South Africa has a new Protected Areas Bill. What does it mean for conservation – and for the World Parks Congress in September? Saliem Fakir, South Africa’s director of IUCN-The World Conservation Union, takes a look.
After many years of haggling, and following the 1999 Kumbleben report (which dealt with conservation and governance issues), a new Protected Areas Bill has been released for review. The primary concerns raised in the Kumbleben report about the streamlining of responsibility and the creation of a clearer framework for the classification of protected areas seems to have been addressed by the Bill. However, forest and marine protected areas are excluded from the current regime as they fall under separate pieces of legislation.
The Bill’s ambit spans all three spheres of government – national, provincial and local – and is an attempt to give flesh to the notion of co-operative governance as it pertains to protected areas.
The Bill is a chapter of the National Environmental Management Act of1998 (Nema), and has to be interpreted within the context of Nema’s labyrinth of complex environmental provisions. Following on its heel is the Biodiversity Bill and the two Bills are meant to operate in tandem, with all provisions in the Biodiversity Bill having application in protected areas.
The Bill makes provision for the declaration of four types of protected areas that can be legally constituted. They are a special nature reserve, a national park, a nature reserve, or a protected environment. This provision strives to ensure that protected area status within all three spheres of government falls under one piece of legislation.
The Bill’s approach is to centralise the creation of a chain of protected areas in the country. It ensures that the national minister or a provincial MEC has the power to terminate a protected area management authority’s mandate if it fails to deliver on performance standards set for the protected area.
A way to picture this is to imagine the country’s 400-odd national and provincial parks and reserves falling under one canvass and being ordered according to their legal classification and a framework of minimum standards that not only set out their governance rules, but also management and use objectives.
The inclusion of legally binding management standards is novel. It ensures that, for the first time, the government obliges itself to set performance criteria for the different types of national and provincial protected areas authorities.
Why all this fuss? Protected areas are no longer places for quaint scientific curiosities. They must be seen for what they are: economic assets, the value of which is being driven by the tourism market and livelihood needs.
Despite predictions that the new government would reduce support for conservation in South Africa, the opposite has been the case. Conservation still enjoys the largest share of enviro-spend in South Africa, whether it be funds from public, private or international donors. The figures run into the billions of rands, with public-sector allocations alone close to R500-million a year.
South Africa has also expanded the amount of land that is under protection, mainly through transfrontier conservation areas. Since 1994, more than 200 000ha has been added to conservation land.
This reflects both the influence of conservation interests in South Africa, and the fact that conservation will continue to dominate the environmental agenda so long as considerable economic interests are tied to the use and protection of the resources.
Southern African countries, and South Africa in particular, are positioning themselves as the hub for a variety of nature-based tourism experiences, ranging from photo-tourism to hunting. Consistent with this vision of seeing conservation assets as having economic utility, the Bill empowers South African National Parks (SANParks) to operate as a business entity. SANParks is encouraged to engage in the commercialisation of some of its assets and to pursue cost-recovering mechanisms through the charging of gate and service fees where appropriate.
The Bill also makes provision for the inclusion of municipal reserves and parks under a national protected areas management system for the first time. The role of municipalities in the provision of an essential public good – creating a network of green spaces for recreation and educational purposes – has been ignored for too long. Many of the municipal reserves have endemic species of plants and animals that are facing real threats as a result of rapid urbanisation. Many serve useful ecological functions and are a source of wild resources for poor communities.
The new legislation is prescient in that it gives South Africa the opportunity to put forward interesting case studies and lobby for a more comprehensive approach to the management of protected areas at the World Parks Congress.
The role of municipalities and private reserves requires special attention, as they have been sorely neglected at previous World Park Congresses. They have generally been marginalised as a result of the dominance of national and provincial conservation officials. The Bill is still a little weak in this respect, especially when it deals with private-sector investment, considering the array of agreements that have already been signed between government and private-sector investors and landowners.
One of the other weak points of the Bill is that it gives scant attention to the needs of communities. While it makes provision for co-management of protected areas with local communities, community activists say the Bill could have been stronger on this issue. Many pioneering co-management models have been battlegrounds between the will of communities who had previously lost their rights and the power of officials, who at times have shown impatience and irritation towards the needs of communities.
For instance, the Bill could have set principles under which co-management arrangements should be established, and could be more specific around issues of rights of access and other benefits. The world over, poor communities derive different kinds of benefits from wildlife. The Bill needs to recognise that in some circumstances special intervention is required to ensure wildlife is a public good that can contribute to alleviating poverty.
Future growth in the acquisition of new land for conservation is likely to come from private and communal areas. The Bill does not deal adequately with the question whether these sectors are to be viewed as co-participants with the state in its overall vision and strategy. The Bill as it stands does not articulate a healthy balance between state, private and communal actors who are already active as partners.
It is not clear whether co-management arrangements are applicable to private landowners, nor what is the status of current rights enjoyed by communities. The apparent bias in favour of the state may serve to hinder co-management.
On the whole, though, the Bill is a positive step. No doubt it will not satisfy all, but it provides a better framework than that which existed before. It has some blemishes that need substantive input from non-state actors, in particular communities and private landowners who want to volunteer their land for the purposes of conservation.
World Parks Congress
The Fifth IUCN World Parks Congress will be held at the Durban International Convention Centre from September 8 to 17 2003. It will be a major international event, attracting at least 2 500 participants from 170 countries around the world.
The theme of the congress is Benefits Beyond Boundaries, reflecting the challenge to show how protected areas are relevant and beneficial to the world’s changing economic, social and environmental agendas. The theme is intended to stimulate broader thinking about protected areas – the opportunities, the values and the beneficiaries in a rapidly changing world – while allowing the congress the flexibility to explore a wide variety of relevant sub-themes. The congress takes place every 10 years.
There are more than 44 000 protected areas around the world. At the close of the 20th century, they covered 10% of the Earth’s land surface, in national parks, wilderness areas, multiple-use reserves and other types of reserves.
The 2003 World Parks Congress will examine the challenges and opportunities facing protected areas in the coming decades. The goal is to secure the multiple values of the global system of protected areas through the application of best science, information and experience.