The City of Cape Town has asked communities to weigh in on the draft Urban Forest Policy which “seeks to take into account the changing social, legislative and environmental context of the city, and can be adopted across City, public and private land”.
With the public participation process having opened on Friday 1 April, the City stated that the policy aims to replace the current Tree Management Policy which has been in place since 2015.
Mayco member for community services and health Patricia van der Ross says rapid urbanisation necessitates finding a balance between sustainable development, protection of the environment and creating quality living and working environments.
“We recognised that the existing policy doesn’t adequately cover all of these considerations, and that is why we are now calling on the public to give their inputs on the proposed amendments, which we believe offer a more holistic approach to tree management, but also our efforts to have Cape Town classified as an urban forest,” says Van der Ross.
To qualify as an urban forest, a 10% tree canopy cover is required.
TreeKeepers, a citizens’ organisation that works to conserve trees in the urban forest, agrees that the existing policy does not place a high enough priority on the importance of trees in the city as mitigators of climate change or their value in terms of ecological functions.
Clare Burgess, the chair of TreeKeepers, explains the current process for city-wide urban development often requires the retention of significant trees within a site and the replanting of new trees to compensate for those lost when building.
“However, the system does not follow through with these requirements by ensuring that developers adhere to their agreements,” says Burgess.
Riaan van Zyl, an arborist and member of TreeKeepers, says a process that affords trees protection during development – that which either finds solutions or mediates compromises when trees need to be removed – is vital.
“Unfortunately, there is no such clear process. This leads to many problems for both developers and the environment. There is also no method to follow up or verify if the arrangements agreed upon were fulfilled. There is no Tree Inventory Management System (Tims) where all these aspects can be recorded and actions linked to a geographic information system (Gis) programme,” says Van Zyl.
The existing policy was applied and utilised predominantly within the operational environment of the recreation and parks department.
The draft policy aims to develop a “transversal” policy that applies to the management of all trees growing in the city, “including City, state and privately owned land, and can be utilised by all City departments and give guidance to the general public and owners of state land”.
In the case of City departments, the draft policy states that, although it is accepted that recreation and parks is the lead department responsible for tree management, going forward the respective land “owner” departments in the City will be expected to manage the trees within their areas of responsibility in accordance with this policy.
Burgess claims that some government and City departments are more destructive of the existing urban forest than private developers.
“TreeKeepers has interacted regularly with schools (“Tree felling raises questions among residents”, People’s Post, 6 April 2021) who operate as custodians of land, but do not value their trees enough to take proper care of them,” she says.
In addition, the draft policy aims to widen its scope “by addressing the roles and responsibilities of private landowners, providing guidance in relation to tree management, as well as providing decision-making criteria to ensure informed decision-making, transversally, by all City departments”.
Burgess says TreeKeepers strongly supports this move.
“We have had first-hand experience of trying to stop tree root zones and tree canopies being decimated by the service delivery sector, both public (electricity, fibre cabling, underground networks) and private (security companies, tree fellers). If clear guidelines with penalties for not adhering are introduced and implemented by the City under a new set of by-laws, TreeKeepers will be very happy,” she says.
Burgess believes that for the draft policy to operate successfully, there must be buy-in from both the public and private sectors.
“This is where education and economic valuation processes are important,” she says.
As to the draft policy providing guidance in relation to tree management to private landowners, Van Zyl says it will be most difficult to apply this in the private sector.
“There is much to do to find solutions to poor tree care; pruning practices in particular. There is no programme to develop skills and capacity. This is a major cause for concern,” he says.
Burgess says TreeKeepers can’t emphasize enough the need to contract the services of arboricultural professionals when specialist work needs to be done.
“Tree felling and garden clean-ups are a very different service to pruning and shaping of trees or treating them for pests and diseases,” she says.
“We, therefore, support the proposal to utilise the services of registered tree care workers and arboricultural teams.”
Burgess urges the City to include these specific requirements in their procurement process.
“There is potential here for a whole new training and mentoring industry programme and the City must assist in enabling this upskilling process urgently,” she concludes.
The public participation process runs until Saturday 30 April.
The draft policy document is available at https://resource.capetown.gov.za/documentcentre/Documents/Bylaws%20and%20policies/Draft_Urban_Forest_Policy.pdf
