B Sonjica: World Water Forum

21 March 2006

THE ROLE OF FORESTS IN WATER-RELATED RISK MANAGEMENT

Ladies and gentlemen, let me begin by saying that it is a great pleasure to
be here today and to take part in this discussion on water and forests. It is
particularly a pleasure because of the long relationship that South Africa has
with Achim Steiner of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) who extended the
invitation for me to be here today. I think particularly of the involvement of
one of my predecessors, Prof Kader Asmal, with Achim on the World Commission on
Dams. They worked together extensively to produce a challenging and far
reaching set of guidelines regarding the development of dams in a process that
brought together opponents and proponents to try to find a way forward that
allowed for infrastructure development while protecting the environment and
those, often the poor and the vulnerable, directly affected by such dam
development. I am glad to say that in South Africa we still have a process of
civil society and government working together on how we can implement these
guidelines and develop win-win approaches to much-needed infrastructure
development.

We are here today to discuss another crucial issue, looking at the role that
forests play in water related risk management, of which the key must surely be
floods, droughts and water quality issues.

Let me say that South Africa comes to this discussion from a different
perspective from many other countries. Ours is not a heavily forested land.
Ours never has been a heavily forested land, or not naturally. Much of our
natural landscape, if not semi-desert, is grasslands, fynbos, succulent and
woodland systems and open canopy woodlands. So we do not face currently, in the
same way as many other countries do the challenge of deforestation and its
associated risks and challenges. On the other hand, we must recognise that
large portions of the limited forests and wooded riparian areas that we did
have historically were quickly utilised, leading ultimately to the need to
bring in commercial, alien timber species. The introduction of these species
helped to conserve the remnants of our natural forests. Historically, the
threat to our indigenous forests came from unsustainable timber harvesting, but
this is now rapidly changing to threats from invasive alien species.

Thus, in South Africa, one of our challenges in managing water resources
lies in managing commercial afforestation and the spread of invasive alien-tree
species. Let me try to paint the picture.

We have about 1,35 million hectares of plantation forests, of almost
entirely alien species. We have only about 530 000 hectares of closed canopy
indigenous forest, which as you can imagine, we consider to be extremely
precious and try very hard to protect. Large areas, particularly in the drier
areas to the north of the country, are covered by open woodland. These
woodlands are important from a biodiversity perspective and in terms of the
maintenance of catchment integrity. They are also vital to poor rural
communities for natural resource use – for fire wood, medicinal plants, stock
grazing and so on.

Estimates are that at least 10% of our country is already invaded by alien
invasive tree species. The nature of these invasions is exponential, so there
will be an acceleration of invasions, given the foothold that has already been
gained by these species. Many of the large trees that are invasive have a far
greater impact on water than the plants they displace, and the estimate is that
around 7% of mean annual run-off is being lost to invasive alien plants. Note
that these are invasive species, and NOT the same species in controlled
plantations.

Left alone, the impact of the invasives on water security will be
increasingly problematic, especially in mountain catchment areas and other
difficult-to-reach areas. The problem is that alien invasive trees tend to go
to the very areas that responsible forestry industry avoids – riparian areas,
steep slopes, wetlands and other areas where the impacts are more severe. As
can be readily understood, these trees use far more water when there is more
available, such as when they have their “feet in the water” along
riverbanks.

It is because of the impacts of such species on our water security that we
have established a major job creation programme, the Working for Water
Programme, to clear alien invasive species from our catchment and riparian
areas.

This programme is also one of our flagship poverty reduction programmes. In
amongst the alien invasive trees, plantations, forests and woodlands, we are a
country of extremes in standards of living. In South Africa you will find a
microcosm of the world today – the very rich and the very poor living side by
side. 40% of our population is poor. A small fraction of the population own
most of the wealth of the country and this inequity is reflected on the ground.
Most of the people living in our rural areas are poor. There are also large
populations of poor in and around our cities and towns. I raise this because I
believe that in the discussion today we should not focus only on the technical
understanding of the role of forests in water related risk management. We must
also focus on the people who are at risk. In South Africa, as in most parts of
the world, the people who are most at risk are poor women and men.

Not only do they often live in areas vulnerable to natural hazards, such as
urban flood plains where they crowd together in fragile shanty towns, but they
have little or no access to emergency services, to emergency transport, to
insurance to enable them to rebuild their lives after a disaster. They are the
most vulnerable members of our societies, wherever we live. It is in their
interests in particular that I am speaking here today.

It is not by chance that the people left stranded in the New Orleans flood
were largely poor (and black). They were the people who did not have their own
cars in which to leave town. They were the ones dependent on public transport
and unable to leave without assistance.

It is not by chance, in South Africa, that people living in informal
settlements choose not to leave their shacks despite flood waters swirling
around their feet. They do not want to leave the few, precious things that they
have, the few belongings that enable them to cling to life and dignity.

It is these people that are at the centre of my focus today.

Let me sketch some of the risks associated with water management in South
Africa. We are a relatively dry country – we receive around half the world’s
average rainfall. Within that dryness, we are vulnerable to both floods and
droughts. Over the past several years we have been in the grip of a dreadful
drought. We have put in emergency water schemes, tankered water to communities
where water supplies have dried up, cut water supplies to farmers and watched
crops and animals die. The past two months, on the other hand, have brought
heavy rain that filled our dams, replenished groundwater in many areas and
brought flooding to some areas.

The issue of commercial forestry in a drought situation is complex. Firstly,
let me say that plantation forestry has brought job opportunities and
development to underdeveloped rural areas. It is an important economic activity
and one that we hope to see grow over the next period of time. None the less,
as a water scarce country, we have also recognised that the dense planting of
trees in areas that were previously grasslands, or open canopy woodlands,
increases the water used by the vegetation in that area. In other words, a
plantation uses more water than a grassland area of the same size, simply
because of the volume of water used by trees through evapo-transpiration. Thus,
the conversion of grasslands to plantations requires, in South Africa, a
water-use licence. It also requires us to examine whether sufficient water is
available in a catchment to allow further plantation extension.

In times of normal rainfall, the use of water in the catchment should be in
balance with availability, and all is well. However, in drought conditions,
where water availability decreases we are often compelled to impose
restrictions on water users. In the recent drought some farmers were informed
that they had no water to use at all – 100% restrictions were imposed on them.
It is, however, difficult, in a heavily afforested catchment, to impose
restrictions on plantation forestry, simply because the trees use whatever
water is available. The only solution would be to cut down the trees –
something that we have not yet resorted to, largely because of the longer term
implications on the availability of wood should we compel early harvesting of
timber. Downstream users may, in a drought, therefore, find their water sources
drying up, at least partly due to the presence of large-scale commercial
plantations.

On the other side of the picture, as I have mentioned, we face the challenge
of floods in South Africa. In South Africa plantation forestry does not have a
particular role in either the generation or the amelioration of floods, nor are
our indigenous forests extensive enough to be particularly important in this
regard, except in particular sub-catchments. Two specific areas of risk
management can, however, be mentioned. Firstly the hydrological impact of
plantation forests, where these are established in degraded catchments and in
the rehabilitation of eroded landscapes, is not well understood within the
country. It is certainly demonstrable that there is likely to be less flooding
and erosion, with less total runoff, with increased low flows in response to
improved infiltration and slow release. The Storms River tragedy of 2002 in
which 13 people died is demonstrable evidence of this. Massive fires in the
catchment and extensive felling led to unprecedented flooding in a tributary of
the Storms River.

The second aspect is that fires through plantations established on certain
soil types have been found to elicit serious soil water repellency – with
consequent localised flooding accompanied by catastrophic soil erosion.

There are also challenges that we face with regard to the linkages between
forests and the quality of water resources. Firstly, there is the potential
risk posed to the water resource by the associated uses of especially
plantation forestry, such as the paper pulp industry. This industry is a major
player in the international market, and provides a lot of job opportunities.
However, where most of the international paper pulp industries are located
close to the ocean, and can discharge their effluents into the marine
environment, this is not the case in South Africa. The high salt, especially
chloride, content of the effluent from this industry, as well as the disposal
of its sludge waste on land, poses a risk to both our inland waters in our
rivers, and our vulnerable, but extremely important groundwater resources. It
must be noted here that although ground water only contributes to 13% of our
total national water supply, 65% of the population of the country rely on
groundwater as their sole source of water, especially in rural communities.

The second aspect that comes to mind when considering the linkages between
forests and the quality of water resources, is the potential positive uses of
especially communal or community afforestation in addressing localised impacts
on water quality, in particular impacts on groundwater. Here a small communal
forest can be used to address potential impacts from small-scale sanitation
facilities, such as septic tanks. Also, there has been some good research into
the use of various tree species in the absorption of mine water – both run-off
from dumps and slimes dams, and more particularly to prevent water ingress into
extensive areas which have been mined for coal. Trees can offer a strategy in
the amelioration of acid mine drainage by taking up that water. This sometimes
puts us in the invidious position of making a decision to have either polluted
water or no water at all. Not surprisingly water-cleansing approaches are
taking precedence.

Ladies and gentlemen, the linkages between forestry and water are complex in
the context of South Africa. Forestry is a disproportionately larger
contributor than agriculture (the largest water use sector in South Africa) to
the socio-economic development of the country. Like agriculture this
contribution is felt in the rural areas where many of our poor people live. In
fact proportionately by area, forestry contributes five times more to South
Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) than does agriculture and it is much more
resilient to market changes and other negative influences. This combined with
the strategic value of having timber resources in a country recognised during
the earliest colonial times as having very few timber resources, combined with
the absence of nearby alternative supplies in the region, must influence how we
evaluate water use for forestry against other users.

We must, however, obviously balance all these benefits with the realities of
water availability, other more pressing or basic water use needs and the
impacts of the forestry sector on water availability, especially in times of
drought.

While we see plantations as highly consumptive of water, we view indigenous
forests as relatively neutral water users but as very important from a
catchment integrity perspective, and very effective in flow regulation. So for
us protection of our small natural forests is paramount. Indigenous forests in
some parts of the country are nevertheless under threat due to uncontrolled
exploitation for a variety of purposes, including fuel wood and traditional
medicines.

The exploitation of woodlands is perhaps more serious – the areas are
greater (27 million hectares), the rainfall lower but more variable, and the
degree of protection lower. Woodland areas are often degraded through
overgrazing, clearing for firewood (often by unscrupulous outsiders), and
sporadic agriculture in areas of high population pressure. This has
implications for infiltration; resulting in overland flow, flash flooding, soil
erosion and groundwater recharge.

Obviously, the benefits and costs of further commercial forestry expansion
(water and others) must be weighed against the benefits and opportunity costs
that competing water uses present, and we need to have the flexibility to
allocate and re-allocate according to the outcome of such evaluations.

None-the-less, I believe that there is scope for expansion of the important
forestry sector in the country. Our President and I have pronounced on this
growth and expansion, especially given the opportunities which it presents for
poverty eradication in rural areas, socio-economic growth and development and
to the broader transformation of South Africa’s society and economy.

Enquiries: Sputnik Ratau
Media Liaison Officer
Ministry of Water Affairs and Forestry
Tel: (012) 336 8790 / (021) 464 1500
Cell: 082 885 8317
E-mail: rataus@dwaf.gov.za

Issued by: Department of Water Affairs and Forestry
21 March 2006