Grant funding will help to safeguard the flora of Table Mountain while also benefiting the community, writes Aspasia Karras
THE Cape Floral Kingdom project, which aims to establish a single national park of 30 000ha on the Cape Peninsula and Table Mountain, is a prime example of the new approach the World Bank is taking to environmental management. The days when it would finance large-scale projects with disastrous environmental results appear to be over.
At least that is what the bank’s president James Wolfensohn announced at the Rio Environmental Summit this year. The bank is certainly trying to clean up its image, so much so that it has appointed a task team comprising its traditional critics to evaluate the impact of its much maligned structural-adjustment programmes.
Francois Falloux, senior environmental adviser with the bank, explains that the transformation was grandiose in its execution. A small office of four fringe environmental lobbyists at the Washington head office has become a mammoth operation with more than 400 environmental specialists on tap at any given moment. They also have veto power and impose strict procedures of assessment on each project.
The bank is currently financing environmental operations worldwide to the tune of $10-billion. In sub-Saharan Africa alone it has dedicated capacity of 70 to 80 specialists.
It now runs a constantly updated watch-list of “hot potatoes”, including past projects that are still environmentally challenging. It seems to be getting a more positive response on this level at least. In an open letter to Wolfensohn on May 30 1997, international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) applauded the president for “his vision for improving the World Bank’s development effectiveness”. But they went on to say Wolfensohn had been “less successful at implementing bankwide changes with respect to improving accountability, project quality, public participation and providing significant debt relief”.
It is no wonder, then, that the bank is making sure its interventions in the Western Cape are up to scratch. The Cape Floral Kingdom (CFK) project is about conservation, and was proposed by the National Parks Board and the World Wildlife Fund, and aims to rescue the globally significant biodiversity of the Western Cape. This is not a simple “save the fynbos campaign”. The scope of the project is huge.
The bank aims to launch a major conservation initiative to create a unified management structure in the form of a national park on the Cape Peninsula, while structuring its actions to bring social benefits to the surrounding communities. The project will initially draw on a grant from the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) in the order of $10-million. The GEF was established to provide lump-sum grants to countries in support of the “green and brown agenda”.
David Daitz, project manager for the National Parks Board, explains that only a country’s government can apply for a grant by presenting a project.
Like the rest of the global set the bank thinks that the Western Cape is a good place to put money. Deitz feels that while there is a lot of suspicion in Africa about the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, because of the conditionality attached to some projects, there is no reason to suspect this one.
This funding is not a loan but a grant; the only conditionality lies in the use of the money. It comes with no strings attached. Phase one of the project involves establishing a national park on the Cape Peninsula, which will integrate the conservation of the areas under a single management authority.
Sixty percent of the GEF funding will for the first six years be dedicated to activities integrally associated with the effective management of the park; this will only constitute 10% of project costs during these years. The success of the project team’s initiatives depends on its ability to successfully integrate the 14 different management authorities into one. The most important conservation activity will be the eradication of invasive alien woody plants – the single most significant threat to the terrestrial biodiversity. These operations also offer the greatest opportunity for the delivery of social benefits to local disadvantaged communities through capacity building and job-creation programmes.
The second activity involves the Table Mountain Fund established by World Wide Fund for Nature SA, in 1993. Since inception, this fund has successfully mobilised significant private sector capital inside South Africa for the support of conservation activities in the Cape Peninsula and now more widely, in the CFK. The project plan envisages using the remaining 40% of the external funding component to top up this fund to a level where it will generate sufficient interest on an annual basis in perpetuity to support NGO and other conservation activities on the Cape Peninsula and further afield.
The final cluster of activities which will be undertaken during the first 18 months involves the compilation of a strategic plan for the conservation of the biodiversity of the CFK. This will require extensive mapping of the western extent of the range of the CFK where the greatest concentrations of threatened plant exist. This essential base data will be followed by extensive modelling of invasive alien plant spread, an analysis of threats and opportunities and the compilation of a strategic and financial plan to save the biodiversity of the CFK. It is an explicit intention to be in a position to mobilise additional domestic and foreign funding as soon as this activity ends.
Satisfactory progress with the funding requirements will allow the project to initiate phase two of the project, intended to support activities outside the Cape Peninsula. Falloux and the bank have a clear reason to get involved. They see it as a win-win situation: we eradicate alien plants, restore the ecosystem, while creating opportunities for micro- enterprise, because the process is very labour intensive.
In the long run it will consolidate international tourism. It also helps to improve the bank’s constantly wavering image in environmental circles.
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