Partnering Institute: Centre for Biological Control, Department of Zoology and Entomology, Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网
Project lead: , SARChI Chair
About the project: The work that the CBC will concentrate on for this project will fit into two of the research clusters: Clean water supply and provisioning (SDG 6 and 9) and Ecological infrastructure: Restoration, management and governance (SDG 14 and 15)
Water demand for agriculture and industrial consumption continues to grow, while threats such as climate change and ecosystem degradation impact on availability of freshwater. This highlights the importance of sustainable water resources management at local and global scales. Controlling factors such as the presence of Invasive Alien Plants (IAPs), that may reduce water quality, quantity or productivity must therefore form part of broader water management programmes for effective sustainable management (Arp et al., 2017). IAPs have been identified as one of the five of
the most significant threats to the provision of ecosystem goods and services, including freshwater resources (MEA, 2005), with SA affected severely, costing approximately R580 million in water provisioning services (ibid). Biological control has emerged as one of the scientific frontiers for controlling IAPs in water systems as well as in other habitats. Biodiversity loss can be caused by IAPs so biological control can assist in lowering loss of important species.
In 2017, the Department of Zoology and Entomology launched the Centre for Biological Control (CBC) at RU, creating a huge opportunity for expanding scientific knowledge in this area. The focus of the CBC is the long-term, sustainable control of IAP species and crop pests through the introduction of biological control technologies, and it focusses on the entire value chain of biological control from fundamental research through to engaged research and student development.
The CBC emphasizes knowledge sharing via community engagement programmes. The main aim in joining this CoP is to strengthen knowledge sharing and use of biological control in SA. We will use this opportunity to review the social learning impact of our programmes to inform development of learning materials (e.g. course handbooks, video materials) in our key engagement programmes, notably waterweeds community mass-rearing project; the Prosopis project, and the Short Course in Biological Control of Weeds. The research will contribute to themes: Clean water supply and provisioning: Water quality monitoring, bio-technology and biological control (SDG6&9), as well as Ecological infrastructure: Restoration, management and governance (SDG 14 &15).
Building on a long track record of biological control research in South Africa and at Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网, the CBC receives annual funding from DEFF’s NRM programme to conduct research towards the biological control of several species of IAPs in South Africa with a consortium of universities and inputs from the Agricultural Research Council. The CBC at Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 leads this consortium involving UCT, Wits, UKZN and the ARC, increasing capacity for biological control in South Africa via consolidating research and implementation efforts. The work targets 54 weed species, using nearly 80 species of biological control agents, including waterweeds, cacti, woody invaders (e.g. Australian Acacia species) and some invasive species from the higher elevation areas of the country. The research offers important scientific and policy findings for water management, food security and ecosystem restoration in South Africa. Recent findings by Arp et al. (2017) show that water hyacinth control in the Vaalharts can lead to an annual benefit of between R54 million and R1.18 billion in agricultural water provisioning, indicating the need for IAP control policy to prioritise those invaded systems that support important economic activity, such as agriculture, mining and industry (Arp et al., 2019).
While such scientific understanding is crucial for policy making, there is also need to strengthen education, training and skills development system to increase uptake of this knowledge, as well as civil society participation in biological control where this is safe and possible, and to develop strategies for bringing the next generation of scientists into this important field of study. To this end, the CBC has launched a number of community engaged social learning activities, which support this objective of the CBC. It is these citizen and youth engagement programmes that will be in focus in this CoP research partnership. We envisage the involvement of the CBC in the proposed CoP in the development of learning programmes and resources to expand knowledge uptake and use in support of members of the general public or ‘citizen scientists’ who would like to further their knowledge about biological control. The CBC has already developed a number of strong programmes for involving citizens, farmers, teachers and schools to develop and strengthen knowledge and uptake of biological control techniques and approaches.
The waterweed community mass-rearing programme is an initiative that is strengthening transformative social learning and sustainable development actions amongst school learners and concerned citizens. This programme works with high schools and interest groups to promote awareness of the threats posed by water hyacinth to water security of South Africa’s rivers. Additionally, it aims to provide hands on experience dealing with a plant-insect interaction, which can be incorporated into the school curriculum. This is achieved by working with and supporting a high school or interest group to set up pools to mass-rear insects for the control of water hyacinth. The first mass-rearing school facility was established at Warrenvale Ho?rskool in Warrenton, Northern Cape, in 2010, and the most recent mass-rearing programme has established more than 11 facilities to engage learners and citizens in addressing the infestation of water hyacinth around the country. This way people are encouraged to use their own agency to do something about the problem. The mass-rearing model is being shared internationally too, with the first programme recently established in Argentina with support from CBC staff members. Evidence in the existing mass-rearing facility projects in schools, show that they can be used to teach a number of different skills, for example, life sciences knowledge and scientific investigation skills, numeracy, and written and oral communication. There is also a need to develop additional support materials and tools for this programme (e.g. video materials) and to strengthen uptake of this programme into teacher education programmes.
The CoPs research focus will assist the team working in the CBC community engagement programme to articulate the value created for citizens, learners and teachers and through this provide insight into the way in which hands-on experiential learning can provide for transformative learning in the science learning pathways. It can also enrich national understanding of strong models of citizen science and engagement which move beyond data generating, to models that can support wider social learning and transdisciplinary sustainable development actions (Vallabh, et al., 2017). Two other programmes that will also be included in the social learning research of the CoP are the Prosopis control and the short course in Biological Control of Weeds, which has to date been completed by 311 participants since launch in 2005. Of interest will be to identify the success factors in the short course curriculum, to inform development of a course handbook. This will link well to similar research in the SARChI Chair in Global Change and Social Learning Systems, who would partner with the CBC to develop policy outcomes (influencing education and training system policy on experiential learning for the life sciences), practice outcomes (course and learning materials), and science outcomes (knowledge of experiential and transformative social learning approaches for citizen engagement).
Distinguished Professor Hill is SARChI Chair and Director of the Centre for Biological Control at Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网. He will contribute to, and oversee research into the very successful community engagement programmes of the CBC, which will be under investigation in this CoP for their potential to be expanded and scaled more widely into other education settings by involving the teacher education sector, by developing learning materials (e.g. a course handbook), and by producing educational videos. Additionally he will provide advice on how knowledge of biological control can be spread wider into the public sphere for developing citizen sciences. His contribution will be to themes on clean water, and ecological infrastructure restoration and management.
The Centre for Biological Control (CBC) focuses the majority of their research on understanding the ecological dynamics of invasive pests, aquatic and terrestrial weeds in particular. A large proportion of this work is the development of biological control methods for these invasive plants, which can then be implemented by owners and managers. Biological control is a particularly appealing solution because it is not toxic, pathogenic or dangerous to humans. It also has the advantage of being self- perpetuating once established and does not harm non-target organisms found in the environment. There are a number of Research Programmes within the CBC which focus on various groups of target plant species, and different aspects of biological control.
Last Modified: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 16:25:11 SAST