Understanding communities’ perceptions, demographics and uses of wetlands in Vhembe biosphere reserve, South Africa.

Abstract

Wetlands are amongst the world’s most important ecosystems, providing direct and indirect benefts to local communities. However, wetlands worldwide continue to be degraded due to unsus tainable use and improper resource management. In this paper, we assess the perceptions, importance, management and utilisation of wetlands among local community members using a household question naire and feld observations within the seven Thu lamela municipality wetlands, Vhembe Biosphere Reserve in South Africa. Seven wetlands were chosen for the study, with 140 household respondents ran domly selected for a questionnaire survey. The study indicated that wetlands were benefcial in supporting local communities through resource provisioning. The unemployment rate and household respond ents’ income were the main contributors to increased wetland dependency and utilisation. We found that urban and rural developments, unregulated use and extensive agricultural practices (i.e., cultivation, live stock grazing) have resulted in wetland degradation. We observed that the local communities around the wetlands were interested in the benefts they receive from wetlands when compared to their conserva tion. Furthermore, the study observed poor wetland co-management or collaboration among the local stakeholders. This has resulted in a lack of openly known, active platforms to discuss wetlands manage ment issues. These results highlight that centralized, top–down approaches to wetland use are insufcient for maintaining and managing wetland ecosystems,posing a challenge to sustainable wetland manage ment. Therefore, there is a need to develop a shared understanding through bottom-up approaches to wet land management nested within national regulatory frameworks, ideally combined with awareness build ing and knowledge sharing on ecological benefts and management of wetlands.