Communities owning conservation

"Engaging community means listening well and being aware of how alienating language and jargon can be... if you can’t operate with different languages and different thinking  you are going to struggle as a community activist." - Luzann Isaacs

This was one of the many take-home ideas to emerge at the Princess Vlei Forum's second Community Conservation Conference held on 28 October at the Lookout at Zandvlei in Muizenberg.

Approximately 30 people attended, representing 18 different community conservation and friends groups across the city.

Dr Don Kirkwood, curator of Stellenbosch botanical gardens spoke on the complexity of the current landscape – figuratively, in terms of this time of mass extinction and literally, in terms of the extraordinary diverse spatial complexity and local patterning existing in the local Cape Floral kingdoms. Setting a context of global and national South African conservation strategy, his message to NPOs and Friends groups was that it’s better to work small, on small pieces of land, to focus, conserve and engage meaningfully with what is possible, rather than attempting big ambitious schemes, which often fail. He held up the work at Grootbos as an example of good practice.

'Recognise the unbelievably rich patterns of diversity which exist in our landscapes. Engage deeply the patterns of birds, insects, flora etc to the people who matter. Landscapes is not just greenstuff. Whatever is left now, IS important. Search and rescue work is important. Preserving and looking after landscape is important. We use spaces not just for learning about the environment but in appreciation as to how complex and beautiful is our Cape flora’.

Luzann Isaacs, who has been the site manager of the Edith Stephens Nature Reserve for the last 18 years spoke with passion, wisdom and insight on the best ways to engage and invest in communities in order to bring out the best for both community and nature.

She addressed the challenges of working with communities and conservation, and the need to keep open the conversations between pressing social issues and the environmental issues. As an example, she gave the struggle down the years with fencing at Edith Stevens. Do you put a fence? Do you not? Who are you keeping out? What are you keeping in? From her experience, she stressed the importance of engaging with whole communities eg the neighbourhood watch groups, the community policing or health forums.

Engaging community means listening well and being aware of how alienating language and jargon can be.  ‘If you can’t operate with the different languages and different thinking (that exist in communities) you are going to struggle as a community activist. You need to think about that!’ Community conservation work also means being very conscious of the issues of power, control and ownership which exist both within institutions and within communities.

Luzann led us in a ‘listening exercise’ where we had to work in a group of 5 people who we didn’t know to come up with a burning question for everyone. Questions that arose from these groups included ‘How do you resolve the conflicting needs of homeless people and conservation areas? How do you know an area has value for conservation if it does not have a fence? How do we resolve the need for recreational space with the need for pristine fynbos?

Luzann stressed the importance of finding solutions that work for the community, of doing action based planning and building coalitions to work collaboratively.

Denisha Anand, Princess Vlei project manager and member of the Mayoral advisory committee on Water led a discussion around managing sites with water bodies. She said the City of Cape Town are doing some good things. There is more of an awareness of the interconnection of waterways. She named the Liveable Urban Waterways project, currently at scoping stage, as an example. Also, the advisory committee as positive initiatives. However, there are still many problems - Denisha  invited people to share specific problems which they are facing currently. Those raised included sewage and water pollution, poor solid waste management, failing infrastructures, litter in rivers, canals and Vleis across the catchments, water hyacinth management and mismanagement, City of Cape Town compartmentalized approach to water issues.

Don Kirkwood encouraged us to focus on solutions and success stories, things that are working. In this context the following were mentioned; the Beach Co op at Surfers corner, Muizenberg who for years have engaged in litter clean ups, working with the ‘informal recyclers’ as one way of recycling, buying white or clear plastics rather than coloured ones which can’t be recycled, pushing for the ‘producer pays’ legislation i.r.t litter, finding a champion within the City who you can work with eg Cllr Kevin Southgate at Princess Vlei, using systems thinking as your approach, and hold the City accountable as it now has Ramsar City status, to do more and better with regard to everything ‘water’.

Participants gave positive feedback, and especially enjoyed the opportunity to build networks with other in the field. Most were  keen to attend such gatherings in the future, perhaps twice a year. It may also be useful to structure learning from other experiences by building in case studies from the different sites. In the coming year,  Princess Vlei Forum is very keen to continue hosting these spaces, to enable us to build a strong community conservation sector able to tackle the many challenges of this space, while also enjoying the benefit of each other's insight and experience.