ADOPT-A-RIVER PROGRAMME LAUNCH - eWISA

ADOPT-A-RIVER PROGRAMME
LAUNCH
17 MARCH 2010
Nadene Slabbert
Department of Water Affairs
Directorate: Resource Quality Services
slabbertn@dwa.gov.za
+27(0)12 808 9619

The Adopt – a – River programme
• The “Adopt-a-River” programme aims to create
awareness among South Africans of the need to care
for our scarce water resources and to actively
participate in the protection and management of our
water resources
• Programme is based on community participation,
training, partnerships, and focused action plans

Vision of the national initiative
Provide an enabling environment for participants who want to preserve/
upgrade the condition of their river reach/es through:
• Guide the resource protection activities in river corridor
• Coordinate conservation & wise use activities between all stakeholders
• Shape the relationship between people and resources by means of
communicated norms and standards
• Create a platform to obtain patrons and resources needed
• Develop materials (such as guidelines) for use by all role players
• Source expertise to guide through implementation & refinement
• Link the programme to other programmes with similar objectives
• Facilitate sharing of lessons learnt/experience

Phases
• Phase 1: Completed in 2007, entailed drafting a Strategic Framework for
the development of the Adopt-a-River programme. It spells out specific
objectives relating to active participation by water users in the care of our
water resources.
• Phase 2: Commenced in 2008 and focuses on the development of an
implementation plan
• Phase 3: Piloting of the Adopt-a-River programme commence during the
National Water Week 2010. The programme design and the
implementation plan will be tested in selected rivers with development of
tools, techniques and training material will take place on an ongoing basis,
as well as information and task sharing with interested parties.
• Phase 4: In this final phase the Adopt-a-River programme will be
expanded to any area where interested parties would want to participate
in the Adopt-a-River programme

Governance
• Implementation is through a national co-ordinator (and later
provincial co-ordinators) – probably DWA appointed (scientific
background)
• The co-ordinators will be responsible for engaging
volunteers/stakeholders for monitoring (either make use of
existing structures or through new establishment)
• Stakeholders can include Government Departments,
Municipalities, Water Associations, NGO’s, Universities &
Educational centres, Industry and the broad public
• Pilot projects are envisaged to become self-sustainable after a
period of time

Key principles of a sustainable programme
• Institutional/governmental support and guidance
• Start small
• Training and education
• Advocacy
• Keep your goals realistic
• Secure funding
• Lengthy process – action plans
• Commitment of stakeholders/volunteers

Key principles of a sustainable programme
• Responsibilities towards stakeholders/volunteers
• Stewardship
• Incentives
• Make connections
• Partnerships
• Co-ordination
• Don’t underestimate local stakeholders/volunteers
• Learn from local experiences of similar initiatives

Resources available from co-ordinator
• Marketing expertise and resources to attract patrons
• Links with related organisations and programmes
• Awareness creation
• Professional trainers and facilitators & recognition
• Tailor made training curriculum
• Training facilities if necessary (otherwise on-site)
• Monitoring and feedback
• Mechanism to facilitate sharing of knowledge and expertise
• Legal advice and labour contracts
• Adopt-a-River website
• Data repository and information management (future)

Active support ultimately envisaged from roleplayers
(once programme is fully implemented)
• Knowledge/information sharing
• Awareness creation/marketing
• Managerial / administrative support
• Resourcing - quantify resource requirements and priorities
• Long term funding – procurement, allocation and
disbursement
• Networking - links to other existing monitoring programmes
or even Adopt-a-River groups
• Physical assistance with execution of projects within river
reach
• Data management and reporting/feedback

Reasons for participation
• Interest will be expected to be mainly issue driven –
such as visible pollution
• Real interest from the community in a specific river
corridor
• Problems in the river are related to diffuse pollution
• The programme has to be able to contribute by
raising awareness – and result in behaviour change

Activities expected within river reaches
• Short-term water quality monitoring
• Clean-up activities (project based)
• Awareness creation activities (project based)
• Long-term monitoring
• Training of volunteers/project leaders
• Most stakeholder/volunteer data will be used to educate the
community and to screen for potential problems. Better
quality data may eventually feed into national programmes
such as the River Health Programme
• Sharing of experiences - communication

Available training materials (currently)
• Volunteer monitoring co-ordinator’s manual
• Sampling manual for volunteers
• Report on Training Material and Training
Needs – to be implemented over time

In the end, the success of the programme
will be in the hands of “ordinary” people
doing “extraordinary” things (with a little
help for a little while). And today we are
all here to witness the first example of
that.

Thanks
Nadene Slabbert
Directorate: Resource Quality Services
slabbertn@dwa.gov.za
+27(0)12 808 9619