Benefits of Urban Greening
Harnessing the Power of Plants
It is shaped according to a substantial body of research on natural environment interventions to evaluate the effects of nature on health from an experimental approach. The interventions consisted of active engagement in the natural environment (e.g., walking, running, or other activities), passive engagement (e.g., resting outside or living with a view), or virtual exposure (e.g., watching videos or images of nature).
The majority of experimental studies assessed mental health and neurologic outcomes. Results from the experimental studies suggested a protective effect of exposure to natural environments on mental health outcomes and cognitive function. Thus, reducing stress, anxiety and depression, improves cognitive function, brain activity, blood pressure and immune functions of the body.*
As part of service delivery to the residents of the City of Tshwane, The Department of Environment and Agriculture Management, has the mandate to develop and maintain parks and open spaces with the result of creating a city that’s beautiful and functional, and provides it residents all of the above-mentioned benefits to their health through plants and nature in a safe and maintained environment.
Delivering Multiple Benefits
The Adopt a Spot programme allows the adoptees of a specific park, open space or ecosystem to plan and plant trees, shrubs or groundcover and annual seedlings through guidance from the Landscape architect’s office in order to keep the plant upgrades indigenous to the vegetation of the region, thus contributing to the plant biodiversity.
The Adopt a Spot programme is a policy compiled by the Department of Environment and Agriculture at the request of the Executive and became a policy of the City of Tshwane after the approval by Council Resolution on the 28 of January 2021.
This Draft policy was approved by all various departments:
- The Chief Financial Officer,
- The Chief of Police,
- Group Legal and secretariat Services,
- City strategy and Organisational Performance,
- Customer Relations Management,
- Human Settlement,
- Regional Operations and Coordination,
- Roads and Transport,
- Utility Services.
As stated in the approved council resolution on Adopt a Spot in the conclusion remarks: ” Through the partnership with business and members of the public, the city will achieve its constitutional obligation of ensuring that the environment is protected, and municipal properties are safe and accessible by all residents and visitors of the city”.
The initial draft of Adopt a Spot was created in October 2018 and followed by the Policy Development Committee in December 2018, followed by council approval for public participation in January 2019. The final approved policy was approved 28 January 2021 and is up for review again in February 2025.
The City’s Bold and Innovative Vision
The vision of the Adopt a Spot programme is found in the Vision of the City of Tshwane ‘A prosperous capital city through fairness, freedom and opportunity’. In addition to the vision, the Integrated Development Plan of the City of Tshwane identifies five strategic pillars that support the vision of the city, one of which is more relevant to this programme – A City that delivers excellent services and protects the environment. This policy on the Adopt a Spot programme aims to maintain and enhance the ecological functionality of open spaces in the city.
The group Head of Utility Services said, ” The initiative of managing and controlling public open spaces will surely benefit the municipality in ensuring that unwanted elements of illegal dumping and illegal land use are mitigated including the reduction of criminal activities. This initiative exhibits signs of broad-mindedness and creativity and has extremely positive intentions.”
Public consultations in April 2020 revealed environmental management as the fourth largest key issue raised by the communities at 7,65% of all comments. The need that Adopt a Spot addresses is just this to create clean and safe public open spaces in the form of parks.
The bold and innovative nature of the Adopt a Spot programme strives to achieve the vision of the city as mentioned above with no extra financial implications as each project to be implemented will be fully funded by the applicant. In turn, the application has the privilege to erect signage that promotes their community, business or non-for-profit organisations.
Partnerships and Collaboration
The uniqueness and much needed timing of the Adopt a Spot concept, and now policy, is bringing about a community phenomenon that in some ways we could have wished for years ago to work more closely with the citizens of the city of Tshwane. Seeing community business taking ownership of certain projects within the city is really encouraging. But also, where Adopt a Spot is abandoned in terms of facilitating from the city side the opposite is true. Communities are left disappointed and frustrated. But not forgetting the reasons that brought the city to this point. We would like to have the best of both worlds now, a well operational section working with our citizens through the Adopt a Spot programme.
The adoption of Springbok Park: The company: Abcon Group Foundation, AGF.
The Abcon group employs, managers, engineers, builders, quantity surveyors, accountants, general labourers, admin officers, architects planning professionals and landscape personal etc.
Abcon employs staff from different sectors of business to join efforts, starting with the transformative work of restoring the park back to an acceptable standard, functionally and aesthetically, and safe for all to benefit from. These gains will allow the City to continue maintaining this historical park to its former glory!
*Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 May; 18(9): 4790.
Published online 2021 Apr 30. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18094790
Addressing Urban Challenges
The Issue
The Adopt a Spot programme seeks to address the deep-seated issues that are negatively affecting the natural environment and open spaces within the jurisdiction of the City of Tshwane causing rapid ecological degradation.
Lack of funding and capacity in the Parks, Recreation and Crematorium section is the root cause and the fruits are the following: Open Vacancies of critical human skills both managerial and supervisory technical positions in the section remain unfilled. Without the warm bodies in the vacancies, a certain percentage of the value chain of services delivery diminishes. Underfunding and lack of fleet vehicles leads to unpoliced parks, road reserves and open spaces which leads to illegal dumping of waste of all kinds, illegal land use, criminal activity and the lack of safety in public open spaces. It also leads to illegal actions against street trees that are left uninvestigated, not recorded and without fines issued for criminal activitiy against the environment.
Due to the above-mentioned problem, certain items/staff/equipment vehicles must be procured through the procurement system. There are delays and shortfalls for procuring essential equipment such as chainsaws, chainsaw operators and chainsaw blades, Personal Protective Equipment, pole pruners and operators, lawn mowers and weed eaters plus operators, ladders, cherry pickers and transport vehicles, tractors, lawnmowers and drivers.
The Impact of the Issue
Due to a lack of funding and capacity in the Parks, Recreation and Crematorium section, the City of Tshwane faces abandoned and unmaintained parks, road reserves and road islands and open spaces, unsightly parks with dilapidated facilities and fencing, playground equipment that’s rusted with exposed sharp metal objects. Fallen trees partially removed and pathways covered in weeds. Water features with smelly rotten still water, lawns partially mowed because of debris dumped causing obstructions to ride on lawn mowers and weed eaters.
Homelessness and drug addiction, and people living on road reserves or parks and open space are causing a humanitarian problem. In search of water these people break irrigation systems to access water, sleep in the park ablution facilities, make open fires to keep warm and cook using any burnable material sourced in the vicinity. This ecological degradation and possible criminal activity makes the area aesthetically undesirable and unfunctional, and prevents the space from being used by residents who fear for their safety and would rather travel to other parks that are horticulturally maintained and adopted by a majority of citizens who love their parks and through this behaviour prevent degradation of the facility.
A Nature Oriented Future
The Adopt-a-Spot Programme encourages the public to take care of the environment by removing illegal dumping, cutting grass, removing alien vegetation, and performing overall management and maintenance activities relating to parks and other public open spaces. Allowing members of the public to make use of, maintain and manage these public open spaces will help to develop aesthetically pleasing and healthy and safe public landscapes, open spaces and recreational parks that will ultimately benefit all members of the community. The result is city that’s beautiful and functional, and provides it residents with benefits to their health through plants and nature in a safe and maintained environment.
Nature Positive Solutions
Implementation
The programme is implemented with a starting point of an application form. In this application form, more information is gathered to determine if the space, first of all, belongs to the City of Tshwane. After reviewing the application, the park or road reserve or section of a river ecosystem or an open space will be awarded to the relevant applicant. According to the rules of the programme, the property still belongs to the city and this application does not alienate the property from the city. Also, no income may be generated from the property under the care of the applicant and no business may be operated from the site. The city has no obligation to assist the applicant with resources.
To date, 51 projects have been kickstarted through the Adopt a Spot programme since the 28 of January 2021. Every programme looks different in size and what need to be done on that property. The city already benefits from this initiative through the landscaping of road islands, parks and the collecting and cleaning of waste in rivers and streams within the city’s ecosystems. Water features are being fixed, dust bins painted, and replacement trees, shrubs and groundcovers are planted and maintained.
Feasibility
Because the City will not disburse any funds and no payments will be made to the applicants for maintenance work or upgrades done on the public open spaces. There will be no cost implications for the city.
The objectives of the programme are to encourage the public to take care of the environment by removing illegal dumping, cutting grass, removing alien vegetation and performing overall management and maintenance activities relating to parks and other public open spaces. To guide a programme to overcome the challenges of ecological degradation, illegal land use, illegal dumping, criminal activities and the lack of safety in public open spaces, And, facilitate partnerships with active citizenry in enhancing the aesthetics and ecological functionality of Tshwane’s public open spaces. The programme is not intended to replace the Alienation Policy of the City for leasing property. The programme is focused on underdeveloped, undeveloped or semi-developed municipal properties zoned as public open spaces. Only sites that are under the control and management or owned by the City of Tshwane as municipal properties and which in the opinion of the City are capable of being maintained through private funding will be considered for adoption. These include but are not limited to the following:
- Illegal dumping sites zoned as public open spaces
- Recreational parks and facilities
- Rivers, wetlands, flood plains, ridges and mountains
- Any dilapidated area zoned as public open space
- Unused Road reserves and servitudes
- Such other properties that the City may identify from time to time.
Multi-Stakeholder Support
Every new Adopt a Spot programme application is unique and will dramatically differ from each other because no property looks the same and no challenge looks the same.
The city approved 51 applications from 51 different communities, stakeholders, organisations and businesses.
As the programme gains momentum the stakeholders will grow with it. To use Springbok Park as an example; People from all walks of life joined hands to start upgrading the park. Some are doctors, builders, sales agents, real-estate agents, accountants, directors, general workers and drivers.
Some are very active in the programmes with hands on experience while others are more passively involved behind the scenes to coordinate or facilitate the planning of the community work schedule, the collecting of tools and the day-to-day planning and feedback of each project.
Others have a real interest in the upkeep of what has already been done up to date, etc.
Management and Maintenance
The concept of Adopt a Spot was initially intended to upgrade a certain property or space immediately and it will be left to the city to continue its services delivery mandate. But later on, it was decided to give the applicant the opportunity to adopt the spot for 30 months/two and a half years to upgrade, plant plants, water and horticultural maintenance to the area and keep it clear of illegal dumping, illegal activities etc.
The design goes even further by allowing the applicant to extend the programme again under the same terms and conditions for another full period as agreed.
This will allow the applicant to have the time to do the necessary upgrades and have the pleasure of the benefits to the neighbourhood or business, and the economic benefit to the community of clean and safe good-looking surroundings that give a positive feel and energy and where community will spend time and money.
Some of the barriers to the initial startup of the programme during the public participation session was the idea that the public wanted to mainly Adopt a Spot in order to use the municipality’s property to their own advantage to start a business or make money from the space.
This was then countered by a policy change in order to discourage the idea by adding to the policy that no applicant or other persons may use the agreement in order to make a profit or generate any kind of income from the property.
Measuring and Reporting Impact
Monitoring Results
Protocols for monitoring results are extremely important as this will determine if the area or project will achieve the desired results. The rules are as such: Any planting of trees, shrubs and groundcovers should be displayed in a landscape design. This Design is then studied to make sure that there are no contradictions in plant species selection that will be potentially invasive to a sensitive eco-system or trees that are planted too close to the main streets and could damage road curbing or other underground services rendered by the City of Tshwane such as fibre cables, water pipes or stormwater drainage pipes etc. If the applicants, agree to adhere to these guidelines then the programme continues.
Other examples of monitoring are that the use of herbicides and pesticides must be done in accordance with health and safety standards both for the protection of human life and nature.
Any building must be in compliance with national building regulations, any irrigation be installed according to waterwise practices, and the mowing of lawn or veld grass and pruning and cutting of trees must be done according to horticultural methods.
Demonstrating Progress
Progress on different Adopt a Spot programmes is mainly measured through site inspections and communication between the Adopt a Spot office and the applicant, individuals or groups.
Because the programme does not cost the City of Tshwane any money and is solely driven by the involvement of its residents, the city does not rely on funding to start new greening programmes, but through the outcome of each new project, the city attracts more interest from other possible areas that needs serious transformation. So, the programme is a win-win for both the residents and the municipality.
Measuring Impact
The Adopt a Spot programme initiated a municipal first where the public can be involved in a multi-project partnership with the city at different times and with various results. According to the agreement, the end result must be better than what the area looked like in the start. This sounds logical to follow such an understanding. The measuring of work done will be discussed beforehand, in the application stage. In other words, the quantitative measurement will relate to the amount of waste that was gathered, loaded and shipped off to the recycling and waste dumping sites of the City of Tshwane.
After the initial clean up, mowing of grass, removal of invasive plants and pruning of trees and shrubs, and the placement of benches (Restoration of old benches), planting of groundcovers and regular watering follows.
The area is now clean and organised and only by this time it will become a qualitative measurement in terms of narrative and storytelling. Now they are noteworthy and the passerby will tell how good the area looks compared to what it used to look like. So, the initiative is achieved.
The City of Tshwane has now achieved through the programme what it wanted to achieve – change, beautification, safeguarding and upliftment.
Learning and Transferability
Adaption and Enhancement
The first amendment to the programme came about when it became obvious that 11 months to work Adopt a Spot was too short and after such a short time, the agreement between the city and the applicant had to be renewed through a new application to adopt the same spot. This deterred possible applicants from participating with the council and was also a huge administrative burden on the Adopt a Spot office personnel. The design was then adapted, and now the agreement laps from 11 months up to two years and 11 months.
The second amendment came about when the initial wording which read “The Partnership will allow for members of the public to make use of,” unfortunately gave the impression that the applicant can adopt a piece of land close to the road, as an example, and there start a franchise that renders services to the community in turn for monetary exchange. This in itself infringes certain bylaws of the city. This amendment was amended and highlighted that no business may be done on any Adopt a Spot programme properties of the City of Tshwane.
Potential for Replication
The types of change to the programme are the following: The restoration of existing infrastructure such as the painting of a gazebo, dustbins, benches or gates, etc. may be done to existing infrastructure only. If upgrading a landscape design includes new pathways or newly added brick flower beds or new irrigation systems, then the programme doesn’t make provision for such newly added infrastructure or improvements.
Further protective measures were put in place against unlawful and uncontrolled building practices that could end up in legal twists over unlawful conduct by the applicants.
These shortcomings led to the development of a new system that will include upgrading of infrastructure and the greening of the environment. Applicants will choose their programme to include cleaning and greening or cleaning, greening and building. This change is not yet approved by the council and is in draft phase.
Inspiring Other Cities
As far as we know other cities have not been exposed to the real benefits of the Adopt a Spot programme within the City of Tshwane. The visual impact is not clearly seen because of the vast square kilometres that the City of Tshwane jurisdiction consists of which is almost 4,000 km2.
The policy has created a lot of interest from the other municipalities as a concept and The City of Tshwane shares information with regards to Adopt a Spot.
Resilience
Reducing Negative Impacts and Ensuring Sustainability
Guidance and monitoring efforts from the Adopt a Spot programmes office include the following: Analysing the project plan that was presented by the applicant to determine the nature and scope of the work proposed. Through this exercise it is then processed, and comments are made in terms of certain practices that should be avoided at all costs during the project lifetime. For example, the waste collected from the property (plastics, veld grass, materials that are flammable) should be separated and dealt with according to recycling practices of recyclables and there should be no burning of such to get rid of the rubble. Also, no burning of grass or tree branches or invasive plants that were removed. This should instead shipped off to green waste facilities to be processed through horticultural machines which give second life to the green waste, turning it into garden or landscaping mulch, potting soil and compost.
Environmental Considerations
The anticipated impacts of the initiative:
- Reduction of illegal dumping of all sorts due to the fact that the public now has a direct say in the area or property that was adopted. Reduction in wasting or dumping of recyclable materials of waste, and reduction of landfill pollution through better recycling.
- Reduction in air pollution due to less illegal burning of rubble in open fields, and cleaner air due to less burning of wastes materials and removal of rotten materials to greening facilities and recycling facilities.
- Reduction of water pollution through cleaner water resources, cleaner riverbeds and ecosystems.
- Reduction in the loitering of people in parks and open spaces that could cause possible crime in the area or suburbs, and therefore the reduction of illegal activities in areas or parks or open spaces.
- Less stress on animals and fauna and flora due to cleaner spaces with less unwanted activities.
- Reduction in the overall degradation of city owned property an overall decrease in hopelessness that a dirty and degraded environment can expose residents to.
Use of Natural Resources
The main focus of the Adopt a Spot programme is to prevent illegal activities on sites zoned as public open spaces, rivers, wetlands, flood plains, ridges and mountains, any dilapidated area zoned as a public open space and unused road reserves and servitudes.
Thus, ensuring that the natural resources within the jurisdiction of the City of Tshwane are adopted, cleaned, and monitored to stay clean. Such natural resources include springs or water systems, eco systems in wetlands and rivers, and natural areas with unique fauna and flora.
Reduction in illegal dumping of oil for example will save the soil from tremendous pollution that could take years to clean up naturally.
Reduction in air pollution, water pollution, ground pollution has extreme benefits to every aspect of the environment and global weather changes.
Adopt a Spot speaks to all of the issues.
