With a miracle plant, an 800,000-hectare challenge and the promise of 100,000 green jobs, South Africa’s thicket restoration has been named a UNEP World Restoration Flagship. This overlooked ecosystem is becoming a global model for climate resilience and community revival.

South Africa’s thicket biome, once a dense, green tapestry of plant life and thriving wildlife, has been degraded so extensively over the past century that most people alive today have never seen it in full.

More than 80% of this ecosystem has been lost, much of it cleared for agriculture or overgrazed during the wool boom of the late 20th century. What remains is a patchwork of fragmented thicket, bare earth and exposed rock stretching across the Eastern and Western Cape.

However, this neglected yet biodiverse landscape and the people working tirelessly to restore it were thrust into the spotlight on Thursday, 4 December, when the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) named South Africa’s thicket restoration as one of its World Restoration Flagships.

The award recognises the country’s multidecade effort to revive 800,000 hectares of degraded land by 2030. The initiative involves more than 60 organisations, including conservation NGOs, carbon developers, scientific institutions and community-led programmes.

The World Restoration Flagships are UNEP’s highest recognition for large-scale, long-term ecosystem restoration efforts. They are the centrepiece of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030) — a global movement mobilising countries, communities, scientists and civil society to revive the natural systems that sustain life.

Each flagship is chosen not only for its ecological importance but for its social impact, its grounding in local and indigenous knowledge, and its potential to act as a model for restoration worldwide.

While the award brings international visibility, to the people leading restoration efforts on the ground, it represents something far more urgent: an opportunity to bring life back to the land while creating green jobs for communities that desperately need them.

Read more: A tale of two dams — Grasslands restoration is as important as engineering solutions to ensure SA’s future water security

A landscape forgotten, reimagined

When driving through the Karoo or the semi-arid valleys of the Eastern Cape, the landscape appears sparse: low shrubs, vast dry plains and little shade. But according to Nick Hamp-Adams, the landscape is a far cry from the ecosystem it once was.

Hamp-Adams is a programme manager at Return to Thicket, one of the 60 organisations leading the restoration in the Eastern Cape.

“People don’t understand what has been lost because most of it disappeared generations ago. It used to be a closed canopy — a micro forest of unique plant species supporting birds, insects and small mammals,” he explained.

Hamp-Adams said that few living memory accounts remain of what the thicket looked like before it was transformed for livestock production. Much of the degradation predates satellite imagery, leaving conservationists to piece together its historical richness through scattered records and remnant patches.

But even in its fragmented state, the thicket still holds a powerful ecosystem booster in one plant: the spekboom.

The power of spekboom

Spekboom is a hardy, drought-resistant succulent tree with a multiplicity of abilities. Hamp-Adams described it as “an ecosystem engineer” capable of reshaping the land around it.

Its functions are significant, including:

• Heat regulation: By forming a dense canopy, spekboom keeps soil temperatures low, a crucial function in regions where exposed soil can reach 50–60°C in summer.
• Soil protection: Its complex roots anchor fragile, sandy soils, reducing erosion and retaining moisture.
• Carbon storage: A single hectare can sequester roughly six tonnes of CO₂ a year.
• Biodiversity revival: Its shade, leaf litter and microclimate give other plants a chance to germinate, while providing food and habitat for wildlife.
• Cultural and practical value: Spekboom is edible, medicinal and deeply embedded in indigenous knowledge and heritage.

The irony is that its value also contributed to its decline.

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