Alex Hetherington

The Cape Peninsula National Park is the site of an award-winning public-private partnership that stands out for its sustainability, community and biodiversity benefits. The partnership is responsible for a project that collects and propagates seeds of the CPNP’s indigenous forests, as well as generating employment and for residents of Imizamo Yethu, a nearby low-income settlement.

Natanya Dreyer not only persuades volunteers to work on needy environmental projects, but gets many of them to pay for doing so. Bio-Experience is innovative in that it captures the country’s rising tourism status and combines it with a desire among adventure travellers for a wilderness experience that involves more than watching animals from the back of a game vehicle.

Seven of every 10 South African cotton farmers have switched to genetically modified (GM) varieties. South Africa has no market for organic cotton. The GM farmers produced 25 130 tonnes of cotton in the 2001/02 growing season.