The objective of this research was to determine how stakeholder engagement impacts on the use and sharing of ecosystem service benefits derived from large lake systems. The Wilderness and Swartvlei lake systems, which form an integral part of the Wilderness Section of the Garden Route National Park (GRNP), were chosen as the study area. The park is juxtaposed with urban and other land uses making it one of the most integrated urban conservation areas in South Africa. The park is an open-access park with only enclosed areas being the camping and chalet areas that borders onto the Touw River Estuary. A major contribution of this research was that it classified stakeholder groups into ten meta-identities (associations, businesses, charity organisations, conservancies, government departments, informal groupings, learning/educational institutions, multiple stakeholder projects, spiritual groupings and sports clubs) and that through an iterative research approach it stimulated dialogue between individuals across the various meta-identities. Engagement is a way of allowing stakeholders to develop a sense of ownership through the decision-making process. This could also lead to a higher level of trust and cooperation. The main insights drawn from this research were that, history is important; engagement is characterised by an on-going blame-game (at least in part as a result of this particular history); meta-identities share some values, but differ in how they see the world; there is a concern over social issues (widespread concern, but few mechanisms to address the issue); management agencies are stewards of the feedbacks between social and ecological systems (responsible for regulating flows of benefits), but in open-access systems cannot do so on their own; all meta-identities are keen to contribute and this can, with appropriate facilitation, be harnessed towards collective action. Stakeholders associated with all ten meta-identities identified provisioning and cultural services as a benefit derived from the lakes. No regulating or supporting services were identified as benefits. This could indicate a gap in awareness of the importance of these services. A category that emerged from this study is the importance of employment opportunities linked to the management of natural resources. The study showed that engagement does not occur around the benefits that can be derived from the lakes, but rather around the issues that have a direct or indirect influence on the ecosystem services and therefore the suite of benefits that would be available for sharing. The issues could be divided into two broad themes; social issues and developmental pressures. The social issues pose an indirect threat to the lakes while the developmental pressures pose a direct threat. As the mandates across agencies differ, with the municipalities concerned with the social issues and SANParks with the pressures, the importance of communication and cooperative governance was highlighted.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:21121 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Roos, Aneri |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Science |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MSc |
| Format | xii, 161 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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