WELCOME TO THE GOURITZ CLUSTER BIOSPHERE RESERVE!

If you are an old friend of the ‘Gouritz Initiative’ just visiting your old familiar GI website, don’t be surprised at this new greeting. And if you are new and visiting this site for the first time, please bear with us as we are undergoing an important transition. Our identity is changing and so is our website.

The Gouritz Cluster Biosphere Reserve is South Africa’s newest member of a group internationally designated as ‘UNESCO Biosphere Reserves’ - and the first in Africa to be designated as a ‘Cluster Biosphere Reserve’. These are internationally-recognized regions dedicated to sustainable development in the 21st century. While socially and environmentally different, they each face a similar challenge: How to accommodate and manage growth and development for the well-being of their human communities, while strengthening agriculture and natural resource conservation in ways that put ‘sustainability’ in practice.

The former ‘Gouritz Initiative’ is proud of its new emerging status as the Gouritz Cluster Biosphere Reserve, and is busy reorganizing itself to meet these new challenges. In the coming months, this website will be undergoing redevelopment.

For now, please visit the current site. If you are specifically interested in biosphere developments, visit the Biosphere Downloads page.

View the current site >>

Stay tuned!