Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
side those sites. Furthermore, more community members will benefit from this joint
project because biogas consumers and the biogas project could contribute to the cre-
ation of at least a few permanent jobs for the ARISE workers. These jobs would (after
a certain period) not depend on the availability of government subsidies but on the
monthly fees to be paid by the households for the biogas produced.
This development package could further be extended by adding other activities
such as sustainable tourism and crop and vegetable production using the organic fer-
tilizer that is a by-product of the biogas generation process (Blignaut 2009). To aug-
ment the funding stream, the development of markets for ecosystem goods and ser-
vices should also be considered, especially that of carbon, despite all the difficulties
that such efforts currently entail (Jahed et al. 2006; Turpie, Marais, and Blignaut
2008; Wunder, Engel, and Pagiola 2008).
Conclusion
The ARISE project, the first of its kind in South Africa, was run by a private company
that was tasked by the government with community-based natural resource restora-
tion. From the results presented here, such an approach obviously has the potential to
provide both social and environmental benefits. In so doing, ARISE was at least effec-
tive in the short run in starting various aspects of an ecological restoration project and,
as shown, temporarily improving the income of its employees.
For the program's restoration efforts to have long-lasting ecological effects, ARISE
should focus on fundamental solutions that remove the drivers of ecological degrada-
tion, rather than treating only the symptoms, which can only lead to short-term ef-
fects. Supplying households with biogas could be helpful should biogas, based on its
physical characteristics and price, be accepted by the community members as a suit-
able alternative to fuelwood. Such acceptance of biogas would reduce or eliminate
the demand for fuelwood, which is one primary driver of environmental degradation.
Other serious shortcomings were revealed in respondents' comments about ways
in which the project could be improved. While appropriate and adequate training was
provided for the restoration tasks, it does not seem as if the project design succeeded
in fulfilling one of the stated goals, namely to prepare its employees for a future job in
the commercial sector. Furthermore, ARISE failed to let community members other
than those employed benefit from the project, and it lacked efficiency in a strict busi-
ness sense and from a project perspective. The shortcomings may well partly be the re-
sult of the arrangement with the government that almost forces the implementing
agent to act as a governmental organization. Future programs should be designed to
develop a multiple number of income streams, both private and public, to harness the
strength of each of these income streams to the betterment of the project as a whole.
The limited successes of ARISE show that the lowest income groups can benefit
from ecological restoration and that they are very capable of contributing to such ef-
forts. However, the program's problems and weaknesses make it clear that such an
ecological restoration project on its own, in a context like that of Greater Giyani, is lit-
tle more a Band-Aid, from both an environmental and a human perspective. For a
