TRANSDISCIPLINARY BASELINE STUDIES TO MONITOR AND ENHANCE SUSTAINABLE RESOURCE EXTRACTION

Unconventional Shale Gas Development (SGD) will likely proceed across a large area (>160 000 km²) of the Karoo Basin in South Africa. The Karoo is an iconic region with unparalleled landscapes and bioscapes with fragile ecosystems including unique biodiversities of plants and animals. It is also a land of great historic value with long lived human traditions that go back in places to heritage sites of earliest Homo sapiens and early hunter-gatherers. It is also a Paleozoic-Mesozoic terrestrial fossil paradise. There is much anxiety amongst farmers, nature reserve and heritage-site specialists; and the tourist industry. But there is also some of the greatest inequality and unsustainable suffering in Karoo communities. Some believe that SGD will mitigate poverty, whilst others believe that that it will be the end of the Karoo natural and archaeological paradise. To address these concerns but also to better understand SGD in the Karoo, AEON started developing and implementing a unique transdisciplinary baseline study ahead of likely SGD. The project has four major areas of research: EARTH (geology, geophysics, geochemistry, atmosphere); WATER (surface, ground, deep, soils); LIFE (ecology, botany, zoology); PEOPLE (socio-economic, public participation, citizen-science, land and indigenous rights, risks, regulations, epidemiology). A total of 35 graduate students (Masters and Doctorate – ratio ca. 2:1) linked to 5 different faculties across the university (Sciences, Art & Humanities, Health, Art, Business & Economic) are actively participating. Students are required to engage and participate in each other’s field and theoretical work. This has created multi-tasking/multidisciplinary activities and analyses. It includes learning to build trust with local communities, farmers, municipalities. Here we will briefly describe some obstacles and results of this project that is now in its 4^th year. The results are rewarding and sometimes unexpected including illuminating observations of a social science student dealing with isotope chemistry. Our approach in working with diverse students and stakeholders will enable detection of shortcuts during SDG, and is making it possible to hand over monitoring batons to local communities.