The Garden Route has been formally recognised as a biosphere reserve, with the announcement by Unesco last Friday coming at a time when the area was devastated by runaway fires.
The official recognition came after eight years of intense preparation by the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve, which included an 8000-page submission to Unesco last September.
The Unesco recognised biosphere stretches from George to the outskirts Port Elizabeth and includes all of the national, provincial and local parks as well as marine protected areas.
Errol Finkelstein, the chairperson of the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve, said biospheres in general seek to reconcile the demands of people with sustainable environmental approaches, including innovate job-creation programmes.
"The fires that have so savaged much of the Greater Knysna and Plett areas are the object of much of our focus," he said.
Finkelstein said that the five biospheres of the Cape met in collaboration with the Western Cape government on Tuesday to create immediate actions plans.
"They incude a new private sector funding drive initiative to boost the efforts to further eliminate alien and invasive trees and plants in the most acute and vulnerable areas and replace them with indigenous species that retard rather than accelerate fires," he said.
However, he said that the fires had nothing whatsoever to do with the recognition of this biosphere as an official Unesco area. "The technical review and all the processes were completed internally within Unesco in March this year and their recommendation was put forward to the Board of Unesco for their annual meeting which took place last week," he said.
"It's pure coincidence that the fires took place over the last two or three weeks and Unesco recognition came last week," Finkelstein said.
(Image: Garden Route Biosphere Reserve)
