Nothing in reserve for SA parks

AP

Charles Tompson patrols Table Mountain National Park. South Africa needs to expand the size of its protected areas by about two and a half times. Picture: AP

Cape Town – South Africa will have to more than double the size of its network of national parks and nature reserves by 2020 if it is to meet its international biodiversity commitments – but no additional funds have been allocated to acquire more land for the next three financial years.

This emerged during a financial briefing by the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs to the National Assembly’s oversight portfolio committee yesterday.

The only major budgeted increase over and above the existing three-year Medium Term Expenditure Framework for the department’s biodiversity and conservation responsibilities is R25 million a year to SA National Parks (SANParks) to combat rhino poaching.

Committee chairman Johnny de Lange instructed senior officials to draft a statement of concern that could be included in the committee’s report.

“The committee feels this is a serious problem,” he said.

David Mabunda, chief executive of SANParks, said: “We have to triple the size of the (conservation) estate as it stands, which is a really tall order.”

It was a slight exaggeration, as currently just over 7 percent of South Africa is formally protected and the international obligation is 17 percent by 2020 – meaning an increase of around two and a half times is required.

De Lange said he was particularly worried that none of the additional R225m requested by the department for “expansion of the conservation estate” had been allocated by the Treasury. SANParks’ current three-year medium term budget for parks expansion is just R51.7m.

“They’re not giving a single (extra) cent towards our international obligation – there has to be a good reason for that,” he said.

“We must indicate to the international community that we’ve frozen this (commitment) and that we’re not going to meet our targets. We can’t let it hang like this.”

The department has been given some major additional allocations for infrastructure projects, including R390m to SANParks for its indigenous forest management on the Garden Route – only R53.3m had been requested – and R70m to the iSimangaliso Wetlands Parks Authority (St Lucia) that had requested R104m.

The current medium-term allocation for the Oceans and Coasts branch has been increased substantially to include R34m for the manning and operation of the fisheries research vessel RS Algoa – taken back from the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries last year – and an additional R31m for the manning and operation of the new polar research and supply vessel SA Agulhas 2.

“We can see clearly that the government is trying to spend more on infrastructure, so there are some good aspects, but less on operations and that is worrying,” De Lange said. – Cape Argus

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