Biodiversity Mainstreaming in South Africa’s Production Landscapes: Lessons and Achievements

South Africa’s grasslands are critically threatened and many biodiversity priority areas lie in production landscapes. This is a challenge best addressed by an approach aimed at strengthening the enabling environment, and innovating, piloting and mainstreaming new models for biodiversity management into production sectors, namely agriculture, forestry, urban development and coal mining. The Grassland Programme (a 20-year partnership between government, conservation agencies, non-governmental organisations, and private sector) has implemented this approach to sustain and secure grassland biodiversity and ecosystem services for the benefit of current and future generations. In five years of implementation, notable achievements have been in shaping policies and regulations, improving existing institutional capacity, and implementing pilot projects demonstrating biodiversity gains across sectors. Particularly significant is experience from the mining sector, where deeper engagement is enabling the development of integrated tools and products that help to ensure: biodiversity issues are consistently incorporated into decision-making processes for mining projects; high priority wetlands (of global importance) are avoided; residual impacts are offset; and proactive stewardship secures landscapes of high importance for biodiversity, energy and water provisioning. The sector demand for these tools and the leveraged finance raised from industry bodies is evidence of achievements earned in the face of lessons learnt as regards policy engagement, market-based incentives, and communicating the value offering of biodiversity using sector appropriate language. Technically proficient, cross-disciplinary teams able to develop integrated, accessible decision-support tools and guidelines in partnership with sector stakeholders, has been critical to the gains made in this multi-million dollar mainstreaming programme

A socio-ecological approach for identifying and contextualising spatial ecosystem-based adaptation priorities at the sub-national level

Climate change adds an additional layer of complexity to existing sustainable development and biodiversity conservation challenges. The impacts of global climate change are felt locally, and thus local governance structures will increasingly be responsible for preparedness and local responses. Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) options are gaining prominence as relevant climate change solutions. Local government officials seldom have an appropriate understanding of the role of ecosystem functioning in sustainable development goals, or access to relevant climate information. Thus the use of ecosystems in helping people adapt to climate change is limited partially by the lack of information on where ecosystems have the highest potential to do so. To begin overcoming this barrier, Conservation South Africa in partnership with local government developed a socio-ecological approach for identifying spatial EbA priorities at the sub-national level. Using GIS-based multi-criteria analysis and vegetation distribution models, the authors have spatially integrated relevant ecological and social information at a scale appropriate to inform local level political, administrative, and operational decision makers. This is the first systematic approach of which we are aware that highlights spatial priority areas for EbA implementation. Nodes of socio-ecological vulnerability are identified, and the inclusion of areas that provide ecosystem services and ecological resilience to future climate change is innovative. The purpose of this paper is to present and demonstrate a methodology for combining complex information into user-friendly spatial products for local level decision making on EbA. The authors focus on illustrating the kinds of products that can be generated from combining information in the suggested ways, and do not discuss the nuance of climate models nor present specific technical details of the model outputs here. Two representative case studies from rural South Africa demonstrate the replicability of this approach in rural and peri-urban areas of other developing and least developed countries around the world

The Gauteng conservation plan : planning for biodiversity in a rapidly urbanising province

BACKGROUND : Gauteng, the smallest of South Africa’s nine provinces, is rich in biodiversity; yet it is also the most densely populated province and thus faces significant development pressures. OBJECTIVE : A project was therefore initiated in 2001 to identify areas of biodiversity importance in the province, using the systematic spatial biodiversity planning approach that has been adopted in South Africa. This article reports on the final version of the provincial conservation plan as completed in 2011. METHOD : Vegetation types and quaternary catchments constituted the coarse filter biodiversity features, while rare and threatened taxa constituted the fine filter features. Ecological processes were captured by a range of landscape features, while planning for climate change primarily involved the design of a corridor network. Planning was undertaken within the ArcView linked C-plan decision support system, where a cost surface preferentially directed the selection of available sites towards low-cost areas. RESULTS : Forty-four per cent of the province is required to achieve targets. Only 8% of features are close to having their targets met or are adequately conserved in the current protected area network of 23 protected areas covering 2.4% of the province, while 73% of features are absent or poorly represented. CONCLUSION : The existing protected area network is inadequate for the conservation of biodiversity in Gauteng. The Gauteng Conservation Plan identifies a set of areas that are required to achieve conservation targets. It is important that identified areas currently not in the protected area network are protected either formally or through legislated land use management processes.http://www.abcjournal.orgam2018Zoology and Entomolog

A strategic framework for biodiversity monitoring in South African National Parks

Protected areas are under increasing threat from a range of external and internal pressures on biodiversity. With a primary mandate being the conservation of biodiversity, monitoring is an essential component of measuring the performance of protected areas. Here we present a framework for guiding the structure and development of a Biodiversity Monitoring System (BMS) for South African National Parks (SANParks). Monitoring activities in the organisation are currently unevenly distributed across parks, taxa and key concerns: they do not address the full array of biodiversity objectives, and have largely evolved in the absence of a coherent, overarching framework. The requirement for biodiversity monitoring in national parks is clearly specified in national legislation and international policy, as well as by SANParks’ own adaptive management philosophy. Several approaches available for categorising the multitude of monitoring requirements were considered in the development of the BMS, and 10 Biodiversity Monitoring Programmes (BMPs) were selected that provide broad coverage of higher-level biodiversity objectives of parks. A set of principles was adopted to guide the development of BMPs (currently underway), and data management, resource and capacity needs will be considered during their development. It is envisaged that the BMS will provide strategic direction for future investment in this core component of biodiversity conservation and management in SANParks. Conservation implications: Monitoring biodiversity in protected areas is essential to assessing their performance. Here we provide a coordinated framework for biodiversity monitoring in South African National Parks. The proposed biodiversity monitoring system addresses the broad range of park management plan derived biodiversity objectives

Map showing the location of the two case study sites.

<p>Map showing the location of the two case study sites.</p

Summary of natural and socio-economic features included, and data sets which were used to map these, for ecosystem priority areas mapping.

<p>Features shown in <b>bold</b> were specific to the Namakwa District municipality only; Features shown in <i>italics</i> were specific to the Alfred Nzo District municipality only. Further details on all of the mapping methods for each individual layer and for the composite maps of each category can be found in the vulnerability assessment technical reports for each pilot site [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0155235#pone.0155235.ref044" target="_blank">44</a>,<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0155235#pone.0155235.ref045" target="_blank">45</a>].</p

Maps of biome impacts.

<p>Modelled current biomes in the NDM (4a), projected changes in climatic suitability for the biomes in the NDM, medium term MIROC (4b), projected changes in climatic suitability for the biomes on the NDM, long term MIROC (4c), modelled current biomes in the ANDM (4d), projected changes in climatic suitability for the biomes in the ANDM, medium term MIROC (4e), projected changes in climatic suitability for the biomes on the ANDM, long term MIROC (4f). Reprinted from [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0155235#pone.0155235.ref044" target="_blank">44</a>,<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0155235#pone.0155235.ref045" target="_blank">45</a>] under a CC BY license, with permission from CSA, original copyright 2015.</p

Summary of the analysis and integration process.

<p>Reprinted from [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0155235#pone.0155235.ref044" target="_blank">44</a>] under a CC BY license, with permission from CSA, original copyright 2015.</p