Sustainable livelihood principles and urban greening in informal settlements in practice: A case of Zandspruit informal settlement, South Africa

ABSTRACT

This article looks to investigate the practice of using the ‘sustainable livelihood approach’ in a multifaceted urban greening project, Trees for Homes. The urban greening project was implemented to improve the quality of life and help marginalised citizens of an informal settlement in South Africa to adapt to climate variability through tree planting. We explored the actual execution of the independent techniques being utilised in the implementation of the Trees for Homes project and how it can promote sustainable livelihood objectives in the Zandspruit informal settlement in South Africa. Using a qualitative approach, the study was able to effectively apply sustainable livelihood principles. It was also found, however, that the multi-level principle was limited by the lack of political muscle which is endemic to many disempowered poor citizens of developing economies. Although the project was successful in many ways, political vulnerability within the development cycle threatens the longer term sustainability of the project outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate variability
• informal settlements
• sustainable livelihoods
• urban greening
• forestry

1. Introduction

There is an urgent need to address the effects of anthropogenic induced climate variability; while the Global North is leading by actions, more needs to be done in the Global South, particularly in Africa (Leary et al., 2008; Food & Trees for Africa, 2011; Giorgi et al., 2014). Climate variability on the African continent is not only caused by global climatic issues, but equally by the rapid depletion of environmental resources, particularly rapid woodland depletion exacerbated by rapid urbanisation and increase in energy demand (Leary et al., 2008). This has resulted in the unsustainable use of urban forestry resources in many African countries and consequently has had an impact on the livelihoods of many of the marginalised and poor in urban environments (Goebel, 2007; Douglas et al., 2008).

The depletion of urban forests has led many governments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to develop climate variability adaptation programmes that use sustainable livelihood principles (SLPs) within communities so as to preserve and protect these urban forests because of their importance in mitigating climate variability (Leary et al., 2008). These principles represent a system where livelihoods in marginalised urban areas are linked to environmental sustainability and where the use of current resources does not deplete the future use of the resources (Arguments for Livelihoods Perspective, 2007; Nel, 2015). SLPs are in essence people-centred, responsive, and multi-levelled in their approach towards development (Toner, 2003; Serrat, 2010). These approaches have been birthed from the evolution of a new understanding of poverty; that it is not merely a lack of income, but that poverty is multi-dimensional in both its characteristics and causes (Hofmeyr, 2008). Thus, the core focus of SLPs is the community, in the form of community-level institutions and processes. SLPs link the micro of community institutions to the macro policy and practice of governments and NGOs (Ashley & Carney, 1999).

This linking of micro and macro is a shift in the focus of donor and government efforts from being predominantly occupied with resources and facilities, or the structures that provide the services, to the people themselves (Berke & Controy, 2000). The benchmark for the successes of SLPs is therefore whether sustainable improvements in people’s livelihoods have taken place. The benchmarks stress the importance of understanding various livelihood factors, such that the community itself identifies strategies which could lead to improved livelihoods (Ameyaw, 1992; Gondwe & Ayenagbo, 2013). They also identify the ability of a community to put to productive use whatever efforts or assets are rendered to them. Another concern for which SLPs are used as a possible solution is that usually isolated sectoral initiatives have limited value to community livelihoods, whilst cross-sectoral programmes become unmanageable (Ashley & Carney, 1999). SLPs are therefore applied in order to gain a good understanding of community needs, whilst paying attention to the larger policy context, thereby improving the effectiveness of development spending (Hofmeyr, 2008).

This article seeks to explore how SLPs have been implemented and developed looking at the core measures of sustainable livelihoods, namely people-centred, responsive and participatory, multi-level, conducted in partnership, and sustainable and dynamic. The programme under investigation is a subsidiary project of the NGO Food & Trees for Africa. The programme is conceived from the United Nations Billion Tree Campaign which initiated the planting of trees worldwide with the aim of promoting sustainability and climate variability adaptation (Vince, 2011). This local project of the UN programme has multiple aims, of which the primary focus is to plant trees to address climate variability in Africa. However, it was recognised that simply planting trees may not be sustainable, and thus the programme was developed incorporating SLPs to look at the growth of fruit trees as a source of food and income for recipients in marginalised urban communities (Food & Trees for Africa, 2011; Vince, 2011). In South Africa, this programme manifests itself as the Trees for Homes programme which specifically targeted the planting of trees in informal settlements as a source of food and income, with the secondary objective of planting a large amount of trees to mitigate climate variability (Food & Trees for Africa, 2011).

In 2012, the Trees for Homes project was implemented in informal settlements across Johannesburg. One of the target settlements was the informal settlement of Zandspruit situated on the north-west periphery of the city (Botsane, 2012). The programme aimed to provide training and short-term paid employment and to promote environmental awareness as well as its environmental objectives. The overall objectives were to improve the quality of life of the poorest in South Africa by adding value to the subsidised housing units they would receive when getting social housing, by providing planting material for the community (Food & Trees for Africa, 2011). In this way the project was inherently multifaceted, from addressing climate variability and promoting sustainable livelihoods to using the sustainable livelihood approach to make the project sustainable (Ashley & Carney, 1999; Musampa, 2006; Food & Trees for Africa, 2011).

Despite the overriding goals of this project, there is insufficient feedback information on the practical implementation of sustainable livelihood projects in informal settlements in South Africa that allows experts to better formulate place-specific strategies for sustainable livelihood initiatives for informal settlements in South Africa to assess its success. It is increasingly being recognised that the success of sustainable livelihood initiatives for climate adaptation purposes depends on the social dimension of the initiatives (Price & Probert, 1997; Dicks, 2014; Giorgi et al., 2014). Development strategies, particularly those that take a ‘top-down’ approach from a national level, have been observed to fail to adapt to the social norms of the communities within which implementation will occur (Zaccai, 2012; Massey, 2013).

This presents a problem especially when it is, in fact, the local and not the national communities that are the main vehicle through which sustainable development decisions and projects, human resource inputs, techniques, values, and ideas are actually implemented (Ashley & Carney, 1999; Dicks, 2014). Better information about outcomes would be useful in assessing the strides that communities are making toward sustainability, and evaluating the performance of mandates, plans, and implementation efforts. Better information would also improve the ability and legitimacy of planners in promoting the more holistic sustainability concept (Berke & Controy, 2000).

This study therefore sought to query, document, and attempt to investigate the interplay of community development experts, their values and sustainable livelihood objectives, and how they can or should come together in a successful manner during the implementation of the Trees for Homes project in the Zandspruit informal settlement. We investigated how information about the programme implementation was relayed to the residents by examining any pre-existing constraints that hindered involvement of the residents and whether or not resources were available to facilitate local involvement of the residents. Finally, we investigated the residents’ competence and confidence in their own abilities to plant trees.

2. Materials and methods

This study was granted Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee number LR 2012001370 ethics clearance. We ensured that all participation in the research was voluntary. This required that the researchers did not in any way coerce any individual into participating in the interviews (Trochim, 2006) and we ensured that the requirement of informed consent was fulfilled. This meant that the prospective participants needed to be fully informed about the procedures and the associated risks involved in research and they must give their consent to participate in the research in writing or verbally (Trochim, 2006). To help protect the privacy of research participants, we applied two standards: confidentiality and anonymity (De Vos, 2002).

There are approximately 4000 households living in the informal settlement of Zandspruit (Gunter, 2014). Because of this number, a convenience sample of 20 community members was recruited from a list of participants. A qualitative research approach – in-depth, semi-structured interviews – was then used often to explore and describe the behaviour of the interviewees within the project (Hancock et al., 1998). The participants were chosen because of their suitability and according to the criteria set: a high level of involvement in the project, an overseeing position of at least one aspect of the project, and/or having access to planning and implementation strategies for the project. Included in the interview group were the community liaison and engagement officers who were overseeing project implementation in Zandspruit as well as the local councillors of the voting district. It was recognised that 20 interviews might not be sufficient and that snowball sampling may have been needed to obtain more data. However, at the conclusion of the 20 interviews it was felt that data saturation had been reached and no additional themes or information were added to the data-set (Guest et al., 2006). The data saturation method is commonly used by researchers to collect data to explain SLPs so as to address the specific aims and objectives during data collection. Given (2008) highlights that data saturation is reached at a point during data collection when no new or relevant information emerges with respect to the newly constructed theory. Hence, we looked at this as the point at which no more data needed to be collected (i.e. n = 27 for the study) and when the aims appeared to be robust, with no gaps or unexplained phenomena, with the resulting theory (i.e. aims and objectives) being more easily constructed and answered. From this point, we addressed our findings bases on four themes; cultural, political, institutional, and technical. The community members’ interviews were triangulated with data from interviews with a further six liaison officers and the local councillor. Thus, while the population for this study was large, it was felt that sufficient data had been collected to allow for an insightful understanding of the project.

Raw transcribed data were raised to the conceptual level using open coding (Baxter & Babbie, 2004; Marczyk et al., 2005). Thematic data analysis and interpretation was done by comparing discovered themes with those identified in Ashley & Carney (1999), Berke & Controy (2000), Toner (2003), Brocklesby & Fisher (2003), Allison & Horemans (2006), Reed et al. (2006), and Arguments for Livelihoods Perspective (2007).

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Thematic analysis

Four main themes or factors were identified and were utilised to investigate the extent and/or quality of participation of the Zandspruit community in the Trees for Homes project. This subsequently gave an indication of the effective application of the SLPs. These themes were cultural, political, institutional, and technical. These four themes were found to be interrelated, and the extent of this interrelation was observed to vary contextually. The impact of cultural themes on levels and quality of participation was investigated, and various cultural factors were identified as themes for analysis. The political themes that were identified in this study assisted in investigating the establishment and exercise of power within the project, and how these impacted on the effectiveness of the application of SLPs through the Trees for Homes project. The institutional themes were concerned with the legal and administrative structure of the project. The final theme that was used in this investigation was the technical theme. Technical factors looked into the details of the manageability of the project and the ‘development cycle’, know-how problems, and regulatory problems.

The discussion was addressed by looking at the questions posed to the interviewees and then presented as their transcribed answers. These responses were subsequently analysed and interpreted to gain an insight into the themes that emerged from the interviews.

3.2. Cultural themes

3.2.1. Participation

Recent studies such as Dicks (2014) on participatory development in urban regeneration suggest that communities which lack pre-existing community structures or pre-existing participatory processes find it difficult to engage with projects that are characterised by a participatory process (Lyons et al., 2002). The quality and quantity of participation is therefore greatly linked to the people-centred nature and to the responsive and participatory nature of SLPs. The quantity and quality of participation was a factor that was considered in analysing the effective application of SLPs in the settlement via the Trees for Homes project. First it was established whether or not a culture of participation already existed in the community. It was evident in the interviews that several initiatives and projects were already running in the community itself. Reference was made to the various programmes that the community was already involved in with local voluntary organisations:

Question:

Are resources available to facilitate local involvement of the residents?

Response:

The alumni [community liaison officers], they are not specifically from Zandspruit, but are from this area, what they do is reproducible, in terms of SIFE (entrepreneurial development society at a local university), they are trying to help with business plans and processes in Zandspruit with student teachers, they’ve been going to Masakane and Zandspruit primary … most of the kids from there go to Matle combined which is a high school. They catch a bus and we have some students teaching some practicums there; then we work with GOLONG, which is an NGO there, our students have painted a number of pre-schools and that has been sort of orientation … then in terms of soccer tournaments, the guys have come down and played some soccer tournaments here … (Interviewee 1)

Furthermore, it was noted that there were some pre-existing community structures in Zandspruit such as Impilo and Community Connect. This, as well as the pre-existing participatory processes in the community, assisted in the effective application of the responsive and participatory SLP.

3.2.2. Education and experience

The confidence of communities to participate is strongly linked to their experience and knowledge of the processes involved in the project (Dicks, 2014). For this reason, the educational experience is imperative in this study. It is also believed to affect the extent to which a community is able to ‘own’ a project. This is very important because it influences the long-term sustainability of a process, long after the project/process initiators have finalised the formal stages of the process (Brocklesby & Fisher, 2003). Focus would therefore ideally be on attempting to build on the community’s strengths, pooling their resources, knowledge, and experience to establish an inter-generational structure, forging a sustainable, locally-based sustainable livelihood or lifestyle. This theme of education and experience affects the effective application of the two SLPs of people-centred and sustainable and dynamic. This study investigated whether or not the Zandspruit community would have any experience in tree planting:

Question:

Do the residents have any relevant experience for them to be able to plant trees?

Response:

No, the only thing that you find is that some of the folks down there do garden work that would embrace some gardening principles working for gardening companies and companies like that. (Interviewee 2)

This question leads to the discussion moving on to gender-related issues:

Question:

Who is more likely to be looking after the trees? The men, the children, or the women?

Response:

 … most likely, it would be a woman, that’s my perception, because the women are far more proactive in doing things than the men. (Interviewee 4)

This raised a particular concern, because men are most likely to look for and acquire garden work in Johannesburg. It was therefore very important for the educators to ensure that women in the community are empowered through education. To the credit of the Trees for Homes project in Zandspruit, the five selected educators from the community consisted of three males and two females. According to Ameyaw (1992), female thinking and experiential knowledge is a major source for the emerging ecological paradigm. This made women’s ownership of the Trees for Home project in Zandspruit very important. It was therefore investigated whether this had been recognised by the project facilitators, in that women were also being educated:

Question:

Does the training and education you give target a specific gender?

Response:

No, it doesn’t target a gender but it definitely has results where women are involved … and I think possibly, the women are more resilient. The men might have been more destroyed, internally, by the injustice in the past, and their dignity more destroyed, whereas the women just want to nurture their kids and no matter what, they’ll get going for the survival of their child – that’s just my personal perspective; whereas men just can’t necessarily recover from that kind of personal destruction … (Interviewee 4)

Indeed, the issue of gender cannot be taken lightly. Where projects incorporate issues of ecological paradigms, women were at times overlooked to varying degrees. However, lessons from the Kasha project in Botswana (Ameyaw, 1992; Elmhirst, 2013) clearly show how women are instrumental in the long-term success of any efforts in ecological sustainability (Singh, 1999).

3.2.3. Attitudes towards outsiders

Although there was no direct question that addressed the factor of attitudes towards outsiders, this theme often appeared as being linked with other cultural and political issues. In this investigation, the issue of attitudes towards outsiders was seen to impact the effective application of the ‘conducted in partnership’ SLP:

Question:

Are there any pre-existing constraints that hinder involvement of the residents?

Response:

No project is easy; you are dealing with people, you are dealing with communities and I think the reality is the community is sceptical at best of outside involvement. So the first question that we would be asked; I’ll give you an example, one of the academics sitting in the one school, and there is some very activist guys there, and we saw this person there from Monash his first question was ‘what are you doing here and what do you want?’ And so they are suspicious especially of someone not there from Zandspruit. Well, what do they notice? The first thing is that they are suspicious of motives because people have misrepresented themselves in the past, secondly they are also tired of empty promises … then for our students going in, they also have levels of fear (the students) because they are going into unknown territory, because they don’t understand – they are not from there … that’s what the trees project is; it’s far more of a partnership. It’s not people just going in to plant some trees and be happy. It’s a partnership, and for the on-going sustainability of the project, the owner of the tree has to own it. (Interviewee 5)

From this response, it is apparent there is a sense of mistrust of politicians, as well as other individuals such as NGOs or cooperatives. Not far from this is also the issue of foreigners, which recently manifested in the Zandspruit informal settlement as violent riots (Landau & Polzer, 2007). These issues can be problematic for sustainability.

3.3. Political themes

3.3.1. Decision-making

From the onset, the Trees for Homes project had policy and mandates to allow the community to have a voice in the decision-making processes of some aspects of the project. Although it was good that the projects facilitated the SLP of ‘people-centred’ in the decision-making process, it also cannot be ignored that the promotion of partnerships and developments is potentially linked to a policy or mandate in the existing Trees for Homes project that was introduced in a distinctly top-down manner (Lyons et al., 2002). In spite of this, however, the community had shown initiative and determination to form structures that would direct any external aid to address the actual needs of its own community:

Response:

… that is when we decide to have the Zandspruit Service Forum, which we now changed to Community Connect … we are trying to involve more community leaders into the forum … (Interviewee 6)

3.3.2. Policy framework of local and national government

Cousins et al. (2005) and Gondwe & Ayenagbo (2013) suggest that the poor and the ‘extra-legal’ sector are portrayed as homogeneous, whereas in reality they are highly differentiated. This is a problem if in varying communities the priorities might be different; even so, in one community the priorities of its members might be very different. It was found in the interview process that the efforts of local and national government in Zandspruit are playing an increasingly active role in regulating patterns of land use as part of a greater effort to direct the course of economic change (Cousins et al., 2005). In Zandspruit, 70% of the land has been purchased by the government and is now being leased to the local council. However, 30% of the community still lives on private property with heightened insecurity. The project had only planted trees on the 70% of land that was being leased to the local council by the government; excluding the remaining 30% of residents. The security of tenure can therefore be seen as a challenge to the application of the people-centred SLP in this project (Gunter, 2013; Minnery et al., 2013).

3.4. Institutional themes

3.4.1. Mechanisms for relaying information

Meetings were used as a means of relaying information about the project. Therefore, the effectiveness of messages reaching the community depended on the commitment of the residents to actually attend these meetings:

Question:

Is information relaying very effective in this project?

Response:

Not really, I would say that the information has been partially communicated in the sense that most of the people don’t come to the public meetings, and you find that that creates a problem because only people who come to the meetings can pass the wrong information about the meetings, which can be diluted, always creating a problem  …  (Interviewee 7)

The community, however, appeared to have recognised the potential problem of this, and has determined to find alternative means to communicate:

Response:

… that is where organisations like mine, Impilo Foundation that is where we come in in terms of communication, trying to find the means where we can communicate … (Interviewee 7)

This can be seen as a stride towards sustainability, because this type of initiative can be seen as the community taking ownership of the project.

3.5. Technical themes

3.5.1. Long-term project management and sustainability of representativeness

The sustainable and dynamic SLP recognises the dynamic nature of livelihood strategies with communities, and suggests that external support responds flexibly to changes in people’s situations and develops longer term commitments (Arguments for Livelihoods Perspective, 2007). The community of Zandspruit itself was found in this investigation to have put in place structures for the long-term management of projects including the trees project. One such structure was ‘Community Connect’, a forum where the community connected with any service provider or organisation that wished to connect or participate in any way in the community.

3.5.2. Vulnerability in the development cycle

There have been confusing messages from the South African government in respect of slum eradication and slum clearance. This message has certainly played a part in bringing about a measure of polarisation between the government and the urban poor and a loss of understanding between the two (Hofmeyr, 2008). Not known for certain is the direction that the government intends to take with regards to addressing the issue of informal settlements (Goebel, 2007). Confusion appears to still exist about the complete eradication or, alternatively, the upgrading of informal settlements, which gives people a sense of insecurity. The ambiguous state of affairs with regards to the legislating of the Housing Act 107 of 1997 (Republic of South Africa, 1997) also exacerbates the feeling of insecurity with informal settlement dwellers (McDonald, 1998).

Although the act reverses the direct interventions put in place by the apartheid government in order to eliminate slums such as active control over slum expansion, eviction, forced relocation, criminalisation of land invasions, and mandating of municipalities and land owners to institute evictions, similar practices have been found to have been incorporated into proposed and approved legislation in contradiction with the Housing Act 107 of 1997 (Republic of South Africa, 1997; Hofmeyr, 2008). This directly impacts negatively on one of the objectives of the Trees for Homes project in Zandspruit, which is concerned with increasing the economic (resale) value of the housing units in Zandspruit. According to the interviewees, the government now owns about 70% of the land, which it in turn leases to the municipality. The remaining 30% remains in private ownership. This implies that the residents themselves are unlikely to benefit economically from the increase in property value because they will not have the deeds and subsequently the right to sell or mortgage the property (Udesh, 2008). If anything, it might negatively impact them should they need to pay rent because the property will become more expensive.

Issues of mistrust were also apparent from the responses of the participants and reference was made to the election processes and other power-gaining narratives. A sense of scepticism was observed in this study towards politicians who have made promises of housing and other forms of development often to garner political support ahead of elections, with little if any development at the end. The vulnerability of the Zandspruit informal settlement in the development cycle poses a potential and real threat towards any effective sustainability. The majority of informal settlements are yet to receive significant development attention, whether it takes the form of full upgrading, relocation to green-field housing projects, or being provided with interim interventions to mitigate living conditions at the very least (Hofmeyr, 2008):.

Question:

Are there any pre-existing issues that can affect the involvement of residents in this particular project?

Response:

there is a lot of political interference … if you are fighting as a politician, you use the community as a battleground … me as a politician furthering mine, or whatever I want to achieve … and of course, the issue of trust, particularly in Zandspruit where there has been a lot of people come here and disappoint the community. They come into the community and promise one thing and then they don’t do those kind of things … and then at the end of the day, the community doesn’t really trust anyone. (Interviewee 8)

Realistically speaking, the residents in these (informal) settlements still remain on the margins of new South African democracy because they continue to receive limited tangible benefits from government programmes and policies (Cousins et al., 2005). The residents in these settlements, as a consequence of this, have developed a somewhat negative perception of government, and even other external parties, believing that they simply do not care about their predicament and are therefore greatly suspicious of external parties’ motives (Misselhorn, 2008). We found that this project was able to implement several SLPs at different stages of project implementation. These SLPs are outlined in the following and, using the responses from the interviews, the way in which they were incorporated into the project is also outlined and discussed within the theoretical framework of this study.

3.6. Sustainable livelihood principles identified in the Trees for Homes project in Zandspruit

3.6.1. People-centred

To a large extent the people-centred SLP was found to be present in this project. According to Lyons et al. (2002), projects implemented to promote sustainable livelihoods and to eliminate poverty can vary in two distinctive ways. Some projects may be result oriented, and the participation of a community is viewed as a means to achieve these results. The other types of project focus primarily on the social and political development of the projects (i.e. are people-centred). This existence of the people-centred SLP was investigated in this study. The Trees for Home project aimed to educate the community, and did so by training members of the community, who in turn educated other members in the community. Education is a social development in the community. Politically, this project was seen to encourage the formation of community boards, which made collective decisions for the community.

3.6.2. Responsive and participatory

This particular SLP emphases the importance of the initiative of the residents of the community in question, and tests the responsiveness of outsiders (who in this case are Trees for Homes). According to Ashley & Carney (1999), residents must be able to identify for themselves an area of need. Outsiders therefore need to develop processes that enable them to listen and respond to these needs. The responsive and participatory SLP was found to have been incorporated in the Trees for Homes project, as one participant responded:

 … the initiative was something that came to us and we then collaborated, and there was acceptance by the community structures that that would be worthwhile … (Interviewee 9)

The project also held meetings as a way to be able to listen to the residents, and then responded to the proposed needs, which in this case was a need for trees in the community.

3.6.3. Multi-level

The multi-level SLP recognises that the elimination of poverty is a great challenge which can only be tackled effectively by working at multiple levels (Arguments for Livelihoods Perspective, 2007). It is important that the micro level serves to inform the development of policy and the development of an effective enabling environment, and that the macro structures and processes allow people to build upon their own strengths (Ashley & Carney, 1999). This livelihood principle was found to be the most volatile within the project.

4. Conclusions

It must be noted that the notion of ‘success’ in the effective application of SLPs in Zandspruit may be open to interpretation. In this study, success is being taken to mean that all four identified factors – cultural, political, institutional, and technical factors – were incorporated into the sustainable livelihood approach inherent to the project, resulting in the survival of the trees originally planted in the project. Thus, although this study is looking into a tree planting project, its attention is focusing on investigating the enabling process by which this project becomes a sustainable livelihood for the Zandspruit community.

This study found that in many ways the identified SLPs – namely people-centred, responsive and participatory, multi-level, conducted in partnership, and sustainable and dynamic – had been incorporated into the objectives of the project in Zandspruit. It was also noted, however, that the multi-level SLP which links the macro to the micro was not adequately addressed in the objectives of the Trees for Homes project. This SLP and objective is strongly linked to the political factor, which was identified as vulnerable in the development cycle. Although most efforts towards sustainable livelihoods had been successful in the project in Zandspruit, a great threat to the sustainability of these efforts exists due to the volatile nature of the tenure of most of the residents, and the ambiguity of the housing policies that the government is trying to use in order to avert the housing crisis faced by informal settlements in South Africa (Misselhorn, 2008; Gunter, 2013; Doberstein & Stager, 2013). This research found that the current state of housing and tenure in Zandspruit is a potential threat to the long-term sustainability of the tree planting efforts of this programme. Land in Zandspruit was found to be mostly government owned, with some privately owned. This leaves the project outcomes ultimately at the disposal of the land owners, who are not the residents. Furthermore, it was found that the residents may not stand to benefit from the increase in property value that comes from the greening of the settlement, as they do not hold the deeds to their homes and therefore cannot resale or mortgage these units.

With regards to participation, it was found in this study that the community of Zandspruit already had in place several participatory processes that were running in the community, and a culture of participation was already established in the community. This was found to have had a positive impact on the extent and quality of participation of the community in the Trees for Homes project (Lyons et al., 2002; Dicks, 2014). There also existed several structures in the community that helped with the long-term management and sustainability of the Trees for Homes project, and indeed other projects in the community. One such structure is Community Connect.

Based on the findings of this research, the Trees for Homes project was able to incorporate most of the SLPs into its objectives, and has thus far succeeded in effectively executing these in Zandspruit. However, the strides made by this project towards sustainable livelihoods still remain vulnerable in the development cycle due to the ambiguous nature of national housing policies with regards to informal settlements in South Africa (Hofmeyr, 2008; Gunter, 2013). The community of Zandspruit was found to have high levels of participation in community projects in general. Structures are set in place, and plans for even more effective project management structures are already in the pipeline. It can therefore be concluded that there is success in the effective application of SLPs in the Trees for Homes project in the Zandspruit informal settlement, with the exception of the multi-levelled SLP in the currently running Trees for Homes project.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Monash Community Engagement Office, especially Craig Rowe and Bronwyn DuRand, for their invaluable input into this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Mwazvita TB Sachikonye http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6757-316X

Tatenda Dalu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9019-7702