The CWBR has created a short film, on The Health and Nutrition Programme, which has been featured as part of UNESCO’s Proud to Share campaign. The video has been published on the UNESCO website and available to view on several social media platforms.

Links to featured video:

UNESCO Facebook Youtube Twitter

All around the world, incredible people are working to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. The #ProudToShare campaign by UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB) aims to share their stories and show how communities are making a difference in Biosphere Reserves.

The CWBR is joining McGregor Magic this year which takes place on Heritage weekend in September 2020. This year the festival will be streamed online, hosting online guided garden tours, floral workshops, panel discussions, and talks by local and internationally recognized experts in fauna, flora, and conservation. The festival celebrates nature’s magic in springtime when the indigenous splendor of flora in McGregor blooms.

Every year, a garden competition is launched in the newly built community to support the greening of their spaces and provide infrastructure for self-sufficiency. A thought-provoking and challenging task to take on, as McGregor is in a succulent Karoo, an arid area in a rain shadow.

As part of the Health and Nutrition Programme, the CWBR will supply thirty gardens with 8000 vegetable seedlings that include broccoli, cabbage, and kale to help realize the greening and food security.

During the stay in McGregor this week, the CWBR team were introduced to an inspiring garden created by a group of children who started their own project to keep busy while schools are closed.

The space, which they named Kids Farm, has succulents, and rose cuttings given to them by people in the community. Together, the children designed the garden, collected materials to realize their vision and prepared the space. Turning the dusty earth and digging into the ground (as hard as concrete) to establish a table where they can sit and socialize in daytime. The children, taking great pride in their garden, water the plants every day, and continue to add to the space together.

Proving that anything can be possible, with determination and vision.

Follow McGregor Magic on Facebook to see updates on the programme.

Grass and flowers adorn the inside

A winner from last years competition.

A garden four years in the making

Across the street, an initiate by the children, who have beautified the neighborhood with their own vision of a garden

Proud of their achievement

Designed by the children

Working together to create the space

Cape Winelands Biosphere Reserve is part of a new UNESCO, Man and Biosphere Programme, initiative.

Biosphere Reserves as Observatories for Climate Change Adaption in South Africa

Background

Climate change impacts are being observed across the Southern African region, with water-related hazards causing massive flooding, landslides and severe droughts, significantly affecting natural resources and posing a direct threat to human security. While climate change is driven by global processes, the solutions to offset the negative effects of climate risks are particularly dependent on local conditions. In this respect, UNESCO biosphere reserves have the potential to become global observatories for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The BE-RESILIENT project aims to strengthen biosphere reserves and their communities to address climate change challenges and associated water-related hazards. The project will engage a set of established and proposed biosphere reserves in the region to pilot effective pathways towards climate change adaptation, using a multidisciplinary approach around four main components.

~ Extract from UNESCO Website

Further reading about the project: UNESCO Website

Be Resilient Brochure

The importance of Biosphere Reserves is sustaining and developing a percentage of the earth’s surface to ensure a healthy co-existence on earth. Read the article linked below to find out about a new Biosphere, the largest protected area in the world, showcasing the importance of collaboration.

Link to article

‘New Biosphere Reserve in Mali Becomes one of the Largest Protected Areas in the World‘

by Vance G.Martin (Wild Foundation)

‘It is an example of how legislation can both set society’s norms (e.g. wildlife protection) and also enable the development of workable solutions that are adapted to local circumstances. In this case decentralization legislation empowered local communities to develop governance systems that protect elephants and their habitat through regulating natural resource use, preventing degradation and promoting ecosystem restoration and resilience.

This exciting and much needed new protected area expansion and legislation in Mali fits into an important global picture of the need for intact natural areas that has been made more evident by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has raised awareness of the direct links between degraded ecosystems and increased vulnerability to catastrophic events’

Extract from article ‘New Biosphere Reserve in Mali Becomes one of the Largest Protected Areas in the World‘

With the outbreak of Covid-19, which has drastically interfered with education, health, and has changed methods of communication. Adaptive thinking towards the educational projects will have to include new circumstances and heath practices.

The CWBR has revised the hands-on educational projects to include exciting new ways of engaging and teaching environmental, science and communication subjects.

The Mobile Classroom and the Nutrition and Health Programme

With the onset of the world pandemic, schools have been closed, further widening the gap between those who have access to on line education and those who do not. Many migrant workers have been stranded without work, adding to the poverty in the area.

The Mobile Classroom, a versatile educational tool that merges practice and theory, will focus on Health and Nutrition Programs, which includes food systems, and gardens, but will include various other aspect of science where possible. Helping to create and foster access to spaces that effectively bridge STEM

(science, technology, engineers, mathematics) education with practical applications in rich, healthy, social, cultural and ecological contexts.

Complimenting and building upon the national school syllabus, the lessons will be taught through practical tasks in a fun and engaging way in different pristine environments. Collaborations with schools will be developed to enhance school education in rural areas and become a support to teachers. 

The program will also build a meaningful and generative cross-cultural exchange program between overseas and local partners, and the CWBR. It will promote healthy living, empathy, cultural understanding, and collaborative capacities during the Pandemic period. This will be done through an online platform where films, podcasts, and educational material used will be created and shared between youths and facilitators local and overseas. Connecting learners across the world in a cultural and ecological context.  

As part of this programme, dedicated community STEM educators will be trained and equipped with the necessary tools to facilitate STEM classes for youth and young adults. Film making and podcasting skills will also be taught as a means broadening the outreach of the programme and to build the online platform. 

Nutrition and Health Programme

The programme focuses on distribution of food parcels to the neediest, food supply to soup kitchens and feeding programmes in need of additional support, Covid-19 practices and protocol, food garden production, and nutrition programmes.

The CWBR currently supports 145 families, elderly, and disabled, whom do not have access to other means of support, with bi-weekly food parcels. The parcels contain the basic needs for a healthy diet.

With recognition that the consequences from the pandemic will not be resolved soon, the CWBR is fostering a ‘self-help’ mentality through food garden programmes. Empowering individuals within the communities, youth and young adults, to develop more sustainable local food systems that help ensure food security. This is done through food garden workshops in a donated communal garden space where practical application is taught. Individual gardens are then installed and visited during follow up workshop sessions. 

The CWBR Hub Nursery produces over 60 000 seedlings monthly. A portion of the seedlings are planted at the CWBR Hub to contribute to Soup Kitchens, and distributed among individuals, communities during workshops. Seedlings have also been donated to the implementation of the USIKO Nursery and Hub in Jamestown, to support the marginalized in their area.

The Nutrition and Health Programme is currently implemented in Paarl, Villiersdorp Mbekweni, Stellenbosch, and Franschhoek.

In partnership with Athénée Action Humanitaire, the mobile educational classroom program has been in development since 2018.

Food Garden Workshop in Villiersdorp

Broccoli and spinach seedlings CWBR Hub

Seedlings planted at USIKO Hub Jamestown

Food parcels provided for ECD families

Additional veggies supplied to food parcels in Paarl

Peanut butter and milk for Her Voice

Food parcels for Villiersdorp

The Cape Winelands Biosphere Reserve, is the source of seven rivers, including the Berg and the Breede. They are not only the life blood to cities, homes, agriculture, and industry but are an integral part of the habitat for the incredible biodiversity along their path to the ocean. The Hottentots Holland Mountain range forms the watershed, with the Berg River flowing into the Atlantic and the Breede flowing into the Indian Ocean.

Unfortunately, they are also the arteries delivering the plastics and other detrimental elements into the Oceans. They are connected to, and interact with the ocean many kilometers inland, so one cannot address the pollution problem only within the oceans and on the beaches.

Arianna Olivelli and her team have been measuring plastic, of all sizes, on South African beaches for over 25 years, especially related to the small fragments found in seabirds.

“The country is the 11th worst offender in terms of land- based litter entering the sea. It is important that we understand the sources and movement of plastic in marine systems if we are to devise effective policies to reduce the amounts entering the sea”.

Britta Denise Hardesty, and Chris Wilcox from SCIRO, research has found that 90 percent of marine debris remains with the littoral zone, close to the shoreline. Plastic making up over 50% of it.

It becomes obvious that the most effective efforts to mitigate Ocean pollution should be land based. Attacking the causes at source, even before it enters the rivers. According to WWF, South Africans use about 30kg to 50kg. (about a third of the American average). With a population of 57 million, it is a staggering 2.8 million tons a year. 70,000 interlink trucks full, that is 191 40-ton trucks a day.

Dr Kevin Winter, while paddling down the Black River, says that they were “flabbergasted” by what they saw during their paddle. “We had to dodge all kinds of things – dead dogs, dead cats, crazy stuff… people won’t believe what ends up in those rivers and canals,” he says.

“When it goes out to sea, we think we’ve lost it altogether, but we need to think again. If we pollute our oceans, how can we expect to run desalination plants? How can we be expected to create drinking water from polluted water? It’s insane,” he cautions.

How are we as South Africans, and as Biosphere Reserves going to reduce this scourge?

If anyone has a practical and implementable solution, please contact at info@capewinelandsbiosphere.co.za

And we will do our best to make it happen.

The Berg River Dam. The first dam designed to maintain the ecological integrity of the surrounding landscape and rivers

Stiebeuel River after heavy rain, running through the middle of Groendal Franschhoek

A beautiful Marine-ecosystem in the Indian Ocean by De Hoop Nature Reserve