Die vestiging van gemeenskapsgedrewe geīntegreerde opgvanggebiedbestuur : die Veldwachtersrivier opvanggebied

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT:South Africa is a semi-arid country with an average annual rainfall of 197mm, in comparison withthe international average of 860mm per year, of which the available freshwater sources are currentlybeing utilised virtually completely. The water restrictions in the Western Cape during the summerof 2000/2001 and of 2001/2002 are sufficient evidence of this. This threatening water shortageholds far-reaching consequences for the socio-economic development of the country if an activeeffort is not made to manage the water resources in a sustainable manner. Starting in the 1990s, theconcept of integrated catchment management crCM) began to enjoy widespread attention as amechanism to manage water resources. However, it was primarily forced, state-initiated projectswith little direct community involvement that enjoyed a limited amount of success.This study undertook community-driven, integrated catchment management in a relatively smallcatchment in the Veldwachters River valley in the Stellenbosch area in the Western Cape in order toinvestigate the effectiveness thereof as a mechanism for sustainable water resource management.The study firstly places the concept of rCM in perspective, after which the study area is demarcatedspatially within the South African and the regional context. Community-based action research asresearch approach provides the techniques to reconcile and integrate the duality of the rCM process,namely the human and physical elements in a catchment, and to successfully involve the communityin the process. The first phase of the study entails the gathering of existing and new information andthe definition of the environmental status of the catchment area in a situation analysis, which waspresented to the community as an information document to initiate public participation. During thesecond phase, a community partnership was established by means of introductory interviews,correspondence, focus group meetings and public forums. The third and executive phase wascharacterised by the mobilisation of the community partnership in the execution of strategicplanning procedures, such as the formulation of a catchment vision, prioritisation of relevantcatchment management issues, the statement of the management objectives and the formulation andimplementation of action plans for the management of various issues in the catchment.The conclusion drawn after a thorough evaluation of the course of the study is that theimplementation of community-driven integrated catchment management can be successfulinasmaller catchment. A few crucial requirements need to be taken into consideration in futureapplications elsewhere, namely:• That the study area must have a small enough area so that all stakeholders can be involvedrelatively easily and for a catchment identity and ownership of the process to be able todevelop;• That the process must initially be facilitated externally until a community partnership has beenestablished and a management committee has been elected, after which the facilitation andmanagement of the process must be handed to the community so that it can finally becomecompletely community driven;• That socio-econornic issues initially will receive more attention than the natural environment,but that these issues need to be utilised to establish the ICM process, after which the naturalenvironment naturally will receive greater priority; and• That the researcher must remain patient, particularly during the second and third phases of theprocess, as public participation and particularly the establishment of a community-drivenprocess can be slow and exhausting.This case study emphasises that each application of ICM will be unique because the degree ofcommunity involvement and the priorities of catchment communities will differ. Communitydrivenintegrated catchment management is not, under any circumstances, an instant solution forwater management and water conservation issues, but it is the only sustainable option.KEY WORDS: catchment management, public/community participation, situation analysis, waterresource management, action research.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University