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and M. Mander. 2012. The identification of potential resilient estuary-based enterprises to encourage economic empowerment in South Africa: a toolkit approach. ABSTRACT. It has been argued that ecosystem services can be used as the foundation to provide economic opportunities to empower the disadvantaged. The Ecosystem Services Framework (ESF) approach for poverty alleviation, which balances resource conservation and human resource use, has received much attention in the literature. However, few projects have successfully achieved both conservation and economic objectives. This is partly due to there being a hiatus between theory and practice, due to the absence of tools that help make the transition between conceptual frameworks and theory, to practical integration of ecosystem services into decision making. To address this hiatus, an existing conceptual framework for analyzing the robustness of social-ecological systems was translated into a practical toolkit to help understand the complexity of socialecological systems (SES). The toolkit can be used by a diversity of stakeholders as a decision making aid for assessing ecosystem services supply and demand and associated enterprise opportunities. The toolkit is participatory and combines both a generic "top-down" scientific approach with a case-specific "bottom-up" approach. It promotes a shared understanding of the utilization of ecosystem services, which is the foundation of identifying resilient enterprises. The toolkit comprises four steps: (i) ecosystem services supply and demand assessment; (ii) roles identification; (iii) enterprise opportunity identification; and (vi) enterprise risk assessment, and was tested at two estuary study sites. Implementation of the toolkit requires the populating of preprogrammed Excel worksheets through the holding of workshops that are attended by stakeholders associated with the ecosystems. It was concluded that for an enterprise to be resilient, it must be resilient at an external SES level,which the toolkit addresses, and at an internal business functioning level, e.g., social dynamics among personnel, skills, and literacy levels. Although the toolkit does not address the internal resilience level of an enterprise, it proved helpful at indicating which enterprises show potential resilience given current SES conditions.

This paper proposes a property rights perspective to interpret institutional regime shifts in the provision of freshwater ecosystem services. Institutional regime shifts are conceived as persistent changes in the structure and function of a system. Property rights are viewed as an important component of institutional regimes. The paper draws on a case study of flow regulation on the Pongolo Floodplain in South Africa to illustrate the central role of property rights in mediating institutional regime shifts. The case study illustrates that there are many combinations of property rights that underpin institutional regime shifts in the provision of freshwater ecosystem services. It provides useful insights into the consequences of failing to recognize, establish and enforce bundles of rights. A major thrust of the case study is that the nature and context of property rights are important in determining the long-term provision of these services. By examining the configurations of property rights that have governed the Pongola River flood- plain over the years, the paper demonstrates the importance of explicitly defining and categorizing the range of rights.Keywords: Property rights, institutional regime shifts, freshwater ecosystems services, common pool resources, provisioning, Pongola floodplain, South Africa Acknowledgements: We wish to acknowledge the funding contributions of the Water Research Commission of South Africa and the International Water Security Network. The International Water Security Network is funded by Lloyd's Register Foundation, a charitable foundation helping to protect life and property by supporting engineering-related education, public engagement and the application of research. We thank Jackie Crafford for constructive critique of the draft manuscript and Victor Bangamwabo for preparation of the map.

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