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Healing the land and air

By Janine Stephen

The humble spekboom (or “porktree”) seems an unlikely hero. But to ecologist Mike Powell it’s a miracle plant with the potential to heal over a million hectares of degraded, eroded land across the Eastern and Western Cape.

The humble spekboom (or “porktree”) seems an unlikely hero. But to ecologist Mike Powell it’s a miracle plant with the potential to heal over a million hectares of degraded, eroded land across the Eastern and Western Cape. Even better, it’s grown easily from cuttings and it sucks up huge amounts of unwanted carbon dioxide: enough to make it a carbon credit- earning crop.?

Powell (42) has been a fan of the fleshy-leafed bush ever since he focused on restoring degraded thickets in the Baviaanskloof for his master’s degree.

Nowadays, he’s something of a spekboom evangelist. He’s involved in innovative projects across the Eastern Cape, from the Baviaanskloof and Addo through to Grahamstown and Graaff Reinet. And whether it’s in his role as regional ecologist for government’s Working for Woodlands programme, research associate at Rhodes University or ecologist and director of environmental finance company Nollen Group, Powell is spreading the spekboom gospel to all kinds of landowners.

Samara private game reserve near Graaff Reinet, once a sheep farm, is one example. Large swathes of its vegetation, including the all-important spekboom thickets, are damaged from overgrazing. “Sheep and goats hammer these plants until they become defoliated,” Powell explains. “Your canopy cover is lost, the litter and topsoil are blown or washed away and there’s classic desertification.”

By planting spekboom, Samara is healing the environmental scars and improving the habitat for game. Guests can also reduce their carbon footprint by sponsoring spekboom cuttings at R300 a pop. Samara has identified some 10000ha of land to rehabilitate . Other reserves are also turning to spekboom: Kwandwe, near Grahamstown, has offered up corridors of land for restoration trials.

Planting spekboom is “very labour intensive, so it’s going to be creating a lot of jobs,” Powell says. This will help game reserves change “perceptions” that they benefit only the wealthy. Spekboom farming or thicket restoration work in particular could “create economic opportunities for impoverished people”.

The “carbon pump” can be a money spinner for owners too. Powell is convinced it “can be profitable for landowners or developers to farm carbon” by planting spekboom. In ideal conditions, the plant sequesters as much as 4,2t of carbon per hectare in a year, which can be translated into valuable carbon credits.

Farmers could destock and rent degraded land to a developer who would restore it and pay the farmer from trading carbon credits. Alternatively, farmers with large amounts of capital can plant spekboom themselves as a carbon crop, which will eventually provide “a passive income for up to 25 years”.

It’s early days in the spekboom carbon credit industry but Nollen expects to have signed a land use contract for 2500ha near Somerset East by the end of August. Carbon Farm 1 will be SA’s first carbon farm. A large European vehicle manufacturer will pay Nollen to sequester carbon as a way of offsetting its operations, effectively “green-leafing” its vehicle fleet.

“We’ll probably be hiring 67-70 unemployed people to plant spekboom and maintain the project,” Powell says. “And there will be a lot of skills transfer.”

Other projects are in the pipeline, including the first black empowerment carbon farm, near Grahamstown (Powell hopes municipalities, private investors and the Development Bank of Southern Africa will get involved). Farmers in the Rooiberg Conservancy near Calitzdorp are interested in restoration work and there is talk of extending the Samara project to surrounding landowners. And already a couple of large conferences in Port Elizabeth and Cape Town have arranged for spekboom to be planted in the Baviaanskloof to offset delegates’ carbon emissions.

For all the social and economic benefits, Powell believes the greatest benefit to the spekboom projects is restoring “natural capital”. “It’s leaking from the land [as we lose nutrients and soil]. That’s the ultimate aim: employ the carbon economy to restore our natural capital, then just harvest the interest. That’s sustainable in the long term.”

Source: Financial Mail

Picture: Mike Powell