Public-private collaboration and sustainable financing through biodiversity and carbon markets can help improve the situation for South Africa’s vast network of provincial nature reserves that are increasingly failing, a recent study has found.

Municipal and provincial reserves (PRs) cover more than 3 million hectares of land across nearly 430 protected areas in South Africa, one of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots.

But chronic underfunding, deteriorating infrastructure, and poor management mean an increasing number of the reserves risk failing their conservation mandate, according to a recently published study by the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), in collaboration with the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (WESSA).

“There is growing concern amongst conservation stakeholders about the state of PAs (protected areas) in South Africa, particularly those managed by provincial and municipal authorities,” the study said.

“A lack of resourcing in terms of staffing and budgets (i.e. inappropriate funding models); outdated and incorrectly implemented management plans; and failing infrastructure have made it impossible for some PAs to fulfil their conservation mandate or generate much-needed funds,” it added.

Moreover, while the country’s network of protected areas is massive, it still excludes a significant proportion of South Africa’s most endemic or threatened species, it added.

Many PRs achieve sub-optimal results because of a lack of skilled management and staff, low and declining government funding means high vacancy rates, robbing the reserves of the opportunity to deal adequately with threats like poaching, theft of fences and other infrastructure, and alien invasive species.

Those areas that manage to generate income on their own, for example through eco-tourism, must forward that revenue to the government and apply to get some of it back.

REFORMS

“The gradual but consistent reduction of our provincial conservation agencies is a core driving factor in the degradation and collapse of most of the struggling PRs in South Africa,” the report found.

“The conservation sector must cooperate to form a united front to lobby for a reverse in this worrying trend should South Africa’s PR network have any chance of continuing to support its mandate of biodiversity and ecosystem service protection.”

It said an increase in government funding was especially important because many of the PRs are located in remote areas, and critical to some of South Africa’s poorest and most under-resourced communities.

At the same time, PRs should look at new ways to organise and new sources of funding in order to alleviate some of the most pressing concerns, EWT said.

That could include an increased degree of collaboration or partnerships, such as private-public partnership options and co-management agreements.

“This will enable the provinces to address their capacity constraints and allow co-opted management partners to bring expertise and capital to improve the management effectiveness and tourism potential of these important conservation areas,” the report said.

As for a more stable funding situation, PRs have the opportunity to explore alternate income streams, such as through carbon and biodiversity markets, as well as through extended eco-tourism, it added.

EWT itself has initiated nature-based carbon projects within the agriculture, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU) sectors with private landowners in the highland grasslands of the eastern Free State.

Similar initiatives could be relevant for some of the PRs, though the report said it would likely be a better option for communally owned land neighbouring the PRs rather than for the PRs themselves.

Biodiversity credits might offer a better option, given such units rely on accurately estimating biodiversity change on a submitted site and translating positive change into awardable credits.

“There are several detailed globally recognised approaches to quantify the biodiversity change for a project … the details of which are beyond the scope of this report, but the key conclusion is that PRs could potentially access financial rewards for protecting biodiversity,” the EWT study said.

“This approach to sustainable financing has not been robustly tested in South Arica and needs to be validated but it does have some potential.”

It also added that while its study focused on South Africa, the same situation can be found across the entire southern Africa region.

Barbara Creecy, South Africa’s forestry, fisheries, and environment minister, told the 5th Global Biodiversity Finance Conference in Cape Town last week that many developing nations, burdened by increasing debt, are not in a position to carry the costs of meeting their commitments under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

“Mechanisms such as debt for biodiversity swaps, payment for ecosystem services, as well as greater availability of grant financing and concessional loans must be considered in the context of achieving sustainable financing mechanisms for developing countries,” Creecy said.

By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com

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