Developing Sustainable Wildflower Harvesting for Global Supply Chains

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This project aims to develop and promote best practice in sustainable harvesting within the South African wildflower industry - a sector supplying high-value, ethically-sourced bouquets to UK and South African high street retailers and supermarkets - with positive outcomes intended for both environmental and socio-economic aspects of ethical wildflower harvesting. As a Knowledge Exchange project, the work will be conducted in collaboration with the Flower Valley Conservation Trust (FVCT) - a Western Cape NGO at the vanguard of sustainable harvesting. The FVCT has piloted an innovative programme of work, which seeks to achieve conservation goals through the development of market opportunities. The FVCT is located in the Cape Floral Region of the Western Cape of South Africa, which is the smallest and richest of the world's six floral kingdoms. The main vegetation type is known locally as fynbos ('fine leaved bush'), which has been harvested from the wild for many decades because the distinctive appearance of the flowers has proven popular with consumers. Large quantities of fynbos are exported every year from the Western Cape to European markets, with UK high street retailers and supermarket chains being the most significant customers. However, unsustainable harvesting of wildflowers is one of the threats to the biome and the fynbos industry has been loosely organised and weakly regulated. In environmental terms, this has led to excessive pressure being placed upon the resource base, as marketable species have been exploited beyond their capacity to reproduce. Given the UK's commercial influence, stakeholders in this country have a responsibility to co-develop more sustainable harvesting practices. The project sets out to develop the work of the FVCT and to promote the cause of sustainable harvesting in both South Africa and the UK through a set of progressive and applied mechanisms.Opportunities for devising mechanisms for ensuring the integrity of the sustainable harvesting programme and improving stakeholder outcomes will be met through four inter-connected work packages. Work Package 1 develops audit methodologies to enable the effective monitoring of sustainable picking practice and landscape management. Work Package 2 develops training materials and programmes in order to improve the skills, opportunities and socio-economic gains of a culturally-diverse harvesting workforce. Work Package 3 develops a better understanding of how sustainable harvesting in horticulture fits into the wider context of ethical consumerism in South Africa as well as in the UK. Interview-based and focus group methods will trace consumers' ethical values and decision-making in the context of their everyday lives and purchasing practices. This will not only construct useful marketing knowledge for the FCVT and its commercial partner, Fynsa, but will also provide a pilot study of ethical consumption in the global South of interest to transnational corporations, NGOs and labour unions working in this area. Work Package 4 promotes the sustainable harvesting agenda to a wide set of stakeholders through three 'Learning Events'. Two workshops will be held in Cape Town to stimulate debate around the viability of biodiversity-business initiatives and the institutional structures required to initiate and sustain them, and to showcase the outputs from the project. Finally, the project impacts will be communicated to the corporate responsibility community in the UK through a presentation to the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), whose membership includes the majority of high street retailers and supermarkets chains, including key buyers of fynbos.