Browsing by Author "Bowd, Rebecca"

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The Identification of Potential Resilient Estuary-based Enterprises to Encourage Economic Empowerment in South Africa: A Toolkit Approach
(2012) Bowd, Rebecca; Quinn, Nevil; Kotze, Donovan C.; Hay, Duncan G.; Mander, Myles
"It has been argued that ecosystem services can be used as the foundation to provide economic opportunities to empower the disadvantaged. The Ecosystem Services Framework (ESF) approach for poverty alleviation, which balances resource conservation and human resource use, has received much attention in the literature. However, few projects have successfully achieved both conservation and economic objectives. This is partly due to there being a hiatus between theory and practice, due to the absence of tools that help make the transition between conceptual frameworks and theory, to practical integration of ecosystem services into decision making. To address this hiatus, an existing conceptual framework for analyzing the robustness of social-ecological systems was translated into a practical toolkit to help understand the complexity of social-ecological systems (SES). The toolkit can be used by a diversity of stakeholders as a decision making aid for assessing ecosystem services supply and demand and associated enterprise opportunities. The toolkit is participatory and combines both a generic 'top-down' scientific approach with a case-specific 'bottom-up' approach. It promotes a shared understanding of the utilization of ecosystem services, which is the foundation of identifying resilient enterprises. The toolkit comprises four steps: (i) ecosystem services supply and demand assessment; (ii) roles identification; (iii) enterprise opportunity identification; and (vi) enterprise risk assessment, and was tested at two estuary study sites. Implementation of the toolkit requires the populating of preprogrammed Excel worksheets through the holding of workshops that are attended by stakeholders associated with the ecosystems. It was concluded that for an enterprise to be resilient, it must be resilient at an external SES level,which the toolkit addresses, and at an internal business functioning level, e.g., social dynamics among personnel, skills, and literacy levels. Although the toolkit does not address the internal resilience level of an enterprise, it proved helpful at indicating which enterprises show potential resilience given current SES conditions."
Toward an Analytical Framework for Understanding Complex Social-Ecological Systems when Conducting Environmental Impact Assessments in South Africa
(2015) Bowd, Rebecca; Quinn, Nevil W.; Kotze, Donovan C.
"Consideration of biophysical impacts has historically dominated environmental impact assessment (EIA) practice. Despite the emergence of social impact assessment, the consideration of socioeconomic impacts in EIA is variable, as is the extent of their integration in EIA findings. There is growing recognition for the need to move EIA practice toward sustainability assessment, characterized by comprehensiveness, i.e., scope of impacts, integration, i.e., of biophysical and socioeconomic impacts, and a greater strategic focus. This is particularly the case in developing regions and in countries like South Africa, which have statutory requirements for the full consideration of socioeconomic impacts in EIA. We suggest that EIA practice could benefit from incorporating evolving theory around social-ecological systems (SES) as an effective way of moving toward sustainability assessment. As far as we are aware, our study constitutes the first attempt to apply and formalize SES constructs to EIA practice within a regulated procedure. Our framework goes beyond conventional scoping approaches reliant on checklists and matrices by requiring the EIA practitioner to cocreate a conceptual model of the current and future social-ecological system with the implicated communities. This means social and biophysical impacts are assessed integratively, and that communities participate meaningfully in the EIA process, thereby helping address two of the most common shortfalls of EIA practice. The framework was applied in two case studies, establishment of community-based accommodation linked to existing tourism infrastructure (Eastern Cape, South Africa), and a proposed wine estate (KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa). The framework revealed impacts, which would not be considered in a biophysically-oriented EIA, and helped identify development synergies and institutional and governance needs that are equally likely to have been overlooked. We suggest the framework has value as a counterpoint to established approaches and could contribute to improving the quality of EIAs with respect to the complex SESs that characterize the developing world."