The International Climate Initiative’s (IKI) Small Grants empowers local actors and funding institutions to drive climate and biodiversity solutions; bridging the gap in global funding to reach impactful community-led projects. While invasive plant clearing has received substantial public investment over many years, results have often been short-lived, with cleared areas quickly re-invaded due to a lack of long-term maintenance, viable business models and coordinated action between landowners, enterprises, communities and government.
SouthSouthNorth’s (SSN) Small Grants Programme in the Hessequa Municipality in the Western Cape, South Africa responds to that challenge by shifting the focus from once-off clearing to long-term landscape restoration of the Cape limestsone fynbos ecosystem by supporting locally-led, collaborative approaches to the sustainable removal, maintenance and beneficiation of woody alien invasive plants, as well as active rewilding of Fynbos flora.
What the Programme Aims to Achieve
The IKI Small Grants Programme aims to demonstrate how invasive plant clearing and biodiversity restoration can be sustained beyond donor funding, while delivering real benefits for ecosystems, local livelihoods and climate resilience.
Through an innovative small grants mechanism, the project seeks to build a viable business model for long-term biodiversity restoration, strengthen local enterprises, create value from invasive biomass, and generate evidence to support replication and scaling.
Specifically, the programme seeks to:
- Restore and protect biodiversity by improving the long-term sustainability of ongoing removal, maintenance and beneficiation of woody alien invasive plants, particularly Rooikrans (Acacia cyclops), and enabling the recovery and rewilding of indigenous fynbos vegetation.
- Strengthen local enterprises and livelihoods, with a strong focus on Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs), including women-led enterprises, that operate in clearing, maintenance, restoration and biomass beneficiation.
- Build a viable, long-term business model for biodiversity restoration and biomass beneficiation that makes continued clearing and maintenance affordable for landowners and financially viable for service providers.
- Enable locally led, multi-stakeholder action by connecting landowners, community-based organisations, NGOs, SMMEs, research bodies, public and private sector actors around shared landscape-level goals.
- Generate evidence and learning on what works in sustainable invasive plant management, to inform replication, scaling and policy improvement in South Africa and beyond.
How the Programme Works
The programme is designed around building a coordinated ecosystem of actors working in the same landscape through a grants mechansism.
Key elements of the approach include:
Locally driven collaboration
SSN will work closely with stakeholders already active in the region to co-design solutions that respond to local ecological, social and economic realities. This includes landowners, service providers, SMMEs, community organisations, municipalities, provincial and national government entities, enterprise development partners and research institutions.
Supporting Sustainable Enterprises
SSN will select organisations that can act as local aggregators, and sub-grantees active in biomass beneficiation. These actors are central to creating lasting jobs and ensuring continuity beyond the project lifespan.
A Practical Business Model for Long-term Clearing
The programme will test and refine a business model that combines grant funding with financial co-investment from landowners, and the mobilisation of additional public and private resources. This includes developing realistic costing models for clearing and maintaining invaded land over time, helping to make long-term contracts and sustained management feasible.
Creating Value from Invasive Biomass
To improve the economics of ongoing clearing, the programme will support:
- Innovative approaches to beneficiation of invasive biomass, such as firewood, wood chips, compost, eco-briquettes, biochar or other value-added products.
- Enterprises or initiatives linked to fynbos restoration including plant propagation, beekeeping and nature-based tourism.
Evidence, Learning and Best practice
Through collaboration with stakeholders, the programme will document approaches, results, costs and impacts. These insights will be translated into practical knowledge products and tools that support learning, replication and scaling of effective approaches to invasive plant management and restoration.
Who the programme is looking to work with
The programme is designed to engage a wide range of actors, including:
- Aggregators (entities with strong local relationships and operational experience that can support and coordinate emerging SMMEs delivering clearing, maintenance and restoration services)
- Community-based organisations and NGOs active in environmental management and livelihoods
- Landowners affected by woody invasive species
- Local and regional SMMEs involved in clearing, maintenance, restoration and biomass beneficiation.
- Public sector actors, including municipal and provincial departments
- Enterprise development agencies, financiers and technical partners
- Research and knowledge organisations
Funders:
