How can a unique agricultural area on the urban fringe of Cape Town, South Africa be protected to provide ecosystem services, fresh produce for low income city dwellers, and a local model of agro-ecological farming? The vast green fields of the Philippi Horticultural Area are an incongruous sight, in the midst of one of the most densely settled areas of the Cape Flats, an expanse of gritty, peri-urban townships [...]
How can people care for biodiversity amidst urban poverty and inequity, when the social, ecological and institutional worlds are fragmented? The Cape Flats Nature project was a project that aimed to reconnect people and nature in South Africa, to slow biodiversity loss and enhance the availability of urban biodiversity. Cape Flats is a plain on the edge of Cape Town that has rapidly urbanized, in which both ecosystem, society, and institutions are fragmented. Apartheid era South [...]
Tyisa Nabanye is a non-profit urban agriculture organisation growing organic food on the slopes of Signal Hill in Cape Town, seeking to improve food security, promote sustainable livelihoods and create employment for their members. Started in 2013 by a group of urban farmers from the townships around Cape Town, Tyisa Nabanye, which means "feed the others" in Xhosa, is an urban garden based on the principles of permaculture. The team [...]
How important is skills development around biodiversity conservation in the good anthropocene? Greenmatter is an initiative aiming to drive transformation in graduate level skills for biodiversity conservation in South Africa. In 2010, the South African government’s Economic Cluster convened the first Green Economy Summit, to map out a green growth pathway that creates jobs while reducing pollution and using South Africa’s natural resources wisely. There was growing recognition that economic growth cannot [...]
Project 90 by 2030 was established as a national project of the Goedgedacht Trust in July 2007 in South Africa. The name comes from an aim to effect a 90% change by South Africans in how they engage with earth systems by the year 2030.
Local residents from the Oranjezicht community in Cape Town's city bowl came together in 2012 to transform an open area in their neighbourhood from a disused lot attracting criminal activity into a vibrant urban farm where community members grow their own food. In addition, people from all over the city can participate by volunteering as farm helpers, and people are encouraged to assist the farm by contributing their kitchen waste [...]