Jobs for youth and protection from climate change: Inside SANParks Vision 2040 plans

After 18 months of discussion and consulting with several stakeholders, the South African National Parks (SANParks) revealed their conservation plan; Vision 2024 on Thursday.

Speaking at the reveal of the vision, the SANParks board chairperson Pam Yako said this came after the board asked themselves about the future of the parks in South Africa.

“We needed to find ourselves an expression of the times that we’re in and also moving in future what how it would look like,” she said.

Impact of the vision 2040 on National Parks

Speaking to The Citizen, SANParks spokesperson JP Louw said the Mega Living Landscape towards parts of the national parks are yet to be explored.

“It’s a bit tricky to want to assume it will just impact the Kruger National Park per se because this thing needs discussion with many persons.

“We create greater collaboration with those who stay around the park. So instead of them just being neighbours they became co-managers and co-owners of a conservation estate. So those are the things we will be exploring at the moment,” he said.

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The Mega Living Landscape

With about 1 600 stakeholders by mid-2024, the SANParks discussed seven scenarios in the planning of Vision 2040.

“We came out with several scenarios. [Some] of the scenarios were a ‘do nothing’, then a ‘collapse scenario’, ‘technology scenario’ in how we do things. What we then went for, a scenario that brings it all together, the Mega Living Landscapes,” Yako said.

According to the organisation, Vision 2040 is to ensure every South African has a stake in conservation, knowing that they will tangibly benefit by protecting landscapes and species.

“At the core of it, it recognises the multiple uses that they have, bringing conservation still as a catalyst for economic development and job opportunities, embraces technology, changing needs and aspirations and putting all of it together which is now the Vision 2040,” she said.

According to SANParks the Mega living landscape can:

• Build climate resilience, especially for the communities
most vulnerable to climate change impacts.
• Bring employment and income to economically depressed rural areas.
• Offer jobs and learning opportunities for the youth.
• Offer dignity and a greater role for women as nurturing
links to nature.
• Strengthen biodiversity protection
• Provide natural goods like firewood, medicinal plants and seasonal wild fruits.
• Provide access to nature, plant and animal species for spiritual, healing, sustenance and commercial benefits Protect ecological services, like wetlands that purify water and mitigate flooding.
• Increase and sustain food security by making small-scale subsistence farming more viable.
• Increase rangelands for the farming of Indigenous livestock species.
• Provide sanctuaries for quiet lands and dark skies.
• Connect with Indigenous knowledge which might in turn find medicine that will cure cancer
Empower National Parks staff through learning and opportunity.
• Offer natural spaces for spiritual and religious purposes.
• Provide good research resources for schools and universities.

‘Inclusive exercise’

Officiating the reveal, the Deputy Minister of Forestry, Fishery, and the Environment Narend Singh congratulated SANParks for being inclusive with stakeholders.

“I’d like to congratulate SANParks, chair, board, and CEO for the very inclusive exercise that you have been conducting for the past 18 months.

He also urged those involved to track their performance to know how to move forward.

“I’d also like to see that you have annual targets and key performance indicators. Let’s not wait until 2040, to see what happens then.

“Let’s measure as we move along, even if it’s every 6 months. Measure, bring the group together possibly once a year, see how you’ve done, where they are succeeding, and where they are failing,” he concluded.

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