Water and Environmental Affairs Deputy Minister, Rejoice Mabudafhasi, has unveiled the Bathlabine Soil Conservation Project in Greater Tzaneen municipality in Limpopo.

The project, launched on Friday, is part of celebrating World Day to Combat Desertification (WDCD).

The Bathlabine community has experienced a serious soil erosion problem for many years, which negatively affected their livelihoods.

The stripping of nutrient-rich soil through erosion reduced the quantity of their food harvests and affected SMME projects based on the sale of agricultural produce.

WDCD is a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) initiative and it is commemorated all over the world each year on 17 June.

The theme for WDCD 2011 is "Forests keep drylands working." According to the UNEP, desertification affects 900 million people in 99 countries as 24 million tonnes of topsoil is lost to erosion annually. The resultant land degradation costs Africa about US$9 billion every year.

Mabudafhasi said: "The arable land in Limpopo enables the province to make substantial contribution to the economy of South Africa through the production of tropical fruits such as bananas, litchis, pineapples, mangoes, pawpaws, nuts, tea and coffee.

"More than 45 percent of the more than R2 billion annual turnover of the Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market comes from Limpopo. We need to protect any potential threat posed to the productive land here and all over the country to ensure sustained food security and employment."

She said the problem of desertification is caused by people putting too much pressure on delicate soils and ecosystems in dryland areas. Other causes are excessive use of the soil, overgrazing and deforestation for development or firewood collection, intensive arable farming and poor irrigation practices.

Lack of rain in such areas makes the land even more fragile. The UN calls these areas arid, semi-arid or sub-arid, which means hot and dry; 43 percent of such areas are found in the African continent.

Mabudafhasi made an appeal to the people of Tzaneen and South Africa as a whole to refrain from chopping down trees unnecessarily, as they play an important role to hold the soil together and help water the land by channelling rainwater into the soil.

"There is a close relationship between livelihoods and soils that are rich in biodiversity. Healthy soils produce life, and yet soil health depends a lot on how individuals use their land. What we do to our soils determines the quality and quantity of the food we eat and how our ecosystems serve us.

"Our increasing ecological interdependence on forests means all South Africans have a valuable role to play in the management of the forest resources. Forests are valued for their biological diversity, for medicinal and local uses, and for their aesthetic and spiritual values," she said.

South Africa's National Botanical Institute is currently drawing up a report for the government to give some indication of the extent of land degradation across the country. - BuaNews

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