The ARISE Project in South Africa

Abstract

Most of southern Africa’s rural people depend on natural biomass as their primary fuel source, and on ecosystems as the primary source of their livelihood (Wessels et al. 2004; Geerken and Ilaiwi 2004; Lawler et al. 2006). Given the relatively high rate of population growth across the subcontinent, the use of biomass for fuel could deplete natural resources and degrade biodiversity. This renewable natural capital, in the idiom of ecological economics, can only be reversed through ecological restoration that coincides with revised, adaptive resource management activities based on a collective will and vision (Blignaut 2009). This chapter provides a critical assessment of a project that aims to restore natural capital at a village scale in a region of dire poverty and joblessness near Giyani, in the northeastern corner of South Africa. The project aimed to improve living conditions and the socioeconomic well-being of local participants, and to sustainably improve the environmental conditions that provide the basis for human life. In this case, ecological restoration actually becomes an integral component of a broader economic development package.