South Africa

South Africa, Our Burning Planet

How savings groups can transform lives and help fortify communities against climate shocks

Shoki Mafogo, a nature livelihoods manager with the Kruger to Canyons Biosphere Region, helps set up saving groups comprising farmers and small enterprise owners in the Greater Kruger area. (Photo: Supplied)

By Roving Reporters and Kemunto Ogutu

6 Nov 2024

Access to finance is vital in building resilience to a rapidly changing environment. But experts warn that while savings groups offer a lifeline, deeper systemic reforms are essential to tackle the root causes of vulnerability and poverty.

Talk about saving for a rainy day.

Katrina Rooi reckons it’s made all the difference. It’s put a roof over her head, or at any rate, helped replace the existing, leaky one.

“Ek sou nooit my dak kon vervang het met my ou geldjie nie,” says Rooi, of Steinkopf, a dorp of fewer than 8,000 souls in South Africa’s remote Namaqualand.

The little money previously at her disposal would never have been enough, but a R3,000 loan from a community savings group made the work possible.

Rooi is a member of one of 11 such groups in Steinkopf. The groups and others in the region, a shortish drive from the Namibian border, are helping hundreds like Rooi, but in particular small-scale farmers, to better cope with the vagaries of climate change.

Rooi’s story was shared by community activist and financial trainer Esther Engelbrecht at the 27th Tipping Points webinar that explored the impact of community-based savings initiatives in South Africa’s Namaqualand. The discussions delved into how these grassroots financial tools are helping small-scale farmers, entrepreneurs, and entire communities survive and thrive in the face of climate shocks.

Field study

Engelbrecht told the webinar, hosted by Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation, about a field study that surveyed the groups in Steinkopf and in Leliefontein, a smaller village, south of Springbok.

In a warming world, financial savvy can help buffer climate shocks, says community activist Esther Engelbrecht. (Photo: Supplied)

The groups, established with the support of the non-governmental organisation SaveAct, provided financial education, fostered entrepreneurship, and helped farmers buy things like rainwater tanks and erect windbreaks to shelter livestock.

Funds let them switch to hardier breeds, too, like the Spikkelbok, an indigenous-to-the-area goat, and Meatmaster sheep, which were less fussy eaters than other sheep breeds and so gentler on the land. At the same time, the animals were better able to withstand extreme heat.

Financial savvy

These were all important considerations in a warming world and very much to the topic of the 31 October webinar: “Saving (For) the Future: How Financial Savvy Can Buffer Climate Shocks.”

Joining Engelbrecht to discuss how thrift, rands and cents know-how and community action could help ease climate change strain, were fellow panellists Shoki Mafogo, Darlington Sibanda, and Zak Essa.

Mafogo is a nature livelihoods manager with the Kruger to Canyons Biosphere Region, a sustainable development and conservation organisation. Sibanda is an interdisciplinary researcher on development and climate change at the University of Cape Town. Essa is doing a doctorate in environmental policy and development through the London School of Economics and is an analyst supporting the Presidential Employment Stimulus programme.

Martha Stein Sochas, an adviser to SaveAct and a retired French overseas development agency regional director for southern Africa, facilitated the webinar.

Adaption

Engelbrecht said the field study found that “indeed, savings groups act as catalysts for climate resilience”.

“They equip members at critical tipping points to adapt and to manage economic and environmental shocks and stresses.”

The groups improved the capacity of people to “withstand climate impact in vulnerable landscapes”.

Engelbrecht reminded the webinar that Namaqualand was a biodiversity hotspot (rich in flowers and succulents) and that scientists had warned that the semi-arid region was at risk of growing hotter and drier.

Of the people interviewed for the study, 57% reported that they depended on the land for farming. But farming was becoming harder to do, with overgrazing and other unsustainable land use practices taking a toll and exacerbating biodiversity loss.

Farmers were reporting an increase in diseases, especially ticks. The rains were coming later in the year, delaying the lambing season, robbing farmers of festive season sales.

Feeling the pinch, men were forced to leave the land and their families to seek work elsewhere.

Women kept the home fires burning, farming and looking after children.

Loans and training

Engelbrecht spoke about SaveAct’s work with Namaqualand communities.

This included helping entrepreneurial farmers like Steffie Gertze.

The homemaker lost everything in the 2015 drought, but a loan from a Steinkopf savings group helped her buy a maize mill to improve livestock feeding. Another loan equipped Gertze with a meat saw, turning her into the local butcher.

Engelbrecht said 42 people participated in the study, drawn from the 11 savings groups in Steinkopf and a further nine in Leliefontein – “two areas identified as vulnerable”.

The Leliesfontein groups count 129 members, an impressive number, said Engelbrecht, considering the entire community totals about 600 people.

A majority of the groups’ members were women and more than 90% were farmers. They reported using their savings to fund things like fodder, medicines, livestock improvement, climate-smart technologies, relocation to seasonal grazing grounds, and camp improvements.

These were “things that speak to the core of climate impacts on farming”.

Lifeline

Engelbrecht told how during Covid-19, group savings provided a safety net. Similarly, with climate change, the groups could spur action and build community resilience.

“So for us, savings groups are a first line of intervention, also to position rural women and youth to secure livelihood pathways and make adaptations.”

Zak Essa is a development analyst. (Photo: Supplied)

Essa recognised the useful role of savings groups in helping people during crises, sparing them from having to sell off productive assets, take on debt, remove children from school, or eat less.

“They're also an important part of solidarity and social cohesion.”

But he felt solutions were needed to tackle underlying social and economic ills.

The PhD candidate, who is researching the intersection of climate change, adaptation, and poverty alleviation, said: “In the long term savings groups need to form part of a broader set of transformative interventions that address the root causes of vulnerability.”

He wondered where development interventions aimed at reducing poverty and inequality ended, and where climate action started.

“Where do they overlap, and where are they the same?”

Ravages of floods

He spoke about the April 2022 floods that ravaged coastal KwaZulu-Natal, claiming more than 400 lives and leaving thousands homeless, especially the poor.

In the greater Durban area, it was a tale of two cities. Essa reminded the webinar of how homes in more wealthy areas were generally better able to withstand the floods. And how owners were able to evacuate or at least rebuild their homes and continue with their lives after the floodwaters had abated.

By contrast, in places like the shacklands of Quarry Road, on the very banks of the Palmiet River, residents fled to higher ground after a late-night warning, some with just the shirts on their backs.

Many awoke the following morning to find the river, normally a modest stream, had carried away all they owned.

“They live in unsafe and flood-prone areas, and already face so many social and economic hazards, and their living conditions are unacceptable even in the absence of climatic events.

“And so fundamentally, it seems that we know that climate change on its own is not what makes people vulnerable. It’s closely linked and stems partly from poverty and inequality.”

Essa called for a “deeper dive” into what made people vulnerable and the interventions needed. He said we were presented with a chance to transform our society; not merely to adapt to climate change so people could continue living in poverty.

He quoted the late Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu: “There comes a point where we need to stop pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream to figure out why they’re falling in in the first place.”

Roots of vulnerability

Development and climate change researcher Darlington Sibanda says on-the-ground experience is vital in understanding the impacts of climate change. (Photo: Supplied)

Sibanda, who is based at the University of Cape Town’s African Climate and Development Initiative, shares some of Essa’s preoccupations.

He said his work drew on research into 32 projects in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa, and that it explored how action to address climate change might at the same time tackle poverty and inequality and bring us closer to achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Online, one-to-two-hour interviews with people from the projects were used to learn lessons.

Guiding principles

The researchers wanted to know how projects were distributed, who benefited and how, and whether the projects accounted for local history, practices, and priorities. They also sought to discover what practices and principles were guiding the projects.

So what emerged?

“Number one… we should agree on a set of principles and a lens, which are related to equity, to guide projects to ensure fairness and transparency,” said Sibanda.

Another lesson was the importance of involving local non-governmental and community-based organisations and experts in projects from the outset. On-the-ground experience was critical, too. And social, relational, and cultural considerations must be given as much attention as technical considerations. This included gender and minority group rights and women and community empowerment.

The power of savings

The need for savings groups and access to credit, particularly for women, was viewed as important by respondents.

Quoting one, Sibanda said: “The introduction of village savings and loans associations proved to be a very effective tool for poverty reduction and women’s empowerment.”

Another respondent told how such schemes reduced the migration of people during long dry seasons.

Youth inclusion

Like Sibanda, Mafogo noted the importance of including young people in climate adaptation planning.

She outlined Kruger to Canyon’s experience with using financial instruments, including savings groups, market access, and mentorship, to build the resilience of communities to climate change.

The organisation has 13 functioning savings groups at a demonstration site, Phiring village, in the biosphere, with nearly 250 participants. Members of the savings groups have access to capital through a revolving loan.

“So the whole system is based on paying it back so that somebody else can have access to it, which is a great way to build when you look at microfinancing,” said Mafogo.

She said this gave communities access to funds, be it for livestock or crop farming, that would be out of the reach were they to apply to most formal institutions.

Building resilience

Using SaveAct methodology, Kruger to Canyon trained and mentored farmers and small enterprise owners who were members of its savings groups.

Mafogo said they continued to monitor the financial health of the savings groups and shared with the webinar graphs that showed “people are embracing the methodology… understanding it, and more and more people get to be part of the savings groups.”

Success stories included Lucy Mohlolo, who received R18,000 for a sewing machine.

Thanks to this and the sales it brought, Mohlolo has been able to take on two young helpers. She also bought her premises after renting it for four years and repaid the loan, with the money being made available to others in the group.

Force for the good

Mafogo also mentioned a women’s cooperative that received a R70,000 loan for a brick-making machine, and four farmers (including two women) who together borrowed a R120,000 tractor.

She said Kruger to Canyon’s savings groups had proved to be a force for good when it came to gender rights.

“We are actually very proud to say that our savings groups have been a great remedy for some of these social ills that arise in our communities. And I think we can safely say that savings groups have definitely become a buffer or contributed to building resilience in our people at grassroots levels.” DM

This story was produced with the assistance of Jive Media Africa, science communication partner to the Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation (OGRC).

Kemunto Ogutu is a Kenya-based freelance writer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REeWvTRUpMk

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