Biodiversity Award

th e Biodiversity Award

CTEET: BIODIVERSITY OFFSETTING

Meeting the needs of a burgeoning urban population requires an innovative approach. “Business as usual”, is not helping either people, nor the planet. Addressing the needs of present and future generations is being recognised globally as an imperative, and not simply a “nice to have”. In meeting these needs, leaders and citizens alike recognise that a healthy planet underpins human need and wellbeing. This can be addressed in part, through biodiversity offsets, offering an innovative approach to reconciling what has typically been a “win or lose” development versus conservation battle. Biodiversity offsets seek to ensure that negative impacts on biodiversity that cannot be dealt with through impact avoidance or mitigation, are compensated for by developers. Successful biodiversity offsetting requires multiple elements including engagement with policy makers, a varied menu of offset options, informed environmental practitioners and a secure and transparent means of funding. With the intention of informing policies around Best Practice for Biodiversity Offsetting in South Africa, CTEET has embarked on addressing all these elements through its involvement with Biodiversity Offsets.

SANBI BIODIVERSITY CRIMES ENFORCEMENT PROJECT

The Cape Floristic Region is THE most species rich landscape per unit area on planet earth! The single biggest threat to this biodiversity is unlawful transformation of land for agriculture and urban expansion. Legal developments must go through an application and approval process, but there is an increasing trend of landowners ignoring regulations designed to protect biodiversity and ploughing / clearing previously undisturbed virgin veld. The SANBI Biodiversity Crimes Project is a capacity-enhancement project designed to increase the successful policing and investigation of unlawful destruction of indigenous vegetation within the Cape Winelands Municipality. The Project is funded by the UNDP’s GEF5 Fund through the South African National Biodiversity Institute’s (SANBI) Biodiversity and Land Use Project and supports the employment of critical skills into Environmental Law Enforcement Directorate (aka the Green Scorpions) of the Western Cape Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning.

WESSA GREEN COAST

WESSA implements a programme called Green Coast along a 300km stretch of coastline on the Wild Coast of South Africa. Here we are focused on 20 specific sites where we have set up detailed monitoring programmes that focus on the monitoring of sensitive habitat, species and cultural heritage. This programme includes over 100 youths from local communities actively involved in this monitoring work and who have also been given accredited training in Tourism Guiding. The intention of this programme is to provide a new kind of “protection” to our sensitive environment by empowering local youths with training and mentorship. Green Coast is designed to also include local government, the tourism private sector and local communities, to ensure that the work is sustainable over the long term. We like to refer to this as “the new nature conservation” model. The concept employs a participatory approach towards contemporary biodiversity conservation with sustainable tourism as a key driver of sustainability.