People-centred urban conservation
Grow conservation finance solutions
Conservation land needs money every year, forever. Grants run in three-year cycles. We build the funding arrangements that outlast a grant, so that the people who benefit from a piece of land also pay to look after it.
Conservation is a permanent cost
A remnant of Cape Flats Sand Fynbos inside the city does not look after itself. Alien clearing, fire management, monitoring and staff are annual costs that continue for as long as the land exists. Grants do not work that way. They run for a cycle, and then the site still needs managing.
Conservation finance has moved quickly worldwide, and South African non-profits are now piloting new approaches to it. We have been running one of them for eighteen years, and administering another for longer than that.
Four ways conservation gets paid for
Each of these puts private money into conservation on public or private land, and each brings a different kind of partner to the table.
Biodiversity offset agreements
Where development is authorised on land with biodiversity value, the authorisation can require that equivalent habitat is secured and managed elsewhere, funded by the developer. We have a long track record administering the funds those agreements generate.
This year: approximately R6,9 million directed towards urban conservation.
Homeowners association contributions
Residential estates bordering conservation land contribute to managing it. The residents get a maintained green edge and a functioning ecological corridor. The land gets a budget that does not depend on a grant cycle.
Running since: 2008, eighteen years of a model that works.
City Improvement District partnerships
CIDs already levy for cleaning and security. Adding ecological management turns parks, verges and traffic islands into actively managed biodiversity areas, at a fraction of what a reserve costs.
This year: Welgemoed CID, 21 parks, verges and islands, and 4 000 plants supplied.
Long-term management agreements
Multi-year agreements with landowners and authorities, with annual escalation built in, so that site management, restoration and conservation staffing hold their value rather than eroding.
This year: annual increases negotiated on almost all long-term agreements, with legal support from ENS Africa.
Conservation as mitigation in EIA processes
Funding opportunities surface during Environmental Impact Assessment and Environmental Authorisation. Getting into that conversation early, in Malmesbury and Haasendal, is how long-term stable funding gets secured before a development is signed off.
Under discussion: agreements promising more than R1,8 million a year at two sites.
Catalytic grants to community organisations
The other direction of travel. We administer the Table Mountain Fund Small Grants Facility, moving money out to community organisations that cannot yet access conventional funding.
Since 2017: R1 160 874 to 42 organisations.
Where this goes next
Urban conservation holds when local government, communities, developers, NGOs and donors fund it jointly and for the long term. That is the model we run.
Many countries have built subsidies and tax incentives for companies backing nature-based solutions. Making those solutions visible to business and government is what unlocks the same money here, and we work at that directly.
We are expanding this portfolio across Cape Town and the Swartland District, and opening the conversations that secure long-term investment in biodiversity.
Developing land, or living beside it?
If you are working through an environmental authorisation, running a City Improvement District, or chairing a residents association next to a conservation area, there is an arrangement here that fits. Talk to us before the decisions are made rather than after.
