Biotic and abiotic drivers of macroinvertebrate assemblages in a South African river
- Authors: Bellingan, Terence Andrew
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Aquatic insects -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Stream ecology -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Freshwater ecology -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Riparian areas -- Management , Ecosystem management -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Mayflies -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Stoneflies -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Keiskamma River
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/61839 , vital:28067
- Description: Aquatic insects are the most numerically abundant and diverse group of organisms found in lotic ecosystems in South Africa and the world over. They play vital roles in freshwater ecosystem functioning, processing nutrients and in turn forming integral links in stream food-webs. This thesis focussed on examining the macroinvertebrate fauna within three reaches of headwater streams of the Keiskamma River system: reaches that were considered to be fishless; reaches that were invaded by non-native salmonid species; and reaches that were dominated by native fish. I described the effects of predatory fish presence through detailed examination of macroinvertebrate assemblage composition; macroinvertebrate drift timing and density; and through niche utilisation determined from stable isotope data. Patterns in the macroinvertebrate assemblages of the headwaters of the Keiskamma River appear to be driven more strongly by flow rate and seasonal influences, but fish presence and biotope availability were also significant drivers. Niche shifts due to predator presence were not easy to detect and, while patterns of influence may have been evident, they were not found to be significant. However, I demonstrated that salmonids selectively feed on native fish species when the opportunity is presented, occupying significantly higher trophic levels when co-occurring with native fish than in invaded reaches where native fish are absent. Drift timing and density were demonstrated to be significantly different between reach for specific macroinvertebrate species from the Ephemeroptera and Plecoptera, under differing fish predation regimes, in agreement with what has been observed from studies in rivers elsewhere. In freshwater ecosystems of South Africa and worldwide, mitigation of negative effects of alien fishes through their removal using piscicides may also affect non-target organisms. To better understand the effects of just such a removal operation, employed for the first time in the history of freshwater conservation in South Africa, macroinvertebrate communities were assessed for non-target effects of rotenone. The fish eradication operations were demonstrated to have a short-term negative effect on the macroinvertebrate assemblage, through water quality index measurements and alteration of densities of macroinvertebrate taxa collected from stone surfaces. However, no long-term detrimental impact was observed as macroinvertebrate faunas returned to a comparable pre-treatment state within a year of each rotenone application.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
- Authors: Bellingan, Terence Andrew
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Aquatic insects -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Stream ecology -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Freshwater ecology -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Riparian areas -- Management , Ecosystem management -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Mayflies -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Stoneflies -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Keiskamma River
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/61839 , vital:28067
- Description: Aquatic insects are the most numerically abundant and diverse group of organisms found in lotic ecosystems in South Africa and the world over. They play vital roles in freshwater ecosystem functioning, processing nutrients and in turn forming integral links in stream food-webs. This thesis focussed on examining the macroinvertebrate fauna within three reaches of headwater streams of the Keiskamma River system: reaches that were considered to be fishless; reaches that were invaded by non-native salmonid species; and reaches that were dominated by native fish. I described the effects of predatory fish presence through detailed examination of macroinvertebrate assemblage composition; macroinvertebrate drift timing and density; and through niche utilisation determined from stable isotope data. Patterns in the macroinvertebrate assemblages of the headwaters of the Keiskamma River appear to be driven more strongly by flow rate and seasonal influences, but fish presence and biotope availability were also significant drivers. Niche shifts due to predator presence were not easy to detect and, while patterns of influence may have been evident, they were not found to be significant. However, I demonstrated that salmonids selectively feed on native fish species when the opportunity is presented, occupying significantly higher trophic levels when co-occurring with native fish than in invaded reaches where native fish are absent. Drift timing and density were demonstrated to be significantly different between reach for specific macroinvertebrate species from the Ephemeroptera and Plecoptera, under differing fish predation regimes, in agreement with what has been observed from studies in rivers elsewhere. In freshwater ecosystems of South Africa and worldwide, mitigation of negative effects of alien fishes through their removal using piscicides may also affect non-target organisms. To better understand the effects of just such a removal operation, employed for the first time in the history of freshwater conservation in South Africa, macroinvertebrate communities were assessed for non-target effects of rotenone. The fish eradication operations were demonstrated to have a short-term negative effect on the macroinvertebrate assemblage, through water quality index measurements and alteration of densities of macroinvertebrate taxa collected from stone surfaces. However, no long-term detrimental impact was observed as macroinvertebrate faunas returned to a comparable pre-treatment state within a year of each rotenone application.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
Social-ecological systems approaches to integrated estuarine governance: the Swartkops Estuary
- Hartmann, Ntombizanele Rebecca
- Authors: Hartmann, Ntombizanele Rebecca
- Date: 2021-04
- Subjects: Aquatic resources conservation -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Ecosystem management -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Biodiversity conservation -- Economic aspects
- Language: English
- Type: Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/51483 , vital:43282
- Description: Estuaries are complex systems and should be defined as social-ecological systems. This study investigated whether the Swartkops Estuary was managed as a socialecological system and also argued for the resource to be characterised as a commonpool resource due to its ‘open access’ nature and being utilised by many users. People often live in close proximity to estuarine resources. This means that the ecological component of the estuary cannot be managed separately from the social system. There are feedbacks that result from the interactions taking place between the ecological and social components and these need to be considered. Furthermore, the interactions between humans and estuaries are complex and do not change in a linear, predictable manner. The research methods investigated two research aims: (i) to investigate whether social-ecological systems approaches are currently being adopted in the Swartkops Estuary; and (ii) the sustainable management of the Swartkops Estuary and potentially other estuaries in South Africa. The following research objectives formed the basis of this study: (i) to examine the current management system of the Swartkops Estuary; (ii) to determine and map the social and institutional actors for the Swartkops Estuary; (iii) to analyse the views of local stakeholders, authorities (policy makers) and policy implementers on the use of a social-ecological systems approach in the integrated management of the Swartkops Estuary; and (iv) to illustrate the potential advantages of adopting a social-ecological systems approach for ecosystem services and society. A mixed-method research design was applied in this study using questionnaires, semistructured interviews and focus groups discussions as data collection methods. The ecosystem services approach is one of the accepted approaches that links humans and ecosystems and the results of this study has demonstrated that the habitats of the Swartkops Estuary provide ecosystems systems to various stakeholders. Through the application of the natures’ contribution to peoples lens, this study has shown that estuaries contribute both positively (ecosystem services) and negatively (ecosystem disservices) to people. The findings of this study have revealed that the Swartkops Estuary faces sustainability challenges related to free-riding and the tragedy of the commons dichotomy. The governance of the Swartkops Estuary is weak due to the limited implementation of policy and regulatory requirements. This inadequacy in implementation has led to the overexploitation of living resources in the Swartkops Estuary because the ‘rulesin use’ are not respected and adhered to by users. This study therefore proposes guiding principles and practical implications for each of the following dimensions: (i) social-ecological systems; (ii) common-pool resources; and (iii) governance for integrated sustainable estuarine management. Challenges faced by estuaries are not only of ecological, social or economic nature; they involve a combination of all three. The sustainability of estuaries is therefore complex and requires management and governance that is designed to cope with, and adapt to, the social-ecological system changes. The novel contribution of this study is moving away from the orthodox approaches of examining the Swartkops Estuary by applying the SES approach to assess the governance of the estuary as a common-pool resource. , Thesis (DPhil) -- Faculty of Humanities, Development Studies, 2021
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021-04
- Authors: Hartmann, Ntombizanele Rebecca
- Date: 2021-04
- Subjects: Aquatic resources conservation -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Ecosystem management -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Biodiversity conservation -- Economic aspects
- Language: English
- Type: Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/51483 , vital:43282
- Description: Estuaries are complex systems and should be defined as social-ecological systems. This study investigated whether the Swartkops Estuary was managed as a socialecological system and also argued for the resource to be characterised as a commonpool resource due to its ‘open access’ nature and being utilised by many users. People often live in close proximity to estuarine resources. This means that the ecological component of the estuary cannot be managed separately from the social system. There are feedbacks that result from the interactions taking place between the ecological and social components and these need to be considered. Furthermore, the interactions between humans and estuaries are complex and do not change in a linear, predictable manner. The research methods investigated two research aims: (i) to investigate whether social-ecological systems approaches are currently being adopted in the Swartkops Estuary; and (ii) the sustainable management of the Swartkops Estuary and potentially other estuaries in South Africa. The following research objectives formed the basis of this study: (i) to examine the current management system of the Swartkops Estuary; (ii) to determine and map the social and institutional actors for the Swartkops Estuary; (iii) to analyse the views of local stakeholders, authorities (policy makers) and policy implementers on the use of a social-ecological systems approach in the integrated management of the Swartkops Estuary; and (iv) to illustrate the potential advantages of adopting a social-ecological systems approach for ecosystem services and society. A mixed-method research design was applied in this study using questionnaires, semistructured interviews and focus groups discussions as data collection methods. The ecosystem services approach is one of the accepted approaches that links humans and ecosystems and the results of this study has demonstrated that the habitats of the Swartkops Estuary provide ecosystems systems to various stakeholders. Through the application of the natures’ contribution to peoples lens, this study has shown that estuaries contribute both positively (ecosystem services) and negatively (ecosystem disservices) to people. The findings of this study have revealed that the Swartkops Estuary faces sustainability challenges related to free-riding and the tragedy of the commons dichotomy. The governance of the Swartkops Estuary is weak due to the limited implementation of policy and regulatory requirements. This inadequacy in implementation has led to the overexploitation of living resources in the Swartkops Estuary because the ‘rulesin use’ are not respected and adhered to by users. This study therefore proposes guiding principles and practical implications for each of the following dimensions: (i) social-ecological systems; (ii) common-pool resources; and (iii) governance for integrated sustainable estuarine management. Challenges faced by estuaries are not only of ecological, social or economic nature; they involve a combination of all three. The sustainability of estuaries is therefore complex and requires management and governance that is designed to cope with, and adapt to, the social-ecological system changes. The novel contribution of this study is moving away from the orthodox approaches of examining the Swartkops Estuary by applying the SES approach to assess the governance of the estuary as a common-pool resource. , Thesis (DPhil) -- Faculty of Humanities, Development Studies, 2021
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021-04
The potential significance of refugia in safeguarding Non-Timber Forest products under Harvesting
- Authors: Mjoli, Nwabisa
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Non-timber forest products -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Nature conservation -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Ecosystem management -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MSc
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/60596 , vital:27801
- Description: Many rural households living in and adjacent to forests in South Africa harvest a variety of NonTimber Forest Products (NTFPs) such as wild fruits, fibre, fuelwood, seeds, medicine and bush meat for domestic use, sale and maintaining cultural values. To promote the continued availability of these NTFPs it is important that NTFPs are well maintained and that harvest offtake is sustainable, because if it is not, then the important livelihood function that they fulfil will be jeopardized over time. The role of refugia in conserving pockets of threatened species from overharvesting has rarely been considered. Building on Shackleton et al. (2015), six applications of the concept are considered: size refugia, spatial refugia, cultural/spiritual refugia and physical/habitat refugia. I examined the prevalence and type of refugia for NTFPs at three coastal sites in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. This was done via several community focus group discussions at each site. Here I report on the role of refugia in offering some safeguard to NTFPs by assessing harvested and non-harvested sites of refugia as well as individual plant species by measuring population density, harvest damage and size class profile. Respondents from the focus group discussions perceived a general decline in the abundance of common, widely used species over the past five decades. Decreasing rainfall and distant farming activities was reported consistently by the majority of the respondents. The most common form of refugia was spatial refugia, followed by cultural/spiritual refugia and physical/habitat refugia. Only six species were identified to be in refugia, namely Cyperus congestus, Cyperus textillis, Millettia grandis, Olea europaea subsp. africana, Phoenix reclinata, and Ptaeroxylon obliquum. Population inventories revealed that regeneration and population densities of some NTFP species in the non-refuge site were adversely affected by harvesting. Populations in refuge sites generally had the largest size classes indicating a regeneration potential but likely to impact regeneration over time if pressures are maintained. Therefore, if refuge sites keep larger individuals, NTFP populations can be maintained. Few studies have critically analyzed the concept of refugia in relation to how NTFPs can be safeguarded and the practical implication of the refuge concept needs to be considered in conservation and strategies and population models.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
- Authors: Mjoli, Nwabisa
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Non-timber forest products -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Nature conservation -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Ecosystem management -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MSc
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/60596 , vital:27801
- Description: Many rural households living in and adjacent to forests in South Africa harvest a variety of NonTimber Forest Products (NTFPs) such as wild fruits, fibre, fuelwood, seeds, medicine and bush meat for domestic use, sale and maintaining cultural values. To promote the continued availability of these NTFPs it is important that NTFPs are well maintained and that harvest offtake is sustainable, because if it is not, then the important livelihood function that they fulfil will be jeopardized over time. The role of refugia in conserving pockets of threatened species from overharvesting has rarely been considered. Building on Shackleton et al. (2015), six applications of the concept are considered: size refugia, spatial refugia, cultural/spiritual refugia and physical/habitat refugia. I examined the prevalence and type of refugia for NTFPs at three coastal sites in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. This was done via several community focus group discussions at each site. Here I report on the role of refugia in offering some safeguard to NTFPs by assessing harvested and non-harvested sites of refugia as well as individual plant species by measuring population density, harvest damage and size class profile. Respondents from the focus group discussions perceived a general decline in the abundance of common, widely used species over the past five decades. Decreasing rainfall and distant farming activities was reported consistently by the majority of the respondents. The most common form of refugia was spatial refugia, followed by cultural/spiritual refugia and physical/habitat refugia. Only six species were identified to be in refugia, namely Cyperus congestus, Cyperus textillis, Millettia grandis, Olea europaea subsp. africana, Phoenix reclinata, and Ptaeroxylon obliquum. Population inventories revealed that regeneration and population densities of some NTFP species in the non-refuge site were adversely affected by harvesting. Populations in refuge sites generally had the largest size classes indicating a regeneration potential but likely to impact regeneration over time if pressures are maintained. Therefore, if refuge sites keep larger individuals, NTFP populations can be maintained. Few studies have critically analyzed the concept of refugia in relation to how NTFPs can be safeguarded and the practical implication of the refuge concept needs to be considered in conservation and strategies and population models.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
Indigenous knowledge of ecosystem services in rural communities of the Eastern Cape, South Africa
- Authors: Murata, Chenai
- Date: 2021-04
- Subjects: Ethnoscience -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Ecosystem management -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Nature -- Effect of human beings on -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Human ecology -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Human beings -- Effect of environment on -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , South Africa -- Eastern Cape -- Rural conditions
- Language: English
- Type: thesis , text , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/177929 , vital:42891 , 10.21504/10962/177929
- Description: This thesis is on indigenous knowledge of ecosystem services. The ecosystem service framework and its associated concepts are fairly young, having been introduced in the ecological discipline in the 1980s. The ecosystem service framework posits that the wellbeing of humans and their communities is dependent on services supplied by ecosystems. It emphasises that for the ecosystems to be able to supply the services, they need to be in a well-functioning state. This idea of well-functioning is predicated on the argument that the ecosystem service framework enjoins resource users to exercise responsible stewardship to prevent degradation and overharvesting. Moreover, the concept of dependence suggests that ecosystem services are of value to humans. The dominant means of measuring the value of ecosystem services has been the economic valuation method in which the contribution that each service makes to human wellbeing is quantified into monetary units. The framework disaggregates the services into four groups, namely provisioning, cultural, supporting and regulatory and seeks to all the pillars of human wellbeing including health, subsistence and spirituality into each of these groups. In doing all this, the framework significantly reconfigures the way we look at and present human-nature relations. This change has the potential to influence significant shifts in how ecological research and intervention programmes are conducted in the foreseeable future. However, the reality that the ecosystem service framework was formulated within, and is informed by the scientific epistemology begs the question: what do traditional rural communities who depend mainly on indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) for shaping and interoperating their relations with nature know of the ecosystem service concept? Rural communities are the ones who interact directly with nature on a day-to-day basis. This makes them a very critical component in the ecosystem service framework. Although South Africa has had studies in the ecosystem service theme, little has been done to attempt to investigate and document indigenous knowledge of ecosystem services that rural communities possess. By focusing only on scientific knowledge of ecosystem services, the South African literature does not do justice to the plural epistemologies of the ecosystem service users in the country. More importantly, the continued dearth of public information on indigenous knowledge of ecosystem services can potentially obstruct implementation of locally sensitive intervention programmes because nothing is known about how the local communities conceptualise the ecosystem service framework. All this presents a crucial gap in the South African research; one that unless effort is made to contribute towards filling it, our knowledge of how communities experience the ecosystem service framework in South Africa will remain skewed. This study set out to investigate and document indigenous knowledge of ecosystem services in order to contribute towards filling this gap. Indigenous knowledge system is an umbrella epistemic system that includes lay ecological knowledge (LEK), traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and many other related organized systems of knowing. Although the thesis has a chapter on LEK, its primary focus was TEK because the thesis was interested in unravelling how aspects of tradition including taboos, customs, traditional rules and belief in ancestral forces influence local communities’ knowledge of some key aspects of the ecosystem service framework including knowledge of various ecosystem services, valuation of ecosystem services, management of ecosystem services and perceptions of the management practices. The decision to focus on TEK was based on the reasoning that rural communities of the Eastern Cape boast a strong reputation of being traditional, recognizing ancestral spirits, legends and taboos as critical tools of knowledge generation and transmission. Using both mixed methods in some chapters and the qualitative approach alone in others, the study collected data in five villages of Mgwalana, Mahlungulu, Colana, Gogela and Nozitshena located in the north eastern part of Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, a region formerly called Transkei. The data were collected not on ecosystem services; but on the local people’s knowledge of ecosystem services. Although literature was consulted, the study regarded respondents as the primary source of data, hence the findings and conclusions presented in this thesis are about what local people know about ecosystem services. The study uses critical realist theoretical lenses to interpret respondents’ reports. The lenses included the principle of the separation between ontology and epistemology, the iceberg metaphor of ontology, epistemological pluralism and the hermeneutic dimension. These lenses were used to make sense of both the knowledge system of local people and the things about which their knowledge was. As part of discussing the local people’s knowledge, the study sometimes refers to science. This is not because I expected them to demonstrate knowledge similar to science. Instead, it was a critical realist dialectical way of explaining what something is by demonstrating what it is not. The study made a couple of key findings that can potentially enhance the growth of the South African ecosystem service discipline. First, respondents demonstrated knowledge of ecosystem services by mentioning a range of them such as drinking water, medicinal plants, cultural plants and fuelwood and how they affect the wellbeing of humans. However, what they did not have good knowledge of is that nature services can be classified into the four groups of supporting, regulatory, cultural and provisioning. Among the four ecosystem services groups, respondents could identify two only; provisional and cultural. Second, local communities depend heavily on ecosystem services for their well-being. The services include fuelwood, construction timber, medicinal plants, wild fruits, wild fish, cultural services and thatch grass. Although they appreciate that ecosystem services have value to their wellbeing, local people found it difficult to represent the value in monetary units. The conditions that make it difficult for local people to perceive ecosystem services as commodities include the absence of well-defined property system, lack of a quantitative consumer tradition and absence of an economic conception of nature. Third, local people understand the need to keep ecosystems in a well-functioning state hence they implement several traditional practices to manage ecosystem services. These practices include taboos, designating certain resources as sacred, legends, customary law, as well as some secular practices including gelesha and stone terracing. However, it is not easy to understand how traditional management practices work because they are not empirically observable. Fourth, local people possess knowledge of the reality that if not well managed, ecosystems can undergo degradation and hence fail to supply the services needed for human wellbeing. However, they explain the causes of degradation in terms of changes observable at the empirical level and the invisible causal power of supernatural forces. The inclusion of natural forces in degradation explanations marks a departure from the scientific explanations that revolve around biophysical processes. Fifth, the use of traditional management practices such as taboos to management ecosystems is under threat at the local communities. The threat can be attributed to three groups of causes, namely changes in worldviews due to adoption of formal education and Christianity, institutional disharmony playing out between the state and local traditional leadership, and lifestyle changes. These challenges constrain the opportunity for local people to apply traditional management practices to prevent the degradation of ecosystems. The net implication of this is that it renders it difficult for researchers and policy makers to assess the effectiveness of traditional management practices because they are not being implemented in full. In light of all these findings, the thesis concludes that TEK is underlabouring for the ecosystem service framework in the sense that it is used by local communities to generate knowledge of ecological concepts and phenomena. This means that TEK does not exist for the sake of its own self. Drawing from this finding, the study proposes a framework of analysing TEK as an underlabourer for social-ecological triggers or issues. Nonetheless, there are few factors that can be sources of limitation to the study. These include the reality that it was difficult to access pure traditional knowledge because over the years the local communities have received many state-sponsored ecological intervention programmes and a possible personal bias given the reality that I grew up in a traditional household and my father was a key holder or TEK. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Science, Environmental Science, 2021 , Thesis chapter to be published in 'Green and Low-Carbon Economy'. Journal available: https://ojs.bonviewpress.com/index.php/GLCE/index
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021-04
- Authors: Murata, Chenai
- Date: 2021-04
- Subjects: Ethnoscience -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Ecosystem management -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Nature -- Effect of human beings on -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Human ecology -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Human beings -- Effect of environment on -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , South Africa -- Eastern Cape -- Rural conditions
- Language: English
- Type: thesis , text , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/177929 , vital:42891 , 10.21504/10962/177929
- Description: This thesis is on indigenous knowledge of ecosystem services. The ecosystem service framework and its associated concepts are fairly young, having been introduced in the ecological discipline in the 1980s. The ecosystem service framework posits that the wellbeing of humans and their communities is dependent on services supplied by ecosystems. It emphasises that for the ecosystems to be able to supply the services, they need to be in a well-functioning state. This idea of well-functioning is predicated on the argument that the ecosystem service framework enjoins resource users to exercise responsible stewardship to prevent degradation and overharvesting. Moreover, the concept of dependence suggests that ecosystem services are of value to humans. The dominant means of measuring the value of ecosystem services has been the economic valuation method in which the contribution that each service makes to human wellbeing is quantified into monetary units. The framework disaggregates the services into four groups, namely provisioning, cultural, supporting and regulatory and seeks to all the pillars of human wellbeing including health, subsistence and spirituality into each of these groups. In doing all this, the framework significantly reconfigures the way we look at and present human-nature relations. This change has the potential to influence significant shifts in how ecological research and intervention programmes are conducted in the foreseeable future. However, the reality that the ecosystem service framework was formulated within, and is informed by the scientific epistemology begs the question: what do traditional rural communities who depend mainly on indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) for shaping and interoperating their relations with nature know of the ecosystem service concept? Rural communities are the ones who interact directly with nature on a day-to-day basis. This makes them a very critical component in the ecosystem service framework. Although South Africa has had studies in the ecosystem service theme, little has been done to attempt to investigate and document indigenous knowledge of ecosystem services that rural communities possess. By focusing only on scientific knowledge of ecosystem services, the South African literature does not do justice to the plural epistemologies of the ecosystem service users in the country. More importantly, the continued dearth of public information on indigenous knowledge of ecosystem services can potentially obstruct implementation of locally sensitive intervention programmes because nothing is known about how the local communities conceptualise the ecosystem service framework. All this presents a crucial gap in the South African research; one that unless effort is made to contribute towards filling it, our knowledge of how communities experience the ecosystem service framework in South Africa will remain skewed. This study set out to investigate and document indigenous knowledge of ecosystem services in order to contribute towards filling this gap. Indigenous knowledge system is an umbrella epistemic system that includes lay ecological knowledge (LEK), traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and many other related organized systems of knowing. Although the thesis has a chapter on LEK, its primary focus was TEK because the thesis was interested in unravelling how aspects of tradition including taboos, customs, traditional rules and belief in ancestral forces influence local communities’ knowledge of some key aspects of the ecosystem service framework including knowledge of various ecosystem services, valuation of ecosystem services, management of ecosystem services and perceptions of the management practices. The decision to focus on TEK was based on the reasoning that rural communities of the Eastern Cape boast a strong reputation of being traditional, recognizing ancestral spirits, legends and taboos as critical tools of knowledge generation and transmission. Using both mixed methods in some chapters and the qualitative approach alone in others, the study collected data in five villages of Mgwalana, Mahlungulu, Colana, Gogela and Nozitshena located in the north eastern part of Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, a region formerly called Transkei. The data were collected not on ecosystem services; but on the local people’s knowledge of ecosystem services. Although literature was consulted, the study regarded respondents as the primary source of data, hence the findings and conclusions presented in this thesis are about what local people know about ecosystem services. The study uses critical realist theoretical lenses to interpret respondents’ reports. The lenses included the principle of the separation between ontology and epistemology, the iceberg metaphor of ontology, epistemological pluralism and the hermeneutic dimension. These lenses were used to make sense of both the knowledge system of local people and the things about which their knowledge was. As part of discussing the local people’s knowledge, the study sometimes refers to science. This is not because I expected them to demonstrate knowledge similar to science. Instead, it was a critical realist dialectical way of explaining what something is by demonstrating what it is not. The study made a couple of key findings that can potentially enhance the growth of the South African ecosystem service discipline. First, respondents demonstrated knowledge of ecosystem services by mentioning a range of them such as drinking water, medicinal plants, cultural plants and fuelwood and how they affect the wellbeing of humans. However, what they did not have good knowledge of is that nature services can be classified into the four groups of supporting, regulatory, cultural and provisioning. Among the four ecosystem services groups, respondents could identify two only; provisional and cultural. Second, local communities depend heavily on ecosystem services for their well-being. The services include fuelwood, construction timber, medicinal plants, wild fruits, wild fish, cultural services and thatch grass. Although they appreciate that ecosystem services have value to their wellbeing, local people found it difficult to represent the value in monetary units. The conditions that make it difficult for local people to perceive ecosystem services as commodities include the absence of well-defined property system, lack of a quantitative consumer tradition and absence of an economic conception of nature. Third, local people understand the need to keep ecosystems in a well-functioning state hence they implement several traditional practices to manage ecosystem services. These practices include taboos, designating certain resources as sacred, legends, customary law, as well as some secular practices including gelesha and stone terracing. However, it is not easy to understand how traditional management practices work because they are not empirically observable. Fourth, local people possess knowledge of the reality that if not well managed, ecosystems can undergo degradation and hence fail to supply the services needed for human wellbeing. However, they explain the causes of degradation in terms of changes observable at the empirical level and the invisible causal power of supernatural forces. The inclusion of natural forces in degradation explanations marks a departure from the scientific explanations that revolve around biophysical processes. Fifth, the use of traditional management practices such as taboos to management ecosystems is under threat at the local communities. The threat can be attributed to three groups of causes, namely changes in worldviews due to adoption of formal education and Christianity, institutional disharmony playing out between the state and local traditional leadership, and lifestyle changes. These challenges constrain the opportunity for local people to apply traditional management practices to prevent the degradation of ecosystems. The net implication of this is that it renders it difficult for researchers and policy makers to assess the effectiveness of traditional management practices because they are not being implemented in full. In light of all these findings, the thesis concludes that TEK is underlabouring for the ecosystem service framework in the sense that it is used by local communities to generate knowledge of ecological concepts and phenomena. This means that TEK does not exist for the sake of its own self. Drawing from this finding, the study proposes a framework of analysing TEK as an underlabourer for social-ecological triggers or issues. Nonetheless, there are few factors that can be sources of limitation to the study. These include the reality that it was difficult to access pure traditional knowledge because over the years the local communities have received many state-sponsored ecological intervention programmes and a possible personal bias given the reality that I grew up in a traditional household and my father was a key holder or TEK. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Science, Environmental Science, 2021 , Thesis chapter to be published in 'Green and Low-Carbon Economy'. Journal available: https://ojs.bonviewpress.com/index.php/GLCE/index
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021-04
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