The Campaign
For a Living Limpopo
Living Limpopo campaigns against coal-fuelled industrialisation of the Vhembe Biosphere Reserve and promotes the creation of a landscape-scale conservation area that will support a thriving nature-positive economy in a part of Limpopo that is still wild at heart.
We exist to inform, to connect, to galvanize action.
Who we are
Living Limpopo is a non-profit organisation with deep roots in Limpopo. We are a movement forged from a broad alliance of organisations and individuals representing diverse interests - from conservation, to the tourism and wildlife industries, farming and rural communities in the Vhembe, to earth, water, climate and social justice activists and ordinary South Africans - who collectively oppose the Vhembe being turned into another Sacrifice Zone for coal and steel in South Africa, and who envision a different future the untamed heart of Limpopo.
We are people from different backgrounds, who represent different constituencies, with different views, but we have come together for a common cause – to organise, to mobilise, to change the future.
You are one of our tribe.
Living Limpopo is proud to be affiliated with
What we do
We campaign to raise public awareness of the Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone and the devastating impact that strip-mining and coal-fuelled heavy industrialisation will have on our sensitive environment, our water resources, on other sectors of the economy and their growth potential. We work to expose the economic madness behind the scheme and the jobs propaganda for what it is.
We are actively challenging authorisation for the SEZ and coal mines, while we seek to engage constructively with government on policy debate.
We are a source of information and a platform to broadcast the work of the many organisations and individuals who are challenging coal resource exploitation and the MMSEZ industrial mega-project.
We believe that a threat on this scale is also an opportunity. Opposition by those who want a different future for Limpopo has mobilised on an unprecedented scale, and we aim to use the momentum to change course. It is our mission to promote:
The creation of the Great Vhembe Conservation Area - a landscape-scale protected areas expansion and restoration programme based on the Limpopo Conservation Plan and Vhembe Bioregional Plan, and
Stimulus of the biodiversity economy in the Vhembe mega-living landscape as envisaged in the National Biodiversity Economy Strategy.
We provide a forum for collaboration and act as a lightning rod to attract support and resources to unleash the wild growth potential of a nature-based economy in Limpopo.
Living Limpopo in action
Campaign goals
Our vision for the landscape will be achieved through the following 5 concrete campaign goals.
Do any of these goals mirror yours, should be working together?
Abandoning coal-based development:
Revocation of Environmental Authorisation for the North and South Site of the MMSEZ and withdrawal of designation of the South African Energy-Metallurgical Zone of the Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone.
Water resource protection:
Rejection of the proposed Musina Dam in the Limpopo River by LIMCOM; gazetting of the Reserve for the secondary catchments of the Limpopo to ensure the sustainability of the Limpopo River Basin; establishment of a fully-functioning Catchment Management Agency for the Limpopo-Olifants Water Management Area.
Stimulus of the biodiversity economy:
Creation of a biodiversity economy ‘node’ in the Vhembe mega-living landscape as proposed in the Operation Phakisa for the accelerated implementation of the National Biodiversity Economy Strategy.
Protected areas expansion:
Promulgation of the Vhembe District Bioregional Plan and declaration of the Critical Biodiversity Areas in the Vhembe District as protected in accordance with the SANBI CBA Map for the Vhembe District Bioregion and Vhembe District SDF (Spatial Development Framework) - to create the landscape-scale bio-geographic corridors envisaged.
Creation of the Great Vhembe Conservation Area carbon and biodiversity credit project:
Implementation of a landscape-scale land management programme in the Vhembe Biosphere Reserve as a Nature-based Solutions carbon and biodiversity credit project for the protection and enhancement of the natural terrestrial carbon sink and biodiversity reservoir.
Our history
Living Limpopo is the descendent of the NoToSEZ.org campaign launched by the Herd Reserve in the wake of the publication of the draft Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report in September 2020 to raise public awareness and objection before the window for public comment closed on the 21st of October 2020.
The explosion of objections from thousands of people which that campaign generated helped stall a project that was being bulldozed through a sham approvals process. Although the vampire in the blood bank - the Limpopo provincial government - finally approved its own application for environmental authorisation and on the 8th of July 2022, dismissed all appeals, the movement has only grown in strength and ambition. Living Limpopo is today a strong community based organisation with global reach.
Where we are
Living Limpopo operates from The Herd Reserve
D1942 Malaladrift Road, Musina 0900
Vhembe District, Limpopo Province
South Africa
This is your cause too
To achieve our vision, we need help. Taking on the might of the fossil-fuel lobby in South Africa and the global Energy-Industrial Complex takes people with guts and grit. People like you. Please support the cause by joining Living Limpopo today.
Take a look at our Wish List, you may be able to make wishes come true.
You can contact us directly by sending an email to our campaign coordinator, Leanne McCann - leanne@livinglimpopo.org
