In 1995, the government of the Republic of South Africa launched the Working for Water (WfW) programme that links environmental and developmental goals through the removal of high water- consuming alien plants with pro-poor rural employment opportunities. Whilst bio-physical evaluations have widely reported on the hydrological, ecological and conservation components of the programme, there exists growing uncertainty over the programme's role as a poverty reduction mechanism. This paper evaluates three projects in the Luvuvhu catchment, Limpopo Province, against five socio-economic workfare criteria and the underlying biophysical rationale. Results show that asset creation from incre- mental streamflow is economically efficient and is likely to improve significantly if biodiversity benefits, community harvesting of riparian goods and services, ecological non-use values and seasonal water demand values are incorporated into the analysis. However, socio-economic benefits are more question- able: poverty targeting is weak with wage rates failing to self-select the poor; a minor proportion (0.5{%}) of catchment households benefit from the highly-valued employment opportunities; high variability in monthly employment causes financial difficulties for labourers; labourers are not ‘empowered' as is evi- denced by the failure of the 2-year exit strategy; and programme efficiency is high in proportional allo- cation of cash-flow to non-management wage labour. It is concluded that the Working for Programme is a potentially replicable model in other semi-arid contexts in developing countries if based on its core biophysical remit but is a transitory and limited poverty reduction mechanism for improving rural live- lihoods. Key
CITATION STYLE
Maeda, H. (2012). Anti-obesity effect of fucoxanthin from brown seaweed. Oleoscience, 12(10), 503–508. https://doi.org/10.5650/oleoscience.12.503
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