South Africa’s nine provinces will begin phasing out provision of free formula to HIV-positive mothers and implement a new policy on breast-feeding from Sunday. But despite the clarity of the policy and its supporting data, vocal critics, including respected individuals from leading medical and academic institutions, have decried the choice.

South Africa's nine provinces will begin phasing out provision of free formula to HIV-positive mothers and implement a new policy on breast-feeding. Credit: Nastasya Tay/IPS

A simple two-page document, the declaration states unequivocal support for EBF for all infants up to six months, including HIV-exposed infants, who should receive antiretrovirals (ARVs) to prevent mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT), as recommended in the 2010 World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines.

The declaration originated from concern over low exclusive breastfeeding rates – the lowest in the world at eight percent; unacceptably high child mortality rates – the rate for 2010 remained almost level with the 1990 figure, with 58,000 children dying before the age of five; and the fact that formula feeding increases the risk of death from diarrhoea and pneumonia, the biggest killers of infants and children in South Africa.

It also commits resources to promoting EBF, including developing legislation for maternity protection and support for workplace breastfeeding. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, it removes provision of formula feeding at public health facilities except by prescription for medical conditions.

An Emotional Debate

“We can increase our EBF rate, but not to the extent that the Health Department believes is possible,” said Haroon Saloojee, a professor in the division of community pediatrics at the University of Witwatersrand, and a leading critic. Saloojee’s concerns focus on mothers’ ability to adhere to infant ARV regimens and the potential for nevirapine (the prophylaxis that HIV-exposed babies would take) shortages in the public health sector.

“The likely scenario is that clinics don’t have nevirapine, and mothers will not be able to give the babies their medication and will continue to breastfeed. The situation in the health service currently makes that a high-risk probability,” Saloojee said.

Supporters of the policy argue that adherence rates to ARVs in South Africa are generally excellent, and based on a recent national study in the March 2012 WHO Bulletin titled”Elimination of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV: Measuring the Effectiveness of National PMTCT Programmes”, presented at the International Aids Society meeting in Rome in 2011, mothers clearly are adhering. National mother-to- child transmission among infants from four to eight weeks old was 3.5 percent, the study found.

“There’s no way you can get those transmission rates unless you have good and reliable service delivery and good and reliable adherence to those drugs,” said Nigel Rollins of the WHO, referring to that study. “To level the argument that women aren’t going to be able to do it flies in the face of the data. I think most women will be prepared to do something good for their children if they have the knowledge… There will certainly be a learning curve, but there is every reason to believe it can be achieved,” Rollins added.

Learning Curves

Unfortunately, the learning needs to go beyond adherence to ARVs as infant prophylaxis. Convincing women to breastfeed exclusively will likely be the greater challenge.

“My mom says there’s not enough milk. I’ve heard from other women that they breast and bottle feed at the same time so the baby can get full,” said 21-year-old Nicola Daniels of Manenberg, a Cape township. A first-time mother, Daniels planned to breastfeed but remained unsure about whether to do so exclusively.

Ingrid Le Roux, medical director at Philani, a maternal and child health project, agreed that convincing women to commit to EBF poses a serious challenge. “There are a lot of underlying issues: mothers are alone, stressed, influenced in a big way by advertising. Some cannot believe that anything they have can be better than what they can buy in the shop,” Le Roux said.

“People don’t believe that it’s possible to breastfeed exclusively for six months. Even health workers… many don’t believe. So if you don’t believe as a health worker, than how can you motivate for it?” Le Roux added.

Despite the very real challenges, evidence from studies around the continent show that EBF is possible with proper support. In KwaZulu-Natal, EBF rates were improved to 76 percent at five months, and 40 percent at six months with home-based and clinic support, according to Anna Coutsoudis, a professor in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Prior to the Tshwane Declaration, KwaZulu-Natal ‘s Department of Health examined child mortality, EBF, problems with stocking formula and the 2010 WHO guidelines, and decided to promote EBF, in part by removing free formula from public health.

“Data showed that formula feeding was not helping in terms of infant survival, it was actually making it worse; and we had very low EBF rates. So we decided that we should follow the WHO guidelines… to follow one feeding option,” Coutsoudis said of the province’s decision.

“In the early days formula feeding was appropriate,” Coutsoudis added, referring to the previous era’s attempt to reduce mother-to-child transmission by discouraging breastfeeding in HIV-positive women. “But now we know that if we improve EBF and we have nevirapine, we can reduce the breastfeeding transmission to less than one percent.”

Rollins further pointed out that the WHO is promoting EBF not to reduce HIV transmission rates (transmission should neither increase nor decrease with EBF if prophylaxis is used), but because it is better. “EBF to HIV-impacted women is not recommended on the basis of ability to reduce transmission, it is there because it is the best thing for the child for every other reason we know about breastfeeding.”

Coutsoudis agreed that EBF is about child survival on the whole. “There’s no way we’re going to improve breastfeeding and therefore child survival in our country while we’ve got these mixed messages and free formula being given out,” she told IPS.

“If people keep running the policy down it undermines the public’s confidence. They need to look at the big picture, that is: if we can improve breastfeeding in this country the whole population will benefit,” Coutsoudis said.

Tucked against the rolling hills of South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, a small rural school has been turning its kitchen scraps, and agricultural and human waste into methane gas for cooking, and nutrient-rich fertiliser, and is even recycling its water.

Using an integrated biogas system, the Three Crowns Rural School in Lady Frere District is teaching learners, the community, and engineers from around the country a new way of dealing with water, waste, and energy.

According to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, if a business as usual approach is followed, South Africa’s freshwater resources will be fully depleted by 2030, unable to meet the needs of people or industry. “The problems will be made worse by more frequent incidents of water pollution and increased costs of water treatment,” said the 2010 CSIR report author, Peter Ashton.

With over 40 percent of South Africa’s dams affected by eutrophication (the process by which water becomes too nutrient-rich and prone to toxic algae blooms), acid mine drainage threatening to poison the water table around heavily populated Gauteng Province, and, according to the Department of Water Affair’s 2010/11 Green Drop report, 56 percent of the nation’s 821 sewage works either in a “critical state” or delivering a “very poor performance,” arid South Africa must develop economical ways of effectively recycling its naturally scarce water resources.

Funded by the Development Bank of South Africa, the Chris Hani District Municipality’s Environmental Management System Programme has been doing just that in its two-year-old pilot project at the Three Crowns Rural School.

The school’s zero-waste system feeds organic waste from the school’s kitchen, gardens, and toilets into an anaerobic “digester” (an oxygen-limiting, gas-tight enclosed pit) where microbial action breaks down the waste, creating methane “bio-gas” in the process.

The digested effluent is sent to a series of ponds, where first the remaining pollutants combine with oxygen and are transformed into a nutrient-rich “algal slurry” that makes excellent fertiliser. The water that emerges from the first pond shuttles to another, where fish like tilapia can feed on remaining algal content. The fishpond eco-system produces another algal fertiliser, and the pond water is irrigation- ready.

The final result is a system that transforms 100 percent of organic waste into biogas for cooking, pathogen-free algal fertiliser, and recycled pathogen-free water for irrigation of the school’s gardens. The project also provides an impressive life-science laboratory where learners daily witness and come to understand concepts like decomposition, aerobic and anaerobic biological action, and sustainability.

“It’s nothing new for the children to talk about digesters and bacteria and the algal pond and sterilisation. Hopefully these guys coming out of the school will help advance this type of thinking in the future,” said Mark Wells of People’s Power Africa (PPA), a consortium of environmental biotechnologies companies that was commissioned to install, manage, and monitor the system.

Francois Nel, head of environmental health and community services for Chris Hani District Municipality, emphasised the project’s ability to affect the way people think. “The first thing is the education of the children and changing the mindset in terms of energy, waste, and climate change. And the ownership – the children take ownership of the environment and the importance of protecting it.”

And it is not only the children who benefit. “This project is very, very important. First I can say to my own life, because I learned a lot of things about nature,” said Zothe, the school caretaker who oversees the feeding of the bio-digester. “We’ve learned how to use things that are connected to nature, like we have a solar cooker, bio-digester, wind power energy, so we don’t have to spend a lot of money, and we don’t waste.”

The Three Crowns project has been a great success, with four schools requesting installation of the same system, and the nearby communities of Intsikayethu and Engcobo planning to install the systems on a much larger scale.

It has also won numerous awards, including the 2011 Netherlands-sponsored Moolah for Amanzi award for best concept in water and sanitation projects, two Eskom ETA awards, and an Eastern Cape flagship project award.

Though adoption of the Three Crowns Project appears to be taking off, not far away in East London’s Buffalo City Municipality, another People’s Power Africa project is attempting to prove its worth to a sceptical municipality.

Like Three Crowns, PPA’s “eMonti Green Hub” is a one-stop shop to recover resources (e.g., nutrient- filled fertiliser, methane gas, and recycled water) from waste, but this time the “feed” includes municipal wastewater, sewage sludge, and the organic fraction of municipal solid waste including garden and abattoir refuse.

Currently 10 million litres of that “feed” in the form of raw sewage are dumped daily into the surf zone by Buffalo City’s defunct Second Creek Wastewater Treatment Works. The green hub proposes to use a large-scale anaerobic digester that is heated in continuously stirred reactors to more rapidly process that waste (woody garden refuse would fuel the heating).

Based on PPA’s feasibility study, the green hub is projected to produce methane biogas at a rate of 300 kilogrammes/hour (a head-high gas canister holds 40 kg), resulting in “green” methane gas, which can provide a sustainable source of income to run the hub. Mercedes Benz South Africa has already provided a letter of interest to purchase the biomethane for use in their paint shop air dryers and ovens.

Processing the daily “feedstock” (including eight million litres of industrial wastewater, eight million litres of domestic wastewater, two million litres of sewage sludge, 48 tonnes of food waste, 16 tonnes of abattoir waste, and 82 tonnes of garden refuse), the hub would yearly generate 5.8 billion litres of recycled water, 2,300 tonnes of biomethane gas, and 10,000 tons of bio-fertiliser, while diverting 30,000 tonnes of waste from landfills every year.

“That’s where it becomes so exciting,” Wells explained. “Especially when you look at what’s happening in the environment, the municipality needs to get its head around the huge amounts of bio-resources that they’re currently not using at all, that are just being thrown into landfill sites and into the sea. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Ultimately PPA wants the hub to benefit local communities, and so plans are for the plant to be held mostly in a joint community and municipal environmental trust, with additional private and public equity. Unfortunately getting the hub operational will involve cutting through extensive administrative red tape, which relies on changes in the attitudes of the city’s engineers and administrators.

“We know that everything is possible, but getting the city’s approval and endorsement has been a struggle. These projects are very difficult to put together because you’re talking about municipal resources and there’s all sorts of issues around that. Plus municipalities have to change the way they do things. We’re pushing the boundaries. We have the technical understanding, but now it’s the how to make it real,” Wells said.

Francois Nel agreed that PPA would face an uphill battle in getting the hub approved. “It’s a brilliant idea. The problem is that people don’t understand. They don’t understand the environment, and they don’t understand climate change,” Nel commented, recalling how even now he struggles to convince engineers to “come to the party,” despite the Three Crowns’ success.

Nonetheless, PPA and its partners anticipate that the hub’s environmental impact assessment will soon begin, and are working with the municipality on moving the public consultation process forward. They remain optimistic that by the end of 2013 the hub will begin producing the nutrients, energy, and recycled water.

“Essentially we see this as the people’s resources. Even if the municipality is in charge of it, they’re throwing it away, so we want to get the benefits from those resources back into community. Even if we don’t capitalise on it ourselves, the project will go forward. The main thing is to solve the problem and demonstrate these solutions,” said Wells.

(END)

By Lee Middleton and - -
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Mar 1 2012 (IPS)

Tucked against the rolling hills of South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, a small rural school has been turning its kitchen scraps, and agricultural and human waste into methane gas for cooking, and nutrient-rich fertiliser, and is even recycling its water.

Zothe, the school caretaker at Three Crowns Rural School in Lady Frere District oversees the feeding of the bio-digester. Credit: David Oldfield/IPS

According to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, if a business as usual approach is followed, South Africa’s freshwater resources will be fully depleted by 2030, unable to meet the needs of people or industry. “The problems will be made worse by more frequent incidents of water pollution and increased costs of water treatment,” said the 2010 CSIR report author, Peter Ashton.

With over 40 percent of South Africa’s dams affected by eutrophication (the process by which water becomes too nutrient-rich and prone to toxic algae blooms), acid mine drainage threatening to poison the water table around heavily populated Gauteng Province, and, according to the Department of Water Affair’s 2010/11 Green Drop report, 56 percent of the nation’s 821 sewage works either in a “critical state” or delivering a “very poor performance,” arid South Africa must develop economical ways of effectively recycling its naturally scarce water resources.

Funded by the Development Bank of South Africa, the Chris Hani District Municipality’s Environmental Management System Programme has been doing just that in its two-year-old pilot project at the Three Crowns Rural School.

The school’s zero-waste system feeds organic waste from the school’s kitchen, gardens, and toilets into an anaerobic “digester” (an oxygen-limiting, gas-tight enclosed pit) where microbial action breaks down the waste, creating methane “bio-gas” in the process.

The digested effluent is sent to a series of ponds, where first the remaining pollutants combine with oxygen and are transformed into a nutrient-rich “algal slurry” that makes excellent fertiliser. The water that emerges from the first pond shuttles to another, where fish like tilapia can feed on remaining algal content. The fishpond eco-system produces another algal fertiliser, and the pond water is irrigation- ready.

The final result is a system that transforms 100 percent of organic waste into biogas for cooking, pathogen-free algal fertiliser, and recycled pathogen-free water for irrigation of the school’s gardens. The project also provides an impressive life-science laboratory where learners daily witness and come to understand concepts like decomposition, aerobic and anaerobic biological action, and sustainability.

“It’s nothing new for the children to talk about digesters and bacteria and the algal pond and sterilisation. Hopefully these guys coming out of the school will help advance this type of thinking in the future,” said Mark Wells of People’s Power Africa (PPA), a consortium of environmental biotechnologies companies that was commissioned to install, manage, and monitor the system.

Francois Nel, head of environmental health and community services for Chris Hani District Municipality, emphasised the project’s ability to affect the way people think. “The first thing is the education of the children and changing the mindset in terms of energy, waste, and climate change. And the ownership – the children take ownership of the environment and the importance of protecting it.”

And it is not only the children who benefit. “This project is very, very important. First I can say to my own life, because I learned a lot of things about nature,” said Zothe, the school caretaker who oversees the feeding of the bio-digester. “We’ve learned how to use things that are connected to nature, like we have a solar cooker, bio-digester, wind power energy, so we don’t have to spend a lot of money, and we don’t waste.”

The Three Crowns project has been a great success, with four schools requesting installation of the same system, and the nearby communities of Intsikayethu and Engcobo planning to install the systems on a much larger scale.

It has also won numerous awards, including the 2011 Netherlands-sponsored Moolah for Amanzi award for best concept in water and sanitation projects, two Eskom ETA awards, and an Eastern Cape flagship project award.

Though adoption of the Three Crowns Project appears to be taking off, not far away in East London’s Buffalo City Municipality, another People’s Power Africa project is attempting to prove its worth to a sceptical municipality.

Like Three Crowns, PPA’s “eMonti Green Hub” is a one-stop shop to recover resources (e.g., nutrient- filled fertiliser, methane gas, and recycled water) from waste, but this time the “feed” includes municipal wastewater, sewage sludge, and the organic fraction of municipal solid waste including garden and abattoir refuse.

Currently 10 million litres of that “feed” in the form of raw sewage are dumped daily into the surf zone by Buffalo City’s defunct Second Creek Wastewater Treatment Works. The green hub proposes to use a large-scale anaerobic digester that is heated in continuously stirred reactors to more rapidly process that waste (woody garden refuse would fuel the heating).

Based on PPA’s feasibility study, the green hub is projected to produce methane biogas at a rate of 300 kilogrammes/hour (a head-high gas canister holds 40 kg), resulting in “green” methane gas, which can provide a sustainable source of income to run the hub. Mercedes Benz South Africa has already provided a letter of interest to purchase the biomethane for use in their paint shop air dryers and ovens.

Processing the daily “feedstock” (including eight million litres of industrial wastewater, eight million litres of domestic wastewater, two million litres of sewage sludge, 48 tonnes of food waste, 16 tonnes of abattoir waste, and 82 tonnes of garden refuse), the hub would yearly generate 5.8 billion litres of recycled water, 2,300 tonnes of biomethane gas, and 10,000 tons of bio-fertiliser, while diverting 30,000 tonnes of waste from landfills every year.

“That’s where it becomes so exciting,” Wells explained. “Especially when you look at what’s happening in the environment, the municipality needs to get its head around the huge amounts of bio-resources that they’re currently not using at all, that are just being thrown into landfill sites and into the sea. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Ultimately PPA wants the hub to benefit local communities, and so plans are for the plant to be held mostly in a joint community and municipal environmental trust, with additional private and public equity. Unfortunately getting the hub operational will involve cutting through extensive administrative red tape, which relies on changes in the attitudes of the city’s engineers and administrators.

“We know that everything is possible, but getting the city’s approval and endorsement has been a struggle. These projects are very difficult to put together because you’re talking about municipal resources and there’s all sorts of issues around that. Plus municipalities have to change the way they do things. We’re pushing the boundaries. We have the technical understanding, but now it’s the how to make it real,” Wells said.

Francois Nel agreed that PPA would face an uphill battle in getting the hub approved. “It’s a brilliant idea. The problem is that people don’t understand. They don’t understand the environment, and they don’t understand climate change,” Nel commented, recalling how even now he struggles to convince engineers to “come to the party,” despite the Three Crowns’ success.

Nonetheless, PPA and its partners anticipate that the hub’s environmental impact assessment will soon begin, and are working with the municipality on moving the public consultation process forward. They remain optimistic that by the end of 2013 the hub will begin producing the nutrients, energy, and recycled water.

“Essentially we see this as the people’s resources. Even if the municipality is in charge of it, they’re throwing it away, so we want to get the benefits from those resources back into community. Even if we don’t capitalise on it ourselves, the project will go forward. The main thing is to solve the problem and demonstrate these solutions,” said Wells.

Excerpt:

South Africa's first eco-friendly and energy efficient low-income housing development in Atlantis. Credit: Lee Middleton/IPS

By Lee Middleton
ATLANTIS, South Africa, Dec 14 2011 (IPS)

Something unusual is happening in Atlantis. Created in the 1970s to fulfill the apartheid government’s agenda to evict “coloured” South Africans from Cape Town, Atlantis has always been best known as the city that apartheid built.

South Africa's first eco-friendly and energy efficient low-income housing development in Atlantis. Credit: Lee Middleton/IPS

But in this new era of climate change concern, the creation here of South Africa’s first eco-friendly and energy efficient low-income housing development may finally overwrite that dark legacy.

Initiated by the City of Cape Town, the project aims to build “eco houses” for 2,400 families in Witsands, Atlantis’s poorest neighborhood, and home to the majority of Atlantis’s Xhosa-speaking minority. The city hopes the project will set a national benchmark for sustainable living in low-cost housing developments.

A part of the national Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDB) that has promised housing for every South African, the project, a collaboration with the engineering firm PEER Africa, the Universities of Cape Town and Johannesburg, Eskom, and several NGOS, has handed over some 800 eco-houses since it began in 2005.

Laid out on a north-facing grid, the energy-efficient homes make use of the “Energy and Environmentally Cost Optimized (EECO™) Human Settlement Development Model™,” elaborated by PEER Africa.

According to this design, all units feature large north-facing windows (allowing winter’s lower sun to heat), a roof overhang that protects against summer’s higher sun, and insulation, especially in the ceilings, that retains the warmer or cooler temperatures inside.

Put back what you take away

“In the beginning it was very hard to get the people to understand,” recalled 34 year-old Fundiswa Makeleni, a member of the community hired by PEER Africa to educate her neighbours about the new concept. “But when I’d take them to the show houses to feel it… everyone loves it now.”

Community buy-in was vital to success, as plans went beyond north-south orientation and large windows. Additional “greening” like the provision of a tree, shrubs, and ground-cover would also be part of the package, but would require continued maintenance.

“We have to put back what we take away,” said Beth Basset of Green Communities, the NGO providing the landscaping for the houses, as well as food gardens and other green spaces like parks and playgrounds.

Like many Western Cape housing developments, Witsands is built on sand dunes. Strong winds and extreme temperatures — exacerbated in a denuded environment — are the norm.

“They’d take away a whole ecosystem, put the houses there, and go away. There was no compacting apron around the houses. The winds would come take all the sand and leave exposed foundations of up to a meter,” Basset observed of other RDP developments.

With a national backlog of over two million RDB houses, the impact of creating an energy-efficient model that promotes sustainable livelihoods could be tremendous.

“From the climate change perspective it’s about replacing the ecosystems. Soil stabilisation, water conservation, recycling. We needed to build a model to deliver greening immediately,” said Basset.

Councillor Ernest Sonnenberg from Cape Town’s Mayoral committee on Human Settlements, agreed. “In Cape Town we’re in a very windy area with loose sand, so structures become unstable. The greening around the houses was a mechanism to bind the ground and prevent erosion. It was also an opportunity to experiment and see how to create a more sustainable livelihood.”

Sustainable living, sustaining lives

“We are the poorest of the poor here. But we use the nature to cool and warm our house. We have solar panels and solar geysers, so we’re saving energy. Each household does not use more than 50 Rand (about six dollars) a month on electricity now,” said Makeleni.

The project’s second phase, which began in 2010 and will build 1,835 units (350 have already been handed over), has added solar geysers, photovoltaic modules for lighting and cell phone charging, and roofwater and stormwater recovery systems.

Makeleni belongs to a women’s group that arose from the savings they were seeing from energy and fuel. “Each month we come together and we all put our savings on the table and put it in the bank. Then after one year we divide that money and can buy things that we need.”

For her own part, Makeleni plans to invest her share in seeds for the food tunnel that Green Communities helped establish.

“Our forefathers used to plant food to eat, never go each and every day to the shop and buy food. My wish is to go back. We have food gardens, electricity from the sun. We can succeed in this way of life with or without money. Even if you have money you can live like this. Even if you’re a single mother you can afford to live.”

Building houses, building communities

Though the financial advantages are obvious, the perks that the eco-homes provide extend into other areas of life as well. Several mothers cited the greater safety of the homes. Obviating kerosene heaters, paraffin lamps, and open fires, the clean energy helps prevent accidental fires, electrocutions from shoddy illegal wiring, and health problems that come with burning other sources of heating and fuel.

“In the shacks they are using paraffin and heaters. It’s dangerous and makes the house dirty, and they can spend more than 200 Rand a month,” commented 31 year-old Vuyokazi Damane.

Finally, there is the sense of community that flowers in places with parks and green public spaces. “It’s not just building houses, it’s building community,” Beth Basset said. “We made a park and playground. It’s the first time some of those kids have walked on grass. This whole greening gives such an impetus to people’s health and well being. All the kids can be found at the park. Old people come and sit on the benches. It’s making neighborhoods.”

Councillor Sonnenberg explained that the pride that people take in their neighborhoods also translates into savings for the city.

“The fact that we were able to get communities to participate and take pride in their area alleviates a lot of cost for us. For example, if the area is sandy and sand is blowing in the street, we need additional cleaning to prevent stormwater rain blockage.”

So far the cost to the city has been minimal. A “normal” RDB house costs about 12,000 dollars to build. Making a unit into an eco-house including adding solar panels adds approximately 3,000 dollars to that bill — not an insignificant number with a housing backlog of 400,000 in the Western Cape alone. However, for now South Africa’s public utility Eskom, has been picking up the tab.

“We obviously want to move to a situation where as a city we can reduce our carbon footprint, and therefore we need to look at innovative ways of building more cost effective and energy efficient houses,” said Councillor Sonnenberg.

“We still have to learn lessons from phase two of Witsands, that will inform our future projects, but we are delighted with the results yielded, and therefore one can only say that the city must invest in future projects of this nature.”

Excerpt:

Rita Francke and another fisherwoman at the jetty, in front of the old crayfish factory at Witsands. Credit: Lee Middleton/IPS

By Lee Middleton
OCEAN VIEW, South Africa, Dec 12 2011 (IPS)

Having observed changes in the sea and the life cycles of the rock lobsters that their livelihoods depend on, a group of fisherwomen from the Western Cape, South Africa are calling on government to adjust fishing seasons to adapt to what they claim are climate change-related alterations.

About 40 kilometres south of Cape Town, the fishing community of Ocean View is mostly made up of “coloured” families forcibly removed from the Cape peninsula’s picturesque seaside villages under the apartheid regime in the late 1960s. Most continued to eke out a living through fishing, and until recently, almost all the fishers here were men.

Sahra Luyt is an exception. With her husband, she began fishing West Coast rock lobster (locally called “crayfish”) nearly 20 years ago for a company. Eventually Luyt went her own way.

“I felt women were being dictated to in fishing, so I started the association and ladies joined,” Luyt recalled of her 1999 decision to found the South African Fisherwomen’s Association (SAFWA).

SAFWA now counts some 70 members, most hailing from the peninsula’s poorest townships, and many of whom say they have encountered difficulties with men resentful of the women’s presence on the sea.

“Before it was very difficult, but now it’s not that bad – we’ve proven ourselves,” Luyt said.

With their own single outboard-motor boats and ring nets, the women participate in the near-shore commercial rock lobster fishery, bringing in around 600 to 800 kilogrammes of lobster each season, normally from November to June. A live rock lobster can fetch 14 to 20 dollars/kg. Though gender dynamics have improved, the women now face other troubles.

“Previously where we’d find a lot of fish, we don’t find many. Also I’ve been to sea these days when you go out on a nice normal sea day and all of a sudden the weather is standing up and you have to rush back home,” said Luyt of the changes she has observed.

Women have typically only been employed in the fishing industry in the processing work. Here a woman fillets fresh hake at a rate of 15 seconds per fish. Credit: Lee Middleton/IPS

The fisherwomen also cited changing water temperatures, more severe tides, and changes in the life cycle of the rock lobster.

“Over the last few years, the crayfish quality has shifted from November when it used to be good. Now we find they’re still molting, or softening their shells to grow, and they’re also in berry, which means the female is still carrying eggs,” Luyt explained. “I’d say those things are climate change.”

SAFWA has called on the South African Marine Resource Management (MRM) to adjust the fishing season to correspond with the changes they say they have observed, and possibly to lengthen it due to the unpredictable conditions they say are a result of climate change.

But fisheries scientists respond that seasons and policy are based on science-based evidence, and so far, the links between fish stocks and climate change are not sufficiently clear. SAFWA can appeal the decision but are yet to do so.

“There have clearly been ecological changes that have driven differences we’re seeing, and they may be linked to climate change, but we can’t prove it,” said Chief Director of MRM, Dr. Johann Augustyn.

Though reports like a 2009 international study led by Edward Allison have made significant progress in linking the impacts of climate change to fisheries around the world – and thus providing some guidance for predictive management changes in those places – data for Africa is sorely lacking.

Tabeth Chiuta, regional director at the World Fish Center, a non-profit research organisation, agreed the science simply is not there yet.

“In Africa, we don’t have enough science to make practical changes. Most of the reaction we are seeing in Africa is based on these global assessments, which have not zeroed in to the specific location like that of these small-scale fisherwomen. Is that change which they are seeing due to climate change? It could be due to overfishing. For Africa the science is not there, and it needs to be generated,” said Chiuta.

But the fisherwomen, like so many Africans who rely on fishing for their livelihoods, do not have time for the science to catch up. According to Chiuta, 10 million African families are involved in small-scale fisheries and fish for livelihoods, and 15 percent of the working population on the continent is employed in fisheries.

MRM head of research, Kim Prochazka, recognised the urgency of the situation. “Faced with this huge amount of uncertainty there’s no small-scale specific directed interventions you can do. But it’s going to take us far too long to get to that understanding. We’ve got to do something now. So you have to take a pragmatic approach that puts you in the best position to cope with whatever changes may come at you,” said Prochazka.

According to Prochazka, this means taking a pro-active approach to rebuilding fish stocks to more resilient levels, managing fisheries on an ecosystem wide level rather than for isolated fish stocks, and developing aquaculture technology in order to prevent a food security catastrophe.

Chiuta agreed that these interventions were the best options fisheries management had in the face of uncertainty. She added that building the knowledge base, improving monitoring, developing capacity to implement adaptation and mitigation strategies, and working on policy and institutional reforms were also all critical around the continent.

Meanwhile, West Coast rock lobster stocks are the lowest they have ever been, with no clear sign of improving. MRM estimates the population at only 3.5 percent of what it was before people started harvesting them on a large scale.

“The primary issue is the one of resource depletion. Unfortunately we can’t tie that to climate change and say that is why the resource is depleted. We have to take responsibility and say the resource is depleted because in the past we caught too much. That is the bottom line,” said Prochazka.

Rita Francke is a single mother supporting three children. When Sahra Luyt appeared and taught her to fish, she had not had regular employment for years, and constantly worried about feeding her family. Asked what she would do if the rock lobster fishery moves or collapses, Francke joked, “I’d move!” Then, more sober, she reflected, “I don’t know what I’d do. I’d have to find a job, cleaning houses or something. I don’t know.”