Building capacity of communities to monitor the effects of rehabilitation techniques in degraded catchments

Abstract

The uThukela catchment area in South Africa plays a vital role in water provision, generating 25% of the country’s water. The communities that live in these mountainous areas rely on the natural resources for their livelihoods. However, the absence of effective management plans and the lack of community involvement in conservation have had a negative impact on these natural resources. Degradation and the loss of grass cover on these steep mountain slopes have resulted in poor water infiltration, increased overland flow and severe soil erosion. Various initiatives in the area, starting with a pilot LandCare project, have built the capacity of the community to implement different erosion control techniques. However, there has been a lack of quantitative data on how successful the techniques have been. The aim of this project was to develop and implement a community-based system to monitor the effect of rehabilitation efforts. The monitoring techniques successfully adapted for use by the communities were those utilizing splash boards, plant basal cover quadrats and runoff plots. All techniques were applied to eroded and rehabilitated sites. The most effective technique was the runoff plots where, for example, at the Oqolweni subward, runoff from the eroded site (2 680 mm) was 28% higher than from the rehabilitated site (1 950 mm) over an 8-month period. The monitoring results indicate that rehabilitation by the community has achieved a significant decrease in soil loss and runoff. However, no single technique can be recommended for rehabilitation as each technique has specific advantages and disadvantages. This monitoring project has played a key role in the government’s Working for Water programme by establishing indicators for a form of ‘payment for ecosystem services’, whereby the government pays communal land users to manage and monitor environmental services, particularly the delivery of watershed services.