Overview
Africa is already experiencing the effects of climate change. Resilience, and an understanding of what that really means, is becoming increasingly important in ensuring sustainable socio-economic development and livelihoods. Efforts to maintain ecological infrastructure are vital to support surface and groundwater flows, water quality, ecological goods and services and buffer against climatic shocks.
The Challenges
Increasing investment in ecological infrastructure can deliver a host of environmental, social, economic, and developmental benefits. These benefits do need to be understood together with those realised from built infrastructure, to provide conjunctive solutions to our developmental challenges. There has been improvement in understanding the value that ecological infrastructure provides, but the need to invest in ecological infrastructure to the extent needed to halt the erosion of our natural capital and to underpin our sustainable development requirements has yet to come.
The management of this ecological infrastructure is critical in ensuring national and local water security. Pegasys has worked with the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) on a number of projects to improve public sector, private sector and civil society actors’ understanding of the importance of more effectively managing ecological infrastructure to ensure improved water security and greater resilience.
The Solution
Pegasys supported SANBI to develop the GEF funded Ecological Infrastructure for Water Security programme (EI4WS), a five-year initiative to undertake directed actions to improve the management of ecological infrastructure in two key catchments of South Africa. The programme is designed to realise impact in these catchments, while developing approaches that can be replicated and scaled in other parts of the country. Once the programme was initiated the Pegasys team supported SANBI in developing a monitoring, evaluation, learning and reporting framework that would enable the team to track progress, to adjust Green Climate Fund programming where needed and to ensure that learning is effectively captured.
More recently, Pegasys has begun a new programme with SANBI to develop a GCF funding application for support to local livelihoods projects (ECO-DRR project) that will ensure local level resilience to the impacts of climate shocks. Again, the lessons learned from these community-based projects will enable the country to take resilience building actions to scale.
Results
While the importance of ecological infrastructure is increasingly being understood, the mainstreaming of initiatives to ensure sustainable management still requires much improvement. Demonstration projects not only realise impact, but also provide rich learnings that can guide improvements in approach. Pegasys’ support of SANBI will guide future efforts to ensure water security and a sustainable developmental future.
The Numbers
For over a decade, Pegasys has worked alongside SANBI to contribute to South Africa’s sustainable development. From concept design to implementation to fund raising to evaluation, Pegasys has worked with SANBI to grow and develop its offering for the benefit of South Africa’s biodiversity.
Derek Weston, Associate Director
