Feasibility Study -- Establishment of an Amathole Mountains Biosphere

AMATHOLE DISTRICT MUNICIPALITY Feasibility Study -- Establishment of an Amathole Mountains Biosphere Reserve 1 1. Introduction 1.1 Background 1.2 Objective of the Report 1.3 Assumptions of the Report 2. Biosphere Reserves 2.1 UNESCO and Biosphere Reserves 2.2 Biosphere Reserve Establishment Process 2.3 Biosphere Reserve Establishment Recommendations 3. Amathole Mountains Biosphere Reserve Spatial Assessment 3.1 Bio-physical Environment 3.2 Environmental Feasibility 3.3 Incorporating Heritage and Cultural Diversity 3.4 Local Communities 3.5 Land Transformation 3.6 Cadastral Information 4. Current Land Use Patterns 5. Future and Potential Land Uses in the Biosphere Reserve 5.1 Land Use Recommendations 6. Institutional Arrangements 6.1 Current Management Institutions 6.2 Implementation Recommendations 7. Current Development Initiatives in the Area 8. Potential Links with other Conservation-based Initiatives 9. Consultative Data Base and Recommendation 10. Financial Feasibility 11. Implementation Action Plan 11.1 Logical Framework 11.2 Performance Tracking 11.3 Budget 12. Conclusions 13. Cost benefit Analysis 14. Feasibility Study Conclusions 15. Recommendations 16. Appendices 16.1 Consultative Process 16.1.1 Record of Consultations 16.1.2 Findings of Consultations 16.1.3 Stakeholder Data Base 16.2 Biophysical Data Layers 16.2.1 Index of Data Layers 16.2.2 Source of Data and History of Access 16.3 Social and Economic Data Layers 2 1. Introduction This report involves the formulation of a project concept document and a feasibility analysis for the establishment of the proposed Amathole Mountains Biosphere Reserve. The idea of this biosphere reserve has been promoted, amongst others, through the Eastern Cape Provincial Department of Economic Affairs, Environment and Tourism (now the Department of Economic Development and Environmental Affairs), since the 1990s. Several other stakeholders have promoted the idea through the years. The Amathole District Municipality (ADM) has of late become the driving institution, and political and institutional champion of this initiative. The ADM has funded this report, and chaired the project steering committee structures. This study has focused on the conceptualisation of the project concept, and further analysis of the feasibility of such an initiative. The project team considered the feasibility in terms of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) criteria of biosphere feasibility, namely: • The ecological feasibility and coherence of the proposed reserve, • The contribution to sustainable development of the region while promoting the biodiversity conservation; and • The logistic and institution feasibility of managing the reserve. The concept of a biosphere reserve has been found to be particularly well suited to the region in question. The domain of the area considered has expanded to almost 2 million hectares; more than twenty-fold the originally anticipated area of the tender process. The proposed Amathole Mountains Biosphere Reserve is located centrally in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. 3 Eastern Cape, South Africa Its location in the province straddling the area of commercial private landholdings and the community land of the former homelands, positions this Amathole Biosphere Reserve well to promote sustainable development through conservation economy initiatives that enable economic empowerment for poor people. It is thus proposed that the vision of the initiative be developed in the next phase of the project but that it encompasses at least a goal to: • Conserve the natural and cultural heritage of the area • Promote the conservation economy that uplifts the historical marginalized and poor people of the region • Strengthen institutions that promote the interests of the people of the region. 4 Proposed Amathole Mountains Biosphere Reserve The area has emerged as a complex matrix of landholdings, some vested under state conservation areas, large portions under state ownership but controlled under traditional authorities, and larger portions still under private ownership, which are either in private conservation or agricultural land-uses. The commercial forestry sector has a significant presence in the region. Much private and community land is also conservation-worthy and thus suites the concept of a biosphere reserve well. The tender team has come up with draft biosphere reserve configuration after considerations of baseline data sets and ecological opportunities and constraints, socio-economic realities and institutional arrangements. The report below will detail the rationale for the recommendations. The recommendations have identified core, buffer and transitions zones, in the format recommended by UNESCO. This draft reserve outline should form the basis and provide the focus of a detailed planning and consultation phase prior the reserve “establishment” and UNESCO nomination. 5 Draft Amathole Biosphere Reserve Configuration The area considered in this report has stretched broadly from the towns of: • Bedford in the west, • Stutterheim and Bhisho in the east, • Whittlesea and Cathcart in the north, and • Peddie in the south. While this gave the project team broad spatial parameters to refine the study focus, it was principally the biological priorities that have defined the boundary recommendations of the proposed Amathole Mountains Biosphere Reserve of this report. 6 1.1 Background The ultimate challenge of establishing a biosphere reserve is to establish systems and structures to enable the conservation of biodiversity patterns and processes, cultural and historical assets and the living landscapes contained in the area of focus, while meeting the material needs and desires of the people that live in the region. The biosphere reserve concept is an attempt to address the sustainable development of an area through the a land-use zonation that sets aside areas defined as the core area, the buffer zone and transition areas where different forms of land uses are promoted and tolerated. Biosphere reserves aim to reconcile apparently conflicting ambitions of the conservation of biological and socio-cultural diversity, while promoting economic and social development. The concepts of Biosphere Reserves originated in the 1960s & 1970s and emanated from the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) Conference on the Conservation and Rational Use of the Biosphere. The conference resulted in the launching of the Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme, and the promotion of the biosphere reserves grew from this initiative. Biosphere reserves have to meet set criteria and are nominated by governments for admission to UNESCO’s “World Network” on qualification. The proposed biosphere reserve is to fulfil three broad complementary functions as stipulated by UNESCO: • To conserve and protect landscapes, ecosystems, species and genetic resources; • To enable and encourage sustainable economic development compatible with the first function; and 7 • To coordinate and logistically enable the development of projects, education, training, research and monitoring that support the first two functions. This is the ultimate objective of the feasibility study, which is to develop a feasibility of establishing, managing and developing a biosphere reserve in the Amathole Mountain Complex. The structure of a “generic biosphere” is depicted in the figure below. (DEAET 1999) The core zone functions as a dedicated conservation area, which is not dominated by human activity and as such is under formal conservation management and monitoring. The Amathole Mountain Biosphere is likely to have several core areas, some linked and some separate. A pre-requisite of such a core area would be land under statutory conservation. Much of the conservation-worthy land in the region falls outside of statutory conservation area and thus will be contained in the buffer zones. In time more and more land can in fact move from one area of conation to another depending on its level of statutory recognition. The buffer zone is clearly delineated and activities permitted augment the conservation objectives of the core areas. It is an area where research, 8 training, education, sustainable resource harvesting, “carbon-sink” economies and tourism are likely to be the major activities. A buffer zone may even have non-core conservation activities, like agriculture and forestry, but efforts are made to conserve the natural assets or impacts on the natural assets. Typically ecological restoration and conservation actions could and should be promoted in this zone, and conservation economy developments should be actively explored. The transition zone is the area where most of the economic activities occur, and extractive commercial enterprises may make up the bulk of the commercial activities in such areas. This is the zone in which most of the communities, farmers and other commercial activities are currently active. In this zone cooperative strategies are to be developed to utilise natural resources sustainably. In the Amathole Mountains Biosphere Reserve this would entail conservancies, community projects, e.g. the commercial utilisation of wattle infestations as a means to control the alien plant problems, and carbon trading through land restorations. The biosphere must function to effectively conserve the biodiversity and cultural assets of the area, it must provide for economic and social development opportunities that are sustainable, and it must logistically

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