous forest • Increasing pressure on marine resources particularly shellfish in the intertidal zone

18. Illegal forest clearance

19. Mtakatye, Wild Coast

20. Harvesting marine resources

21. Responses and interventions • How has government responded? • DEAT provided a grant to a local entrepreneur to • develop an indigenous nursery • hire people to clear invasive aliens • replant deforested areas • Current situation unclear

22. Assessment • Contested local governance and unsupported land tenure systems can result in de facto ‘open access’ • Continuing uncertainties about exercise of land rights management functions • The case an ideal zone for ‘participative forest management’ ito the NFA • However low visibility of DWAF Forest Officers in 2006 • People reluctant to leave cleared areas • Government responses fail to engage with key land and resource tenure issues which underpin sustainable management of the forest resources • Commodification of medicinal plants also contributes to pressure on forest resources

23. Assessment • Fragmented responses to multisectoral issues – forests, rangelands, marine resources land and resource tenure • These require an area based joint programme with a clear champion • Currently the approach to stewardship avoids situations where there is institutional confusion or conflict due to high risk of failure • However there is an argument to be made that these situations could become the focus for an integrated stewardship programme

24. Schmidtsdrift, Northern Cape

25. Background • Tswana and Griqua occupants of Schmidtsdrift forcibly removed in 1968 • SADF established a training camp • Competing land claims settled through negotiation in 2000 • 31,829 ha restored to a CPA • Restoration characterised by contestation between Tswana and Griqua claimants, ‘traditionalists’ and ‘modernists’ • Some 300 households return to 5 settlement areas • 2 declared rural townships • 3 spontaneous settlement areas • CPA Constitution fails to determine individual rights, benefits and responsibilities

26. Mining activity Alluvial diamond mining commences in 2001 with prospecting rights awarded along the whole river frontage.

27. Impacts on livestock production

28. Environmental dimensions • Alluvial diamond mining has massive impact on grazing, cultural and natural assets • In 2003 Government temporarily closed mining activities of NDC after damage to graves and pollution of environment but it soon resumed • Currently between 200 000-250 000 tonnes of material are processed per month • Contributes spread of prosopis and other invaders • Alleged illegal abstraction of water • Inadequate rehabilitation • How to give meaning to local stewardship when powerful mining interests ride roughshod over the law and government interventions and monitoring are ineffective?

29. Environmental dimensions (2) • Prior to removal people were settled in six areas • On their return people encouraged to live in two main settlement areas – majority remain offsite • Settlement pattern encourages overgrazing in areas around settlements • Increasing bush encroachment • For several years after settlement there was no investment in grazing camps or water infrastructure • Game relocated to an area which one group of claimants utilised for grazing • Creates conflict over resource use

30. Defining rights, benefits and responsibilities Phuhlisani appointed in 2008 to clarify membership, rights, address conflict and align plans

31. Sustainable NRM rests on defined and enforceable rights & duties • Common property resource management depends on decentralised management, agreed boundaries (even if these may be fuzzy) and memberships, effective monitoring, and conflict resolution mechanisms • Clarification of rights • Access and use rights • Management rights • Exclusion rights • Transfer rights • Clarification of duties and contributions • Credible management institutions and compliance capability • Environmental stewardship initiatives require investment in tenure systems and local institutions • Self managing ‘stewardship’

32. Conclusions • Land reform spans diverse settings • Ranges from projects on a small geographic scale utilised by family members and relatively homogenous and coherent groupings through to large land areas where large and heterogeneous groups have rights • Clearly stewardship initiatives will be easier to implement in confined and stable settings • However developing multisectoral stewardship initiatives which can engage in large and complex settings like Mtakatye and Schmidtsdrift remains a key challenge which to date has not been addressed

33. Thank you www.phuhlisani.com