Protecting important areas through engaging with private sector
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A local government official and NGO partner explaining the biological significance of his land to a local farmer. This farmer has now signed his land into formal protection through biodiversity stewardship. Copy rights BirdLife South Africa.
Of South Africa’s 112 Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs), less than 40% are legally protected, and as a result the Biodiversity Stewardship Programme is being used to acquire legal protection for priority IBAs. It provides a tool for securing biodiversity, promoting the management of natural resources and expanding the PAs network outside of state-owned national parks and reserves by working with and incentivizing landowners for protecting important sites.
Last update: 29 Mar 2019
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Impacts
• The collaboration between private landowners, the government and conservation NGOs is extremely important in Africa, and through the use of gap analysis and dovetailing common interests, this programme is able to offer an innovative approach to conservation by identifying and targeting important sites which leads to the cooperation of the public and private sectors. This leads to the formal protection of common interest sites and habitats.
• Declaring & managing protected areas through biodiversity stewardship, using government and NGO partnerships, costs only 1/6th of proclaiming & managing state-owned lands as PAs.
• BirdLife South Africa has recently provided assistance to legally protect 60,000 ha of the Chrissies Pans IBA, and is working to add another 60,000 ha to the protected area network in another seven priority IBAs: i.e. Grassland, Verlorenvlei, KZN Mistbelt Grasslands, Berg River Estuary, Cape Whale Coast, Aghulhas Plain – De Mond, and Steenkampsberg IBAs.
• BirdLife South Africa is also piloting incentives, particularly tax incentives, which aim to increase the uptake of biodiversity stewardship by private land owners.
