Browsing by Author "Vetter, Susanne"

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    Land reform, sustainable rural livelihoods and gender relations: A case study of Gallawater A farm: Volume 2
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2000) Vetter, Susanne; Goqwana, Wiseman M; Bobo, Joseph; Marsh, Alan
    There is an ongoing debate about the sustainability of South African communal rangelands as old views on overgrazing and degradation are being widely challenged. The degradation issue has recently received renewed attention in the light of land reform, as this is expected to lead to an increase in the area of South Africa which is held under some form of communal tenure. District-level data on vegetation and soil degradation (Hoffman et al. 1999) have shown that communal districts have significantly higher levels of soil erosion, and that communal and commercial districts experience very different vegetation changes under the same environmental conditions, even if livestock densities are similar. The implications of this for communal livestock farmers are still under debate, and the interrelationships between high human population density, high stocking rates, land degradation and people’s livelihoods need to be better understood for land reform to result in economically and ecologically sustainable land use. This case study of a land reform pilot project in the Eastern Cape focuses on the changes in the biophysical environment, particularly soils and vegetation, which are likely to result from the change of land tenure and land use on Gallawater A.
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    Rangelands at equilibrium and non-equilibrium recent developments in the debate around rangeland ecology and management
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2003) Bayer, Wolfgang; Hahn, Brian; Hiernaux, Pierre; Hoffman, Timm; Illius, Andrew; Kerven, Carol; O’Connor, Tim; Richardson, David; Sandford, Stephen; Vetter, Susanne; Ward, David; Waters-Bayer, Ann
    The debate on equilibrium vs non-equilibrium dynamics in pastoral systems emerged in the early 1980s, when economists, ecologists and social scientists began to challenge the widespread claims of overgrazing and degradation in African rangelands and subsequent interventions based on rangeland succession theory and correct stocking rates (for example, Sandford 1982; 1983; Homewood & Rodgers 1987; Ellis & Swift 1988; Abel & Blaikie 1989; Westoby et al. 1989). The debate gained momentum in the early 1990s after two international workshops around emergent new paradigms in rangeland ecology and socio-economics (Woburn I and II), which resulted in the publication of two books, Range Ecology at Disequilibrium edited by Behnke et al. (1993) and Living with Uncertainty edited by Scoones (1994). The ‘new rangeland ecology’ argued that the traditional, equilibrium-based rangeland models did not take into account the considerable spatial heterogeneity and climatic variability of semi-arid rangelands, and that mobility, variable stocking rates and adaptive management were essential for the effective and sustainable utilisation of semi-arid and arid rangelands.