Forestry and water – the key to our future

WHEN delegates visiting South Africa for the 14th World Forestry Congress (from September 7-11 at the Durban International Convention Centre) answer the call of nature, many will feel as disturbed as we do that we tend to flush our loos with potable water.

They will feel disturbed because they understand the relationship between forests and water. Flushing it away is a gross manifestation of our under-valuation of water, and a slap in the faces of all those for whom access to water remains a daily grind.

Our country is not blessed with an over-abundance of water – or indigenous forest, nature’s great filters, retainers and providers of water. Our soils have proved mineral-rich, but don’t harbour great aquifers. To a large extent, we make do with what the weather provides – and import the rest we need from our neighbours. And then we flush it down the loo?

Inequity was arguably apartheid’s most significant bequeathment to our democracy. It defined the fabric of which the new South Africa was made. From where we lived to what we ate, the level of education and healthcare to which we were entitled… to whether or not we were deemed worthy of a supply of clean water.

At its most hideous, water inequity led to communities living adjacent to major dams, such as Jozini in KwaZuluNatal, being refused access to dam water and having to compete with their livestock for water from nearby streams.

We must also recognise the impact of deforestation on the water resources of our country. This was exacerbated in the apartheid era when communities were removed and relocated to barren “homelands” to serve as dormitory communities for the industrial and mining centres of our country.

We now face the challenge of developing our communities and reversing this posting of our people to barren, treeless wastelands.

We need to see afforestation as a critical part of guaranteeing our sustainable future.

We are proud of the strides we have made in rectifying some of these imbalances. But we know that the existing water scarcity in South Africa will be compounded by climate change, which knowledge forms the framework for all of our discussions about equitable allocation and benefit sharing.

Within this framework, we must pursue our Integrated Water Resources Management agenda to effectively involve stakeholders at basin level in decision-making and planning, optimise the operation of available infrastructure and continue to explore innovative partnerships with communities.

Partnerships that will bring people and sectors together to address the full spectrum of vulnerabilities relating to health risks, degradation of ecosystems and disaster management, and should form a central component of our propoor water policies and management.

We must treasure the resources we have and acknowledge their proper value. Among these treasures are our forests. Less than 1 percent of South Africa’s land surface is covered by indigenous forests, which punch above their weight in their ability to protect natural systems, including aquatic ecosystems and water resources.

In the absence of massive water and indigenous forest resources, community forests are among the most valuable resources we have. These relatively small pockets of green may not feature prominently in satellite imagery, but viewed from the ground they perform critical functions in the provision of livelihoods and clean water to rural communities.

As far back as 1864, in his book Man and Nature, which is regarded as a founding document of the global conservation movement, the author George Perkins Marsh wrote: “With the disappearance of the forest all is changed.”

While the title of the book betrays the male chauvinism of the day, more than 150 years of subsequent scientific inquiry and research has proved the content of Marsh’s thesis right.

South Africa can be very proud of its record in meeting the UN Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of citizens without access to a basic water supply. An estimated 95.2 percent of people now have access to clean water.

The challenge that lies before us is to sustain this progress.