29 October 2009 - Media
statement - Department of Environmental
Affairs - THURSDAY, 29 OCTOBER 2009: South
Africa plays a prominent role and is specifically
honoured that the keynote address was given
by Rejoyce Mabudafhasi, the Deputy Minister
of the Ministry of Water and Environmental
Affairs.
The Deputy - Minister
is well known in environmental circles in
the global arena. According to Mr Al Duda
of the Global Environmental Facility International
Waters portfolio she is playing a leading
role in issues of environmental sustainability.
“Rejoyce Mabudafhasi
is one of the most supportive Ministers
of the International Waters portfolio’s
programmes in Africa. She is a real champion
of good governance for better environmental
protection and improved livelihood for the
poor. Her enthusiasm inspires us all.”
In Africa alone, millions
of people depend directly on marine resources
for their income and survival. And it is
no secret that living marine resources are
dwindling like never before. Not only are
many of the fishing stocks dangerously low,
some may already have reached a level of
depletion from which there may be no return.
To top it all off coastal erosion and sea
level rise have become pressing problems
in many coastal countries and island states.
Last week the Maldives held their first
cabinet meeting under water to draw attention
to the disaster that is looming over their
country.
Fortunately there is
hope on the horizon. For the week starting
Sunday, 25th October, hundreds of experts,
politicians, project managers and government
officials from all over the world converged
at Cairns in northeastern Australia to share
information and search for solutions. The
5th International Water Conference is taking
place under the auspices of the Global Environment
Facility (GEF) which represents the biggest
consolidated response from the international
community to the problems facing the world’s
oceans, coastal areas and freshwater bodies.
The Deputy Minister
carried a special message “From Cape Town
to Cairns” as South Africa hosted the 4th
International Waters Conference in Cape
Town two years ago. Since then there have
been many advances in the region, including
in the Benguela Current Large Marine Ecosystem
and the Agulhas and Somali Currents large
Marine Ecosystem. There is also a far stronger
emphasis by the GEF and its partners on
the involvement of local communities, a
direction that is very much applauded by
Deputy Minister Mabudafhasi who is well
known for the emphasis she places on grass
roots involvement in solving environmental
problems.
According to Mr Duda,
increased large-scale programmes are needed
across the globe to avert the looming disasters
already starting us in the face. He added
that “more politicians should follow the
example of the Deputy Minister. Environmental
disasters go beyond political borders, and
politicians need to reach out and take hands
in order to make GEF funding truly effective
in addressing issues such as climate change
and dwindling marine resources. No longer
can a country by country approach alone
be enough. We need to tackle the problem
at the level of large marine ecosystems
that transcend international borders.”
Indeed, the world’s
oceans, rivers, lakes, and groundwater systems
do not respect political borders. These
systems cover most of our planet, but they
continue to be managed in a national and
fragmented way that is endangering the food
supply and livelihoods of billions of people.
For example, our coasts and oceans have
become degraded almost to the point of no
return with the depletion of oceanic fish
stocks. Water is at the heart of our planet’s
natural resource base. We need water to
produce food, power industry, quench thirst,
and nurture ecosystems.
Today, the Global Environment
Facility (GEF) remains the world’s largest
financier of transboundary water collaboration.
The GEF International Waters portfolio consists
of 180 projects with some US$1.1 billion
of GEF grants and $4.5 billion in co-financing
invested in 149 different GEF recipient
countries. These projects target many of
the worlds’s most threatened and damaged
transboundary water ecosystems.
From 24 to 29 October
2009, Cairns will host over 300 of the world’s
leading scientists, natural resource managers,
civil society, international organization
staff, country representatives and private
sector specialists in the area of transboundary
water management during the 5th GEF Biennial
International Waters Conference (IWC5).
Implementing agencies of the GEF include
the World Bank, the United Nations Environmental
Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations
Development Program (UNDP), other international
agencies and NGOs will all take part in
this watershed event.
The IWC5, hosted with
the generous support of the Government of
Australia and the Australian private sector,
has the objective of facilitating experience
sharing across the project portfolio with
a special emphasis on climatic variability
and results-based management. Climatic variability
could have debilitating consequences for
many of the world’s water systems from groundwater
to oceans.
Mr Sello Mabotja
Media Liaison Officer for the Deputy Minister
of Water and Environmental Affairs
+ More
SPEECH FOR THE MINISTER
OF WATER AND ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS, MS BUYELWA
SONJICA, MP, AT THE CELEBRATION OF NATIONAL
MARINE MONTH, JQ SPORTS CLUB, ROCKLANDS,
MITCHELL’S PLAIN, CAPE TOWN
27 October 2009 - Speech
Programme Director,
Acting Deputy Director – General, Dr Razeena
Omar,
Recognise Mr Cupido, MD of Anix Consulting
Honoured Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen.
As I was coming along
I noticed a notice board that says if you
litter we will fine you R1000 – 00. we really
need to inculcate a culture of looking after
our environment; to plant the seed so that
the environment can give us comfort even
as we develop.
It is a pleasure to
join you this afternoon as we celebrate
our inaugural National Marine Month. Until
this year and for most of the early 90s,
National Marine Day was a one-day celebration
during the month of November. It subsequently,
in the late 90s, became a week long focus
which was celebrated during October following
proposals from the education sector, November
being examination month and thus limiting
the input and participation of the education
institutions in this important calendar
event during the month of November.
Recognising that we
needed to highlight the importance of our
oceans and the marine environment, on World
Oceans Day, 8 June 2009, I declared that
the National Marine Week was to be celebrated,
with effect from this year, as the National
Marine Month. This announcement coincided
with the announcement that South Africa
is expanding the Big 5 to the Big 7, now
including two marine animals, that is, the
Great White Shark and the Whale.
Not all of us can appreciate
the need to safeguard the environment and
the marine and the coast, especially the
ocean.
The ocean is important
because there are plants and animals that
we live on. If we do not look after the
ocean we can have disasters like we saw
in Indonesia like the Tsunami.
It is a reality that
fish stocks are declining globally and this
poses a serious challenge to fisheries’
management in South Africa. The need to
balance the environmental imperative of
ensuring the sustainable development of
our marine resources on the one hand and
the imperative of ensuring a sustainable
livelihood for our fishing communities,
some of which depend entirely on fishing,
is a real challenge and requires innovative
fisheries’ management strategies.
It is therefore critical
that a government-wide intervention in the
coastal communities to address coastal poverty
and alternative livelihood opportunities
in light of declining fish stocks is implemented
as a matter of urgency.
Ladies and gentlemen,
under the theme: “From Oceans, to climate,
to Flora and Fauna”, the celebration and
observation of the Marine Month are a recognition
of the important role that our country is
surrounded by oceans and that oceans play
a critical role in our weather patterns.
Therefore they impact on the kind of vegetation
and animals that are found from the West
Coast in the Western Cape to the Eastern
Coast in KwaZulu-Natal. In this regard,
through a variety of events from lectures,
to school visits to aquariums and to a number
of awareness programmes, we have sought
to reach as many South Africans as possible.
The programme for the
National Marine Month has therefore involved
events in some of the smallest fishing communities,
such as Port Saint Johns, to the big cities,
such as Pretoria. In all the activities
we sought to show that what happens inland,
in terms of weather patterns is influenced
by our oceans.
South Africa’s different
climatic zones, with its different biodiversities,
agricultural and economic activities, are
shaped by the availability of one of our
scarcest resources, namely fresh water.
Our rainfall patterns also dictate many
activities as they are vital to defining
natural habitats and ecosystems. Our country
is characterised, in general, by a dry western
half, a wet and lush eastern half and an
area of transition in the South-Western
Cape. Opposite to what we see on land, the
ocean shows a different pattern.
The ocean along the
dry west coast is the very productive cold
Benguela system that supports large fisheries
such as those focussed on the small pelagic
(anchovy and sardine) and the demersal (hake)
stocks. Along the lush and wet east coast
we have the warm Agulhas Current with rich
ocean biodiversity, but not large fish stocks.
One of the main reasons for the lush eastern
half of the country is that the warm waters
of the Agulhas current transfers moisture
into the atmosphere that produces cloud
and rainfall over the country in the latter
half of summer.
In the first half of
summer, the rainfall over the eastern half
comes from a low air pressure system that
comes from the oceans over the equator.
For similar reasons, since the west coast
waters are cold, there is no moisture to
add to the atmosphere and hence no rainfall
contributing to the dry western half of
the country.
To the south of the
country, there is a unique situation as
it is the only place in the world where
a warm and cold current meet. Because of
this, it has given rise to a unique climate
in the SW Cape that has produced a terrestrial
biodiversity like none other in the world,
namely Fynbos.
Scientists have shown
that our rich biodiversity in the Fynbos
has been boosted by the climatic conditions
created as a result of a mixture of warm
and cold oceans. The Fynbos and other bio-geographic
zones in the country can be linked to the
warm and cold ocean currents that flow past
South Africa’s long coastline. These currents
in addition to the cold southern oceans
are key drivers of South Africa’s climate
and rainfall conditions.
The oceans therefore
play a critical role in shaping economic
and social activities along our coasts as
well as inland, because it is the primary
producer of moisture to the atmosphere that
eventually produces rain over the country.
In the past week or
so, the President of the country led a delegation
to Hawston to engage with the fishing communities
in the Western Cape. There is a directive
that the President gave to both Minister
Joematt-Peterson and I to look at how we
can as government in partnership with the
communities, find ways of ensuring that
even as we continue to appreciate and safeguard
the oceans around the country, we also have
to find ways of addressing the poverty that
has crept into these communities as the
resources are depleted and the fisheries
are closed. We shall come back to these
communities in the time that the President
has directed.
We have now become aware
of the impact of climate change on the coastal
line. This has resulted in the erosion of
the coastal line which is very obvious especially
on the east coast area of Durban in KwaZulu
Natal. That is one more reason for us to
look after our coast.
In conclusion, I hope
that this new emphasis on the National Marine
Month as opposed to the National Marine
Day will help us as a nation to ensure that
the necessary appreciation and respect for
our oceans and what they stand for and mean
to all of us.
I thank you.
