The South African ‘Ecological Reserve’, A Travelling Concept

Abstract

With its ‘ecological reserve’, South African National Water Act of 1998 is perceived as one of the most ambitious Water Acts in the world from an environmental perspective. At first sight, this ‘ecological reserve’ provision could be mistaken for a typical case of North–South policy transfer when actually it was initially engineered by the Department of Water Affairs and its civil engineers in the 1970s–1980s. The paper shows the renewed influence of the scientific community over the definition of the concept during the debate leading to the adoption of the Water Reform Act in the mid-1990s. While investing in the international arena, South African hydro-ecologists managed to reinforce their position in the domestic arena at the same time. Therefore, we demonstrate complex interdependence between domestic and international levels benefiting this travelling concept. Finally, we emphasize that for hydro-ecologists, the international arena was never a resource already there but an opportunity created.

Notes

1. For the rest of the paper we will either use the term ‘ecological reserve’ or EFR, which is a term by which the concept is best known worldwide.

2. It is undeniable that the ecological reserve adds important financial costs for the DWA, which has to implement it, together with water access for all.

3. Personal communication with International Rivers Executive Director, Pretoria, March 2013; Phone interview with a leading international hydro-ecologist, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford, December 2010.

4. Phone interview with a leading international hydro-ecologist, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford, December 2010.

5. Interview with an aquatic scientist, Cape Town, August 2010.

6. We speak about an ‘unlikely alliance’ because of the fact that a priori river ecologists are not prone to welcome the work of civil engineers whose task is to build water infrastructures that most of the time irremediably modify the ecological condition of a river ecosystem.

7. Smith (2013) advocates cross-fertilization between the literature in public policy analysis and the literature in international relations in a bid to study the internationalization of public policies.

8. The 1994 Agreement of the COAG on Water Reform committed the state governments to a clear timetable for developing water resource plans that would cater for environmental flows.

9. Interview with a water expert, Australian National University, Canberra, June 2013.

10. Personal communication with International Rivers Executive Director, Pretoria, March 2013.

11. Interview with a leading aquatic scientist, professor of freshwater ecology, Cape Town, August 2010.

12. Interview with ex-DWA Deputy Director, December 2010.

13. Interview, Pretoria, 1 December 2010. In his address at the congress of the Limnological Society of South Africa (which later became the SASAqS) held in Grahamstown in May 1980, he had already mentioned this international context, with ICOLD's emerging discussion over environmental issues following environmental impact assessment laws passed in several ICOLD country members.

14. The flow releases from the dam that some of the scientists proposed to maintain ecosystem services delivery to people can arguably be seen as having an environmental justice's objective. But it is also worth mentioning that despite being one of the very first ones to be determined, the Pongolapoort dam ecological reserve has hardly ever been implemented. The same can be said of the rest of the reserves determined in the country later on. Until today, the ecological reserve exists mainly on paper.

15. The author also shows that the reservoir construction did not stop with the implementation of minimum flow requirement; on the contrary, it acquired a new utility: allowing low flows to be sustained for the sake of the environment.

16. Not used to providing hydrometric information, scientists were not ready to provide even one figure to DWA and have been even mocked for their approximate answer that the required flow should be ‘about the level of a foot ankle’ (Cambray 2010).

17. Interview with a leading aquatic scientist, professor of freshwater ecology, Cape Town, August 2010.

18. This programme gathered water resources managers, funding agencies and aquatic scientists.

19. Interview with one of the leading Australian hydro-ecologists, professor of freshwater ecology, Brisbane, June 2013.

20. It is important to say that the word ‘coup’ is only used to emphasize the radical change underwent by the concept of EFR during the adoption of the NWA. This should be understood neither as a pejorative characterization nor as a normative judgment over hydro-ecologists’ role.

21. It was in the 1980s that the biggest dam construction project, the LHWP, was adopted.

22. Interview with an aquatic scientist, Pretoria, 2011. Again, this term is not used in a pejorative sense but to underline the complete ‘overturn’ in the meaning of the concept that hydro-ecologists managed to achieve in the run-up to the drafting of the new Water Act.

23. This explanation in terms of ‘window of opportunity’ was also endorsed later on by Biggs, Breen, and Palmer (2008).

24. The ex-Limnology Society of South Africa.

25. Interview with ex-SASAqS representative in the NWA experts’ panel, professor of aquatic science, Grahamstown, November 2010.

26. A human rights narrative had more prospects than an ‘environmental’ rights narrative in a post-apartheid and transformation context (interview with a leading aquatic scientist, professor of freshwater ecology, Cape Town, August 2010).

27. With a lot of former white elites leaving the Department after the end of the apartheid regime, replaced by political cadre deployment from the new ruling ANC party.

28. For more details about this re-direction of the concept of Ecological Reserve, see Bourblanc (2013).

29. Basically, whether the environmental flow provided will cater for near natural conditions, or an overall good ecological status, or slightly degraded conditions, etc.

30. For more details about this process, see Bourblanc (2013).

31. Either through their participation to international projects or through their involvement in international experts’ networks.

32. We will go back to the critical involvement of South African hydro-ecologists in the LHWP in the following section.

33. Not surprisingly, this common perception about South Africa EFR success story has been publicized by environmental NGOs such as The Natural Conservancy (see Brian Richter's writings in particular) and by International Rivers (interview, Pretoria, March 2013).

34. Interview with one of the leading Australian hydro-ecologists, professor of freshwater ecology, Brisbane, June 2013.

35. Interview with ex-World Bank official in charge of EFR, Canberra, June 2013.

36. Interview with ex-World Bank official in charge of EFR, Canberra, June 2013.