CECAN Fellowship: Transboundary aquatic biodiversity management at the water-food-ecosystems nexus: Supporting an in-process governance intervention in the Incomati River Basin, southern Africa
The complexity of the water-food-ecosystems nexus is well recognised, but for river basins that cross multiple countries, managing shared resources is further complicated by the additional dimensions of different laws, languages, and organisations. The Incomati River Basin in southern Africa is one such space, spanning over 46,000 km2 between Eswatini, South Africa, and Mozambique. The basin is home to around 2.4 million people, many of whom are dependent on natural resources for their lives and livelihoods. The region also has large-scale irrigated agriculture (including sugarcane, citrus, and macadamias) and is one of the most important basins sustaining eco-tourism and conservation in the world-famous Kruger National Park. Although there are some functional management entities operating within the basin (for e.g., SANParks, the IUCMA and ARA-Sul), transboundary management of shared water resources has been hindered by the lack of a capacitated watercourse commission at a basin scale (with the Incomati and Maputo Watercourse Commission being in its infancy). A current window of opportunity exists for relevant organisations to come together around the management of aquatic biodiversity (and all the associated ecosystem services enabled and supported by this biodiversity, from drinking water, to farming, fishing, and tourism), which this fellowship would ideally support.
About Jai
Dr Jai Clifford-Holmes is a systems thinker and modeller, facilitator, and project and process manager primarily working in natural resource management in southern Africa. He was appointed as Executive Director of the Association for Water and Rural Development (AWARD) in mid-2023. AWARD is a South African non-profit organisation that has a primary focus on integrated water resources management, sustainable land management, livelihoods, and climate change. Prior to taking over as Executive Director, he spent eight years as an independent consultant working between applied research institutes affiliated with universities, NGOs and consultancies. He has a PhD in Water Resource Science, awarded in 2015 by Rhodes University (in South Africa), with co-supervision and links to Delft University of Technology, in the Netherlands. Jai was a 2011 Mandela Rhodes Scholar, a 2017 Mandela Washington Fellow and was a founding member of the South African System Dynamics chapter (serving on the policy council from 2014 – 2016). Jai holds honorary appointments at two South African universities, in the form of Research Associate positions in the Institute for Water Research (IWR), at Rhodes University, and the Institute for Coastal and Marine Research (CMR), at Nelson Mandela University. Over the last decade, he has gained experience across the natural resource management spectrum, with a consistent focus on applying systemic approaches to policy and practice. This has included collaborative modelling at a catchment scale; leading sustainable land management initiatives that tested innovative restoration models and their institutional uptake; contributing to marine spatial planning at both bay-scale and regional levels, including the development of a strategic framework for the Western Indian Ocean; and collaborating with the IUCN on human-wildlife conflict processes using theory-of-change and mental modelling. These projects were funded by a range of international agencies and donors, including the EU, GEF, USAID, UNEP, UKRI/GCRF, and GWP, among others.
