Dr Luthando Dziba, CSIR Natural Resources and the Environment
"Immensely rich species diversity is found in South Africa. With a land surface area of 1,1 million km² - representing just 1% of the earth's total land surface - South Africa contains almost 10% of the world's total known bird, fish and plant species, and over 6% of the world's mammal and reptile species."
- Guy Midgley, South African Risk and Vulnerability Atlas, 2010 |
Biodiversity is the variety of life on Earth. Southern Africa houses a wealth of biodiversity that supports livelihoods of many rural and urban communities.
South Africa has three globally recognised biodiversity hotspots - the Cape floristic region, succulent Karoo, and Maputaland-Pondoland. The country leads the way in development of legislation to protect these valuable national assets through laws such as the National Environment Management Biodiversity Act of 2004.
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| Biodiversity and ecosystems produce many benefits, called ecosystem services. These include fresh water, firewood and fertile soils for agriculture (Pictures: Mitzi du Plessis)
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The Cape floristic region is one of South Africa's three globally recognised biodiversity hotspots (Picture: Jaco Rossouw)
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Biodiversity and ecosystems produce many benefits, called ecosystem services. These include fresh water, firewood and fertile soils for agriculture. Benefits also include protection from extreme events associated with climate change, like floods, droughts and fires. Ecosystem infrastructure and services therefore, like municipal infrastructure and services, play an essential role in supporting social development and economic prosperity, and keeping us safe.
The information on the Biodiversity theme page in the South African Risk and Vulnerability Atlas (SARVA) synthesises what is known about ecosystem services in South Africa and how this knowledge might be used to address national priorities of poverty alleviation, unemployment, enhancing ecological infrastructure and improving service delivery.
The Biodiversity theme page is critical to informing decision makers at local and national level about available resources in support of decisions for sustainable use and management of biodiversity in South Africa. More importantly, the theme page will be showcasing how our biodiversity supports many ecosystems which provide many benefits (ecosystem services) for human well-being. These benefits, when appropriately utilised and managed, can help communities adapt to climate change.
The Biodiversity theme page will offer many decision-support tools such as maps and various toolkits that will allow planners and policy makers to consider biodiversity when making decisions about land use and development. Examples of such tools already exist, such as SANBI's Biodiversity GIS.
Case studies of the successful management of biodiversity for human well-being will also be accessible via the link. The information in the Atlas will be kept updated to reflect the state of biodiversity in South Africa and the changes southern African ecosystems are likely to experience as a result of anthropogenic-driven climate change.
South Africa recently received a cash injection of $1,6 million from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) for implementing the Project for Ecosystem Services (ProEcoServ).
This project, a partnership between the CSIR, SANBI and the Department of Environmental Affairs, aims to understand the importance of biodiversity and ecosystems to our society and to find ways to better manage these ecosystem services and ecological infrastructure, especially in the face of the increasing risks we face from climate change. The project further aims to mainstream this understanding, together with tools, capacity and knowledge, into natural resource management and decision making at local and national levels in South Africa.
ProEcoServ is a global project that was developed to bridge the science-policy gap in environmental and natural resource management. It aims to mainstream ecosystem service information, tools, capacity and knowledge into natural resource management and decision making at local and national levels.
South Africa and Lesotho, together with Vietnam, Chile, Trinidad and Tobago have been selected by UNEP as pilot study sites to develop innovative and practical approaches to integrate assessment and valuation of ecosystem services into sustainable local, regional and national development programmes. This is again affirmation of South Africa's profile in the science and policy arena of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Dr Belinda Reyers and Dr Luthando Dziba, chief and principal scientists respectively at the CSIR and co-leaders of the ProEcoServ project, point out that in the past, many projects were directed at either science or policy development, but hardly ever at the interface between the two. As a consequence, the rich knowledge generated on South African ecosystems often did not make it onto the radars of policy and decision makers, especially those outside of the environmental sector. This is the gap that ProEcoServ aims to fill.
In South Africa, the project will focus on three scales, with specific activities planned at a municipal management scale (focus on development planning and disaster management), at a catchment level (focus on water and land use management in the grasslands) and at a national policy scale (mainstreaming ecosystem services in the context of poverty alleviation and socio-economic development).
The biodiversity community in South Africa is keen to make the case that biodiversity supports South Africa's economy and livelihoods of many communities. The South African Risk and Vulnerability Atlas presents a great opportunity for demonstrating the benefits of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Visit the Biodiversity theme page for more information.
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