Mega Living Landscapes: A chance to put people back into nature in Eastern Cape

Across the world, regions such as the Amazon, the Congo Basin, Madagascar and the Cape Floristic Region hold extraordinary concentrations of life. These are not simply beautiful places. They’re living libraries of evolution, containing species, ecosystems and ecological processes that cannot be replaced once lost.

But there’s a paradox at the heart of their conservation.

Many of the most biodiverse places on Earth are also places where the communities living closest to them remain economically marginalised. While the world celebrates these landscapes for their conservation value, the benefits seldom reach those expected to live with them, protect them and carry many of their costs.

South Africa is one of the world’s megadiverse countries and contains three globally recognised biodiversity hotspots: the Cape Floristic Region, the Succulent Karoo and the Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany hotspot. Each is ecologically distinct and globally irreplaceable.

The Eastern Cape sits at the heart of this picture. It may not have the same international profile as the Kruger or iSimangaliso, but it is remarkable not only for its biodiversity, but for its diversity of biomes.

The province brings together fynbos, forest, grassland, savanna, Nama-Karoo and Succulent Karoo, alongside important centres of endemism, major river systems and some of the most distinctive thicket ecosystems on Earth.

Its coastline is equally significant. The Eastern Cape lies within a marine transition zone, where the warm Agulhas Current meets the cooler temperate influence of the southern oceans. This creates an exceptional overlap of species, habitats and ecological systems.

From rocky shores, estuaries and long sandy beaches, to offshore reefs, islands and productive bays, the coastline supports a remarkable diversity of fish, sharks, rays, whales, dolphins, seabirds and marine invertebrates.

It is not simply a beautiful coastline. It is a living marine landscape of national and international importance, with the potential to support conservation, tourism, research, sustainable livelihoods and a more inclusive coastal economy.

Yet many communities living within and around these landscapes continue to face unemployment, limited opportunity and a history of exclusion from both land and conservation value.

That is the challenge we must confront directly.

It is no longer enough to draw lines on maps, declare protected areas and expect communities to support conservation because the science says it matters. Protected areas are essential and the science remains critically important. But unless biodiversity becomes part of a fairer economic future for the people living alongside it, conservation will remain vulnerable, contested and incomplete.

The question is therefore not only how we protect the Eastern Cape’s biodiversity, but how we make that biodiversity the foundation of a more equitable rural economy.

This is where SANParks’ Vision 2040 and the concept of Mega Living Landscapes become significant.

Mega Living Landscapes are not simply larger national parks. They’re connected landscapes in which protected areas, communal land, private land, towns, cultural sites and biodiversity corridors function as part of one living system.

They represent a shift from conservation through isolation to conservation through integration, recognising that the future of conservation lies beyond the fence line.

The Eastern Cape now has two major opportunities to demonstrate this approach.

The Greater Addo Mega Living Landscape offers the opportunity to think at the scale nature requires, connecting Addo Elephant National Park with Mountain Zebra National Park and potentially Camdeboo National Park through ecological corridors, stewardship agreements and biodiversity-compatible land uses.

This doesn’t mean placing all the land between the parks under formal conservation. It means developing a connected landscape in which conservation, agriculture, tourism, community land, restoration and other compatible uses can support one another.

The Eastern Grasslands opportunity is equally important. Grasslands are too easily misunderstood as empty land awaiting development. Far from it. They’re water factories, carbon stores, cultural landscapes and biodiversity assets with significant livelihood potential. When grasslands are lost, they are often lost quietly and permanently.

For Mega Living Landscapes to succeed, however, good intentions will not be enough.

Communities must be partners from the beginning, not merely beneficiaries at the end. This requires meaningful participation, clear communication, trusted local institutions and governance structures that bring all stakeholders to the same table with clarity and accountability.

The economic proposition must also be real. Opportunities could include ecological restoration, alien plant clearing, tourism, hospitality, local food supply chains, biodiversity monitoring, carbon projects, biodiversity credits, environmental education and youth development.

Crucially, the benefits must remain local through procurement, enterprise development, employment, ownership and skills transfer. The biodiversity economy cannot become another extractive economy carrying a green label.

Landowners and communities must also be properly incentivised to keep land under biodiversity-compatible management. These mechanisms must be transparent, ethical and measurable.

Biodiversity finance cannot remain a slogan. A concerted effort will be required from the government, conservation organisations, communities, businesses and investors to unlock credible financing as part of the programme.

Young people must be placed at the centre of this opportunity. The Eastern Cape faces a youth unemployment crisis, but it also contains one of the richest biodiversity classrooms on Earth.

Mega Living Landscapes will need to become training platforms for the next generation of rangers, guides, ecologists, restoration workers, hospitality professionals, conservation entrepreneurs, biodiversity monitors and landscape managers. If young people cannot see a future in nature, conservation will eventually lose its social foundation.

Science and local knowledge must also work together. Farmers, herders, fishers, traditional leaders, healers, community elders, conservationists and scientists all hold parts of the landscape story. A living landscape approach will have to bring these different forms of knowledge together.

The state has an essential enabling role. Mega Living Landscapes will require alignment between national departments, SANParks, provincial conservation agencies, municipalities, traditional authorities, nongovernmental organisations and private investors.

Roads, safety, water, spatial planning, permits, training and investment incentives all matter. Conservation will need to be integrated into local economic development and not treated as a separate environmental concern.

It will be necessary to measure success differently. It cannot be assessed only by the number of hectares placed under conservation.

Measurement will have to be through jobs created, young people trained, enterprises supported, degraded land restored, women included, wildlife protected, water systems improved and trust rebuilt. Conservation and sustainable development outcomes must be measured together.

Functional partnerships between the government, civil society, communities and the private sector will therefore be fundamental.

Mega Living Landscapes offer South Africa a way to move beyond the old divide between people and parks. They allow us to demonstrate that biodiversity is not a barrier to development, but the basis for a different and more sustainable form of development.

They can turn protected areas into anchors of wider landscape renewal and make rural communities shareholders in conservation value rather than spectators to it.

For the Eastern Cape, the opportunity is especially powerful. Greater Addo and the Eastern Grasslands can become engines of rural renewal, showing that a biodiverse province does not have to remain a poor province. They can translate globally significant natural wealth into dignity, employment, enterprise and ownership.

That is the future we should be working towards.

A future where biodiversity is neither locked away from people nor sacrificed for short-term gain but used wisely as the foundation of a more just, inclusive and resilient economy.

A future where people and nature do not merely survive alongside one another but thrive together. DM