This is an extract from an address by Professor Kader Asmal, the former minister of water affairs and forestry, as well as education, in Johannesburg at the launch of Leonie Joubert’s book Invaded: the Biological Invasion of South Africa
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When I became the Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry after South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, the department was perceived to have seen itself primarily as a builder of dams - after all, we were the department charged with managing the water supply in a country that had a scarcity of water. Of course, the department had also had a very selective approach as to who was supplied with water: 16 million were not. But this focus shifted when the scientific community presented us with the following startling bit of information: 10 000 hectares of South Africa were overrun by thirsty invasive alien plants. They used far more water than the indigenous plants that they displaced - siphoning off as much as 7 percent of our annual rainfall run-off. Invasion The warning was clear: if we allowed these plants to spread unchecked, the extent of their invasion could double within 15 years. Working for Water was born out of this revelation - a programme of clearing invasive alien plants, while giving jobs and training to some of the country's most marginal communities. It was the manner in which the programme epitomised the Reconstruction and Development Plan that enabled me to approach the minister responsible for the RDP budget, Jay Naidoo, for an initial grant of R25 million. It was an exercise in trust, and how it has borne fruit. Since that initial investment, we've spent more than R5 billion tackling the invasion. The programme will soon be approaching an annual budget of R1bn. What an extraordinary success this investment in faith has proved, and is proving, to be. Part of its appeal were the multi-faceted benefits from doing this work. The initial attraction for a government that had to deal with the obscene injustices of apartheid, was its labour-intensive approach. About 30 000 people are getting work through this programme currently, with more than 5 000 further beneficiaries through its provincial offshoot, the KwaZulu-Natal Invasive Alien Species Programme. It was the flagship success that gave rise to the Expanded Public Works Programme, and the central role it now plays in our government. It wasn't just that it created jobs either, but that it focused on the marginalised - by race, gender, age, disability and more. Until recently, it was the only programme that had targeted opportunities for military veterans; it linked up with the Department of Correctional Services and Nicro (the National Institute for Crime Prevention and the Reintegration of Offenders) to provide for the reintegration of former inmates; it provided then rare work opportunities for those living with HIV and Aids; it provided care for the children of workers; it helped to break down the barriers that apartheid had constructed. So much of the social development focus pioneered by Working for Water has become mainstreamed in government programmes. Success But the programme is essentially designed to control invasive alien plants. From one perspective, the programme has had extraordinary success: it has become, it is said, the biggest conservation programme on the continent of Africa, clearing over 1.6 million hectares of alien invasion. The more impressive figure is what the extent of invasion, and its impact, would have been, had these 1.6 million hectares been allowed to spread and grow. Scientists have established that, left alone, the invasives could eventually use as much as 20 percent of South Africa's annual run-off. That is simply unaffordable. Just on the water quantity benefits alone, this programme pays for itself. But its benefits are far greater:
Working for Water recently began a partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature, which aims to bring private business into the battle against thirsty invasive plants. This new "water neutral" scheme allows the private sector to offset their water use by paying to have the equivalent amount of water released back into a river system by clearing invasive alien plants, and maintaining the area alien-free for 20 years. The first two pilot projects have been unveiled in the Baviaanskloof near Port Elizabeth, and in the Table Mountain National Park. This marks a new era in our ongoing offensive against these plants. Development The success of Working for Water has led to other key conservation and development programmes being developed, notably the Working for Wetlands, Working on Fire and Working for Woodlands programmes. The next exciting development is the Working for Energy programme, which (inter alia) seeks to generate electricity from invasive alien biomass. What a winning combination this could be. You will forgive me for focusing so strongly on Working for Water, for it is an obvious personal passion. And I do want to make the point that, notwithstanding the exceptionally progressive approaches towards this programme by successive government administrations and ministers, the problem of invasive alien plants is actually worse than when we started in 1995. Even with the best bio-security, new species will invade. But it is clear that we have to invest strongly in prevention, in early detection and rapid response, and in the use of biological control agents, if we are to win this battle. I must add my pleasure at seeing Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme and formerly of the World Commission on Dams, issuing a statement on International Biodiversity Day, focusing on invasive alien species. In this he highlights the Working for Water programme as one of the role models for addressing this scourge. You only have to page through Invaded: the Biological Invasion of South Africa to know that it is not sufficient to have a programme that only focuses on invasive plants. Invasive animals are also major problems. But I venture to say that it is invasive microbes - the viruses, bacteria, fungi and the like - that will present us with our biggest long-term challenges. We are seeing it more and more, with SARS, bird flu, the H1N1 swine flu and so many other human health invasions. A comprehensive programme on invasives is necessary, as New Zealand has done. We must heed the warnings about taking an overly national approach, and we must involve other countries, because invasive species don't respect our geopolitical boundaries. Climate change We need to look at the "lethal cocktail" of invasives, climate change and habitat destruction. We need to confront the impacts of trade, travel, transport and tourism in the spread of invasives around the globe. Climate change is the big unknown in this equation. Declining rainfall is going to decrease the country's agricultural yield and cause indigenous species to move into new areas as they die out in other areas. But how will rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns and climbing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere impact on the spread of alien invasive species in southern Africa? They may lose their competitive advantage in some parts, and begin to die out, but they might begin to move into new areas. We've already seen how rising CO2 in the air is fertilising some plants, like the indigenous Acacia karoo, causing them to grow more prolifically. Will the Acacia karoo's distant relatives, the invasive Australian acacias, respond in a similar way? Scientists still need to answer this question for us, and we should put a great deal more money into researching this matter. Most urgent of all is the issue of water. South Africa is expected to run out of available water resources by 2025, as the population and economy grow and demand more from this already stretched resource. We need to be aware of what the converging stresses of climate change, invasive species and growing demand will mean for the country's future water security. This will force us to rezone areas according to water availability.
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