Invitation to address water quality issues in the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve

Date: Tuesday 24th March 2020
Venue: Knysna Log-Inn Hotel, 16 Gray St, Knysna Central, South Africa
Link to venue: https://goo.gl/maps/gs7x3REvce29wWdr5 

Workshop Overview
The Garden Route Biosphere Reserve (GRBR) is undergoing a collaborative strategy development process, and as part of this process interested individuals and organisation are cordially invited to attend the first of two workshops to identify and contribute to tackling water quality issues within the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve. We hope that our approach will lead to a strong sense of action required at the landscape level, while learning from and working with specific project level work already underway. We are looking for tangible actions that can be taken to conserve our valuable water resources.

The purpose of the first workshop is to:
1. Identify and discuss major threats to water quality in the GRBR domain,
2. Identify existing water quality initiatives, where we invite participants with existing initiatives to give a short (5 minutes) introduction.
3. Ask how we as a community can come together to tackle some of the identified threats and to support existing successful initiatives.

The key outcomes of both workshops are to establish a working group to develop a programme to tackle Water Pollution, which the GRBR will ratify into a proposal document by June 2020.  The proposal will be used to leverage the GRBR as an overarching mechanism to raise funds for coordinated actions by stakeholders in the landscape which are aligned with the vision and mission of the GRBR.

Participants are encouraged to commit to and attend both workshops to ensure continuity and consistency in the development of ideas, knowledge and outcomes.  The workshops will be held on Tuesday 24th of March in Knysna and Friday 8th of May in George.

Registration for the Workshops
Please express your interest in attending as soon as possible, but not later than 19th of March 2020.

 RSVP email to Luzanne Visagie at admin@gardenroutebiosphere.org.za  (or Luzanne.visagie@mandela.ac.za)

Contact Person: Dr Louw Claassens
Email Address: kyss.louw@gmail.com

Please let us know if you would like to occupy a 5-minute slot to introduce your initiative.

Project Team: Bianca Currie, Louw Claassens and Ntombi Vundla

Topic: Strategy Planning for Environmental Education in the Biosphere Reserve
Venue: Garden Route Environmental Education Centre, George
Dates: Wednesday 26th of February, Wednesday 18th of March and Wednesday 8th of April, 2020.
Draft Program: Click to view here: DRAFT Program for Environmental Education workshop 26 Feb 2010

Workshop Overview
The Garden Route Biosphere Reserve (GRBR) cordially invites the participation of all individuals and organisations that are involved in environmental education programs in the Garden Route to collaborate in developing a coordinated approach to youth environmental education within the GRBR. The biosphere reserve seeks to work together with stakeholders and actors in the landscape to collaboratively develop a programme for youth environmental education in the biosphere reserve.

The GRBR will be hosting a series of 3 workshops. The first workshop aims at identifying current successes and strengths which can be leveraged as well as gaps and needs in the education landscape that the GRBR youth programme can fill. The second workshop will consolidate a workable program for the youth based on the success, gaps and needs analysis. The third workshop will be dedicated to finalising a programme and informing a budget as well as identify potential funders the GRBR can target a proposal submission to.
The key outcomes of the workshop series are to establish a working group to develop a Youth Environmental Education Programme which the GRBR will ratify into a proposal document by June 2020. The proposal will be used to leverage the GRBR to raise funds for coordinated actions by stakeholders in the landscape which are aligned with the vision and mission of the GRBR.

Participants are encouraged to commit to and attend all three workshops to ensure continuity and consistency in the development of ideas, knowledge and outcomes. The workshops will be held on Wednesday the 26th of February, Wednesday the 18th of March and Wednesday the 8th of April in George at the Garden Route Environmental Education Centre.

Registration for the Workshops
Please express your interest in attending as soon as possible: send an RSVP email to Luzanne Visagie (admin@gardenroutebiosphere.org.za) before 23rd February 2020.

Draft Program (Click here): DRAFT Program for Environmental Education workshop 26 Feb 2010

Contact Person: Monica Vaccaro
Email Address: monica@landmarkfoundation.org.za
Project Team: Bianca Currie, Monica Vaccaro (Coordinator)

We cordially invite interested individuals and organisations to a series of 3 workshops to identify and contribute to tackling key drivers of rapid urbanisation, land use and land use change in the GRBR. The purpose of these workshops is to develop a framework to understand, and a strategy to address, these key drivers and the challenges they pose for government and other institutions of civil society.

In pursuit of the purpose and framework of the workshops, a bottom up, collaborative approach is envisaged. This approach should lead to a strong sense of actions required at the landscape level, while learning from specific project level work already underway. 

The outcome of the workshops is to establish a working group for the GRBR to address these challenges and their resolution in the medium and long term.

The workshops will be held on:

Friday 14th February in George;

Friday 3rd April in Knysna and

Friday 15th May in Jefferey’s Bay.

A key output of the workshop series will be a strategy ratified in a proposal by June 2020. The proposal will be used to raise funds for coordinated actions by stakeholders in the landscape, aligned with the vision and mission of the GRBR. 

Participants are encouraged to commit to and attend all three workshops to ensure continuity and consistency in the development of ideas, knowledge and outcomes. 

Registration for the Workshops 

Please express your interest in attending as soon as possible, but not later than Monday 10th February 2020, by contacting Luzanne Visagie [luzannev@mandela.ac.za] 

 

Dr Bianca Currie, Chair of our Biosphere Reserve, delivered the Chair’s Report at the Annual General Meeting on the 13th December 2019:

It has been a year of transition, consolidation and strategizing for the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve. The transition from the interim board to the reserves first board, who will serve for the next five years, was a lengthy and administratively heavy process. The new board only officially gained control and signing power of the reserve’s bank account mid-2019. We now have a sound decision making body for the Biosphere Reserve. The current board members bring a good mix of skills and expertise to the table. They have helped to provide the Biosphere Reserve with stability and formulated an implementable overarching strategy and a draft communications strategy taking into consideration our limitations and constraints.

The strategy documents have provided the Biosphere Reserve with direction and purpose placing the reserve on a clear set of tracks for the future.

The Garden Route Biosphere Reserve’s overarching strategy
The Garden Route Biosphere Reserves overarching strategy looks at the landscape through a social ecological systems lens and considers our natural and social capitals, our strengths, weaknesses; as well as drivers in the system and threats to our assets. This strategy now consolidates the biosphere reserve efforts into six key focus areas namely: 1) Landscape Management Coordination, primarily focused on facilitating the coordination of alien invasive plant clearing in the Biosphere Reserve;
2) Green Enterprise Mentorship Development, primarily aimed at developing skills and capacity in the youth;
3) School Youth Biosphere Programme, to work with school goers, colleges and universities;
4) Biosphere Membership, to develop the necessary infrastructure to make a connection with stakeholders in the biosphere reserve;
5) Water Pollution, aimed at improving the state of rivers and estuaries in the biospherereserve and especially related to pollution; and
6) Town / Land Use Planning Capacity Development focused on sustainable cities development and improved decision-making regarding land use planning in the Biosphere Reserve.

One of the challenges the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve currently faces is the capacity to be an implementing agent in the landscape. Without funding for dedicated staff, we are limited to playing a co-ordination and facilitation role. We therefore firmly acknowledge the need to work together with our stakeholders. Over the next year the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve endeavours to establish a working group structure made up of stakeholders currently undertaking valuable work in the landscape, within each of the key focus areas. We ask how we can support and strengthen existing agents and action taking place. In the coming year we wish to collaboratively develop key focus area strategies, funding proposals and action plans, building on what our stakeholders are currently doing in each of the areas. We believe our success lies in a bottom-up process working with agents in the landscape.

The Biosphere Reserve also expects to formally establish an advisory group made up of those who lead each of the key focus area working groups. This advisory group will provide a further layer of expertise to inform decision-making related to the biosphere reserve and the activities it engages in. A structure where the board is informed by the advisory group also provides a bottom-up and top-down information channel for communication to flow, allowing decision-makers to be informed by those on the ground; and the decisions being made can filter from the board to the agents in the field.

Draft communications strategy
A second equally important strategy developed for the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve this year was a communications strategy. A draft communications strategy has been formulated which provides a vision and mission statement for the reserve. It includes a draft rapid assessment tool to guide what the Biosphere Reserve communicates on behalf of its stakeholders. The draft vision for the Biosphere Reserve is to connect people and environments for enhanced diversity and wellbeing; and the draft mission is to improve collaborations to support integrated environmental management and equitable development. The draft strategy also expresses who we should be communicating with, what
we should be communicating, and how we should be communicating in light of our limitations.

Funding
We are grateful for the small operational funding we have received in the last year from the Department of Environment and Development Planning. However, our primary need in the coming years is to raise funding for the development of the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve, and its growth into an institutional structure that is not limited by its capacity to implement. The working group strategies and funding proposals are our first steps in raising sorely needed funds for collaborative action in the landscape. The operational funding from government will allow us to employ the necessary expertise to ratify the strategies into funding proposals.

Summary
In summary, progress has been slow but determined in 2019. We have been transitioning to a new board and strategizing for the future direction of the Biosphere Reserve. The year has been about putting the necessary guiding documents and processes in place while consolidating the governance structure of the reserve. With these vital pieces of the machine in place we have clearer focus and direction with which to move forward. Our priorities next year are to elicit support, develop relationships and partnerships, and work closely with our stakeholders on the ground to raise funding for activities in the landscape.

I believe we now have a plan which sets us on a positive trajectory and together with our stakeholders we can grow and develop the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve into a useful mechanism for sustainable development in our region.

Dr Bianca Currie
Chair
UNESCO Garden Route Biosphere Reserve