Shock report reveals state of South African rivers

A shock report on the state of South Africa's natural environment, released on Wednesday, states that over 80 percent of our rivers are in such a bad state they have been classified as "threatened". Of these, 44 percent are critically threatened.

Other findings are that 34 percent of South Africa's land ecosystems are threatened, so are three of the 13 groups of estuaries and 65 percent of marine biozones.

"The results are a warning to us all," Environment Affairs and Tourism minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said on Wednesday.

The report, the National Spatial Biodiversity Assessment, was compiled by the South African National Biodiversity Institute in Pretoria and was launched at Van Schalkwyk's pre-budget briefing in parliament on Wednesday.

He said the report, the first comprehensive evaluation of South Africa's natural environment, would enable the authorities to identify areas that needed protection most urgently.

"Perhaps more importantly, the report makes specific recommendations as to how to best link conservation with development in these threatened areas," Van Schalkwyk said.

Rivers were not only home to a large number of plant and animal species, but they provided the country's water, on which our economy and all life depended, the report said.

The poor state of 82 percent of our 120 rivers was not only a result of what happened on river banks, but also the result of how land was managed throughout the river catchment.

"Our river systems are in a much poorer state than our land ecosystems. This reflects that South Africa is a water-scarce country with multiple demands on limited water resources from urban settlements, agriculture and industry," the report said.

The fate of our freshwater therefore relied on managing land and water in an integrated way. Many of the country's 259 estuaries were also in a bad way, and only 14 are protected. The number of protected estuaries should be increased.

The freshwater "reserve" - the amount of water needed in a river to enable it to function biologically - should be determined for those estuaries which were critically endangered.

Although the National Water Act of 1988 made provision for reserve determination, this had been done for only "a handful" of estuaries, the report said.

The state of the country's marine resources was not as bad as the rivers and estuaries, but worse than the state of land ecosystems.

Sixty-five percent of our 34 marine biozones were threatened, with 12 percent critically threatened.

Commercial and recreational fishing were by far the biggest pressure on the marine biozones.

None of the marine biozones on the West Coast was protected, while those offshore were poorly protected.

If the marine environment was to be conserved, there was an urgent need to engage with commercial and recreational fishing sectors, the mining industry and the emerging mariculture industry.

The report is intended to inform policies, plans and day-to-day activities of public and private sectors.