Urbanization and scarce income-earning opportunities have led to increasing commercialization of non-timber forest products in southern Africa, including the nutritious mopane worm Imbrasia (=Gonimbrasia) belina. The mopane worm contributes substantially to incomes and food security in households across the region, but little research has addressed its use within South Africa. Using semi-structured interviews with harvesters and resource managers, this paper compares the management of mopane worm resources under public, private, and communal governance systems to explore the ability of each to provide users with sustainable access to the resource. Results show that governance is weaker in the communal property regime compared to the public and private property regimes. Weak control over access and high demand for mopane worms in urban and rural centres may be leading to a concentration of harvesting pressures in communally managed areas, increasing competition for a resource already scarce after years of drought and land-use change.

UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB) is implemented through a world network of biosphere reserves, which offer a holistic people-centered landscape-level conservation approach. When successfully implemented the program enhances social–ecological system sustainability and resilience. However, there remains a research gap in understanding and collating lessons from individual sites for the benefit of the program globally. We assess MAB implementation in South Africa’s oldest biosphere reserve, the Kogelberg Biosphere Reserve (KBR; est. 1998). Using semi-structured in-depth interviews with directors and the coordinator, complemented by document analysis, we explore the governance and implementation learnings of the KBR as it has evolved. The KBR program implementation is guided by global necessity, but driven by the local context, which for the KBR translates to a non-profit organization cooperative governance model. The site faces a perceived lack of government financial support and awareness of the ‘biosphere reserve’ concept. Despite these challenges, successes have emerged in the formation of local partnerships to fulfil critical roles in socio-economic development and biodiversity conservation. The learnings from KBR, as it strives to become a model site for sustainability, are useful for other sites similarly operationalizing an international designation for local conditions.

Customary governance systems constitute the main regulating system for access and harvesting mopane worms across rural communities in South Africa. Nonetheless these institutions remain at risk of erosion and fragmentation. The growing demand for and interest in entomophagy as a viable option for alternative protein. In South Africa where entomophagy is intertwined with cultures and customary traditions, the mainstreaming efforts are gaining traction in policy and the food industry, aimed at stimulating novel markets and generating income for rural communities. These seeks formalisation, scaling, and marketing of edible insects. Given that the edible insects are mainly harvested in rural communal areas, where customary governance systems are prominent, pertinent questions arise regarding the likely governance implications. The study is grounded in common pool resource theory and interactive governance theory to analyse mopane worm customary governance and institutional arrangements that regulate access and use in Limpopo Province, South Africa. Qualitative data were collected through 24 interviews with traditional leaders, harvesters, project managers, and a ward councillor across Ka-Homu and Ga-Selwane villages and analysed thematically to identify governance arrangements. The findings reveal that customary governance institutions over mopane worms are shaped and co-produced through long-standing legal pluralism relationships of responsible resource stewardship that co-exist with statutory governance systems. Our findings further show the existence of well-defined access rules, harvesting norms, graduated sanctions and multi-actor enforcement mechanisms that are consistent with Ostrom CPR design principles. With the mooted formalisation proposed in South Africa, these findings suggest that this legal pluralism if ignored, has potential to become tension point in the edible insect sector. Thus, formalisation pathways of the edible insect economy must recognise and integrate existing customary governance institutions as legitimate co-governance actors, and failure to do so may risk eroding the institutional arrangements that presently regulate resource overuse and sustain rural livelihoods.

Reconciling community development and biodiversity conservation is essential for fostering mutually beneficial relationships between land reform beneficiary communities and protected areas in rural South Africa. Following apartheid, some communities that successfully reclaimed their ancestral land entered into co-management agreements with conservation authorities to retain these areas as protected landscapes. While land restitution has restored ownership rights and created livelihood opportunities through conservation and ecotourism, persistent concerns remain regarding power relations, benefit distribution, and meaningful participation in decision-making. Using the Double Drift Nature Reserve (DDNR), a 23,500-ha protected area within the Great Fish River Nature Reserve, as a case study, this research evaluates the effectiveness of comanagement and benefit-sharing arrangements between the Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Agency (ECPTA) and the Likhayalethu Communal Property Association (LCPA). Data were collected through 23 semi-structured interviews with current and former LCPA executive members, land claimants, and community members from Gxwederha, Kwa Jani, Glenmore, Qamnyana, Khayamnandi, Alice, and King William's Town. The findings indicate that the land restitution process has successfully restored land ownership to claimant communities. However, despite formal co-management arrangements, perceived inequities in power, influence, and decision-making continue to undermine the effectiveness and legitimacy of shared governance. These inequities appear to stem from a mismatch between community expectations and ECPTA institutional policies, resulting in unequal access to conservation-related benefits. The study highlights the gap between the formal objectives of co-management and their practical implementation, demonstrating that equitable governance and meaningful community participation are essential for achieving both conservation and rural development outcomes.

South Africa's 2024 general election ended thirty years of outright African National Congress (ANC) rule and produced the country's first coalition government, amid intensifying environmental pressures including climate change, chronic water insecurity, biodiversity loss, unresolved electricity crisis and a contested Just Energy Transition (JET). Against this background, the paper reports on a qualitative document analysis of how far the country's leading parties engaged environmental issues in their campaign manifestos. This review takes a structured, search and coding of the 2024 manifestos of the ANC, Democratic Alliance (DA), Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP). Findings show EFF's manifesto outlining the most extensive dedicated environmental content and commitments spanning climate, biodiversity, pollution, and mining rehabilitation. This sits against a single unelaborated net-zero mention from the DA and diffuse just-transition language embedded within the ANC's economic transformation priority. The MKP offers no dedicated environmental content and instead proposes reversing existing renewable energy and coal transition measures. Across all four parties, water and energy are framed predominantly as infrastructure and service delivery crises rather than ecological concerns. The EFF stands with clear environmental targets, committing to coal use and proposing a constitutional amendment naming the state as the custodian of natural resources, a clause with no precedent in three other manifestos. The implications of this review for environmental governance are that environmental issues survive in manifestos chiefly through translation into infrastructure, sovereignty and rarely as ecological claims. These have implications for extend and practicality of environmental governance and accountability between elections.

Native to South Africa, honeybush ( Cyclopia spp. ) has gained international commercial significance over the past decades. South Africa recognises indigenous groups' traditional knowledge of honeybush, and these groups are now striving to draw benefits from its commercialisation. Through a case study of a group of Khoikhoi honeybush harvesters in the Western Cape province of South Africa, and operationalising Ribot and Peluso's theory of access, we analyse the mechanisms shaping indigenous groups' ability to benefit from honeybush commercialisation. Compared to other actors along the value chain, the indigenous harvesters only experience limited benefits from the commercialisation of honeybush. Lack of access to technology and capital are found to be key limitations. In addition, ambiguities resulting from legal pluralism, current tensions between the local traditional authority and democratic institutions, as well as within the traditional authority, generate unclear governance arrangements, further hindering local participation in the commercial use of the resource. Analysing the findings in the context of South Africa's history of racial oppression, the study sheds light on continuities in the unequal access to and distribution of resources in post-apartheid South Africa.