Programme director
His Majesty, the King of the Zulu Nation, King Goodwill Zwelithini, on whose land we are meeting today. BAYETHE!!!!
Deputy Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs, Mme Rejoice Mabudafhasi
The Vice Chancellor of the University of Zululand, Professor Fikile Mazibuko
The Local Mayor of Mhlathuze municipality, Mayor Mnqayi
Chairperson of the Environment Portfolio Committee in KwaZulu-Natal, Mr Singh
Chairpersons, board members and chief executive officers of our conservation entities represented
Community representatives from all nine provinces
All the delegates
Members of the media
Ladies and gentlemen
I am humbled to be given this opportunity and privilege to address this grand gathering on the eve of the hosting of the Fourth People and Parks Conference.
Our conference this year is hosted as the world celebrates the International Year of Biodiversity. The celebration of this richness is more apt in our country especially given the immense wealth of natural resources which includes a vast array of biodiversity such as plants, animals, parks and ecosystems that our country is endowed with.
We are a people with a traceable, oral or written, history of conservation and with a strong and unbreakable bond with the land. Traditionally as a people we have always lived in harmony with nature and the philosophies of sustainability and conservation were inherent in our society.
The Department of Environmental Affairs has over the past years been implementing a People and Parks initiative. This is in response to the World Parks Congress' Conference of Parties (COP7) which emphasised the need to consider communities as stakeholders in parks by specifically focusing on governance, participation, equity and benefit sharing for communities. In our country with its painful history of land dispossession, this was to be an interesting and informative undertaking.
The land restitution process saw thousands of black people claiming ownership of land, with much of that land falling within protected areas. Successful land claims presented new economic opportunities for the claimants who had been moved away from their land.
Between 2004 and 2008, three major People and Parks conferences were held, providing a platform for engagement, sharing lessons learnt, highlighting challenges and exchanging best practice approaches. These landmark events have shaped the progress of the People and Parks programme in South Africa.
In particular, they have contributed largely towards shaping the implementation of the progress of the programme through the development of the People and Parks action plan. The action plan is driven by six fundamental themes:
- Access and Benefit sharing
- Implementation of Protected Areas Act
- Co-management
- Protected Areas Expansion
- Land Reform and Protected Areas
- Community public private partnership
The Protected Areas Act makes provision for the People and Parks programme and makes it possible for co-management agreements to be forged between claimants and authorities.
Claimants that are now new land owners will have shared rights with park authorities. The formation of these agreements is proving to be a challenge and attention needs to be paid to providing support and increasing resources to facilitate this.
In this stead we appreciate the support of Minister Nkwinti and the department he leads, because I believe that this will result in another shining example if what can be achieved through cooperative governance.
Your majesty, ladies and gentlemen, the overall aim of the People and Parks programme is to address issues at the interface between conservation and communities, in particular the realisation of tangible benefits by communities who were previously displaced to pave way for the establishment of protected areas. The programme has grown in leaps and bounds since the country hosted the World Parks Congress in Durban in 2003.
Over the next three days we will amongst others, see the launch the national co-management framework which signals a bold step in addressing issues of co-management.
Our Deputy Minister, Ms Rejoice Mabudafhasi, will address us tomorrow on the significance of the People and Parks programme. She will also launch a publication that documents our journey from the days when issues of land ownership clashed with efforts to conserve natural resources, to an era when the country committed itself to protecting and upholding the rights of communities in the conservation of our rich natural and associated cultural heritage resources.
We will also witness the handing over of eight cheques for the 2009/10 financial year, for the eight Land Claims Trusts in terms of co-management agreements signed with iSimangaliso. Additionally, two new co-management agreements will be signed with the Mabaso and Mkhasa communities.
I am immensely proud of the work done by iSimangaliso Wetland Park's People and Parks programme in furthering government's commitment to use protected areas' management for community upliftment while ensuring future conservation includes a pioneering Enterprise programme.
Definitely, working together we can do more to ensure that our people reap the fruits of liberation, irrespective of their station in life.
Ladies and gentlemen, iSimangaliso has committed an additional R16 million for phase two of the enterprise programme, which will include 60 new entrepreneurs and the establishment a rural business hub. This is a first for a South African park, and I believe it can be used as a yardstick to do the same at other identified parks.
Ladies and gentlemen over the next three days we will take stock of where we are in ensuring that as we improve the conservation approach in the country, our people are not left out.
We must do so with humility and a clear understanding that if we fail, history will judge us harshly; but more critically, our people, who are highly politicised, will harshly remind us of our responsibilities.
I thank you.
