Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning

1. In a response from the national Natural Resources Management (NRM) programme approximately 2344 people are employed in the Western Cape through the Working for Water Programme of which some were not full time opportunities. In terms of the provincial conservation implementation agencies CapeNature provided approximately 876 employment opportunities in the Working for Water Programme for 2014/2015 period.  It is however expected that this figure will increase to more than 1 600 people in 2015/16. During 2014/15, SANParks and the City of Cape Town engaged about 1063 and 172 people respectively through the Working for Water programme. Therefore a total of at least 2111 people were contracted through the Working for Water Programme in the Western Cape (10.5% of the people contracted nationally).

2. The Working for Water Programme has contributed significantly to alien clearing efforts in the Western Cape.  CapeNature implements alien clearing on nature reserves that are managed by the Public Entity.  CapeNature was able to deliver 345 930 hectares of aliens cleared with funding from Working for Water (2011-2014) as detailed in Table 1.

Table 1: Working For Water	2011/12	2012/13	2013/14
	Actual (ha)	Actual (ha)	Actual (ha)
Initial	23 028	29 655	4 460
Follow-up	91 483	95 496	101 808
TOTAL	114 511	125 151	106 268

 

         

Regarding water conservation, the Western Cape holds 57% of the strategic water resources in the country and 90% of the water catchment areas in the Western Cape are managed by CapeNature.  These are typically the mountain catchments contained in a number of CapeNature managed nature reserves across the Western Cape, such as the Cederberg, the Boland and the Swartberg Mountains.