April 2008

Biodiversity Mainstreaming Protects South Africa's threatened Grasslands

Innovating thinking and the formation of cooperative partnerships with industry and municipalities has helped the National Grasslands Biodiversity Programme in South Africa achieve early successes in mainstreaming biodiversity concerns into productive sectors. The project aims to remove barriers to mainstreaming by building institutional and policy-level capacity, correcting market failures and demonstrating how different production sector practices can be adapted to achieve biodiversity management. 

In the short time since its inception, the GEF grasslands project has significantly increased the body of knowledge on the biome - the second largest in South Africa, occupying 29 percent of the country’s land territory. The grasslands are an important repository of globally significant biodiversity and a rich storehouse of floristic, avian and invertebrate diversity. It is exceptionally rich in floristic diversity with a high proportion of indigenous species, second only to the Cape Floristic Region. By applying systematic conservation planning, the project has helped identify the critical biodiversity areas that must be secured to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem services. This knowledge helps inform land use decision-making and directs development away from sensitive biodiversity areas.

The grasslands project, which is being implemented by UNDP with the help of a diverse group of local partners, has been necessary because South Africa’s grasslands, along with other temperate grasslands across the globe, are critically threatened. An estimated 30 percent of the area has already been irreversibly transformed, two of the biome’s 80 vegetation types are listed as critically endangered, 18 as endangered and 27 as vulnerable, while 83 percent of the grasslands’ river ecosystems are ranked as threatened, with 48 percent critically endangered. However, less than two percent of the grasslands are currently designated protected areas, and even these are not considered representative of diversity across the biome.

By encouraging stakeholders to buy into a common goal, the four-year US$ 45.9 million project (GEF grant: US$ 8.65 million) has already, in its first year, secured the participation of important economic sectors, such as forestry, agriculture, coal mining, and urban development.

For more information, please contact: Jay Dowle; jay.dowle@undp.org