In an effort to develop a classification of marine habitats for South Africa, the marine science community is working virtually round the clock to meet a July deadline for identifying marine priority areas for the country’s first National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP).
”However, we will definitely have terrestrial and freshwater priorities by July, and the NBSAP is on track to be completed in October,” said Amanda Driver, co-ordinator of the National Spatial Biodiversity Assessment (NSBA) team.
The NBSAP is led by the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT), while the NSBA, which is the geographic or spatial component of the NBSAP, is jointly funded by DEAT and the South African National Biodiversity Institute, and led by SANBI.
”In general the world knows less about the marine environment… with, for example, species data in the marine offshore environment severely lacking. We are dealing with much more than the coastal environment, everything up to 3 000 metres in depth or everything in our economic exclusion zone,” said Driver.
Driver juxtaposed the lack of marine data with the relative abundance of data in the terrestrial and freshwater spheres.
Once it is completed, the five-year NBSAP will provide a road map for the conservation of biodiversity, the sustainable use of its components and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of generic resources.
The NBSAP is divided into five task teams looking at conservation, sustainable use, access and benefit sharing, invasive alien species and economic integration and poverty alleviation.
Dealing specifically with the conservation component, Driver said they were looking at identifying geographical priorities across marine, terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems by looking at, for example, species, habitats and ecological processes such as water production.
”We can’t conserve everything and what this plan does is to prioritise which geographic areas need attention to keep our ecosystems alive,” she said.
Asked about the short timeframe — only about eight months — for the development of such an important document, NBSAP lead conservation planner, Dr Mathieu Rouget, said this was the first time such a task had been undertaken.
”There are limitations and information gaps… we know nothing about the full impact of land degradation in the country, and have no detailed map of marine habitats,” he said, emphasising however that the plan was not cast in stone and could be revised at a later stage.
Rouget said the plan contained recommendations on the country’s endangered ecosystems, listing them as critically endangered through to least threatened.
Giving a foretaste of what the country could expect, Rouget said 15 terrestrial priority areas were identified, including the entire Cape lowlands, the Soutpansberg range in Limpopo, Pondoland in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu Natal, and the Wild Coast in the Eastern Cape.
For freshwater ecosystems, the ”critically endangered” Gouritz River system in the Western Cape and the Vaal River in Gauteng were identified, as well as the Fish and Gamtoos rivers in the Eastern Cape, among others.
According to Rouget, it was envisaged that the NBSAP would help fulfill statutory obligations contained in the newly promulgated Biodiversity Act, which called for the preparation and adoption of a national biodiversity framework.
This framework will provide for an integrated and uniform approach to biodiversity management, identify priority areas for conservation and can establish norms and standards to guide provincial and municipal environmental conservation plans. – Sapa