Sustainable biodiversity stewardship and inclusive development in South Africa: a novel package for a sustainable future

Rawat, Y. S.

doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2017.03.003

Cited by 14 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…South African conservation authorities have been focusing their private‐land strategy on stewardship (contractual) nature reserves (Cumming & Daniels, ), which are actively sought out by provincial planning authorities in priority conservation areas. Land owners and agencies engage over the terms of the contract, management plans and the gazettement process, as well as audited management systems (Cumming & Daniels, ; Rawat, ). Land owners have to commit their land to the programme for at least 30 years, but around 40% have chosen to contract their land into perpetuity (Rawat, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Land owners and agencies engage over the terms of the contract, management plans and the gazettement process, as well as audited management systems (Cumming & Daniels, ; Rawat, ). Land owners have to commit their land to the programme for at least 30 years, but around 40% have chosen to contract their land into perpetuity (Rawat, ). Rawat () provides a useful overview of the terms and benefits of different contracts within the stewardship programme.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Land owners have to commit their land to the programme for at least 30 years, but around 40% have chosen to contract their land into perpetuity (Rawat, ). Rawat () provides a useful overview of the terms and benefits of different contracts within the stewardship programme.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The contribution of land tenure diversity to the spatial resilience of protected area networks

Vos

Cumming

2019

People and Nature

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1. The relationship between diversity and resilience is relatively well-established for ecological systems, but remains much less explored for socio-economic systems.Institutional diversity can have particular relevance for protected areas, whose managerial responses to environmental change depend on their legal basis, ability to make and enforce rules and socio-political acceptance and endorsement.2. Protected area expansion strategies are increasingly turning to private land conservation to increase the configuration and connectivity of national protected area networks. Yet, we know little about the relative role of privately owned protected areas in protecting threatened and poorly protected (under-represented) habitats, and in the overall connectivity of the national protected area network.3. We present an empirical assessment of protected area tenure diversity across South Africa. 4. Privately owned protected areas comprise 25.58% (2,878,422.26 ha) of the area of the total protected area estate. 5. Private nature reserves emerged as the dominant protected area type in underrepresented and threatened habitats, protecting, on average, 32%, 38% and 41%, respectively, of poorly protected, threatened and endangered vegetation classes.6. Private nature reserves had the largest overall effect, compared to other protected area types, on connectivity within the national network. A spatially randomized comparison showed that privately owned protected areas are overdispersed and more strategically positioned to connect other types of protected areas than would be expected by chance from their extent and abundance. 7. Our results suggest that privately owned protected areas enhance the resilience of the national protected area network, making it more extensive and better-connected, with greater levels of habitat redundancy. More generally, our analysis highlights the potentially valuable role of institutional diversity in building resilient habitat networks for biodiversity conservation. K E Y W O R D S composition, configuration, diversity, network analysis, private land conservation, socialecological, South Africa (other than absence of the material) should be directed to the corresponding author. for providing protected area and cadastral datasets. We also thank L. Roberson and M. Mehnert who assisted with protected area mapping from gazettes and cadastral data sets. A. Driver and T. Cumming provided useful discussions on the protected area policy context and correct use of terminology.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The contribution of land tenure diversity to the spatial resilience of protected area networks

Vos

Cumming

2019

People and Nature

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“…6 Through binding contractual agreements with landowners, practitioners can also potentially secure fiscal benefits for farmers (for example through tax rebates), supporting stewards to off-set the costs of voluntary stewardship actions on their land. 51 There is also recognition that integrating the biodiversity stewardship tool with other approaches to sustainable natural resource management could help South Africa to work towards its National Development Plan and the Sustainable Development Goals. 19,47 Examples of these include the integrated landscape-level initiatives identified here, but also marketbased incentive schemes, and rural development and environmental education initiatives, which were not identified in our findings but have been recognised as important forms of stewardship.…”

Section: Concerns and Opportunities For Stewardship Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

meaning and practice of stewardship in South Africa

Cockburn¹,

Cundill²,

Shackleton³

2019

S. Afr. J. Sci.

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Stewardship offers a means of addressing social-ecological sustainability challenges, from the local to the global level. The concept of stewardship has had various meanings attached to it over time, and the links between the theory and practice of stewardship are not well understood. We sought to characterise the practice of stewardship in South Africa, to better understand the relationship between theory and practice. We found that practitioners’ understandings of stewardship coalesce around two core notions: the idea of stewardship as ‘responsible use and care’ of nature, and stewardship as a ‘balancing act’ between stewards’ use of natural resources for agricultural production and their responsibility to protect and manage the wider ecosystem. Stewardship practice in South Africa is strongly influenced by the biodiversity stewardship tool; however, many practitioners are integrating biodiversity stewardship with other approaches. These emerging social-ecological stewardship initiatives operate at landscape-level and work towards integrated social and ecological stewardship outcomes, by facilitating collaboration among diverse stakeholders. Further research is needed to better understand what is required to support these integrated, collaborative and cross-sectoral initiatives. Policy mechanisms that facilitate integrated place-based stewardship practice can contribute to expanding the practice of biodiversity stewardship in South Africa. Significance: Our findings contribute to a growing understanding of what stewardship looks like in South Africa and how it is put into practice. We show that biodiversity stewardship is a prevalent understanding of stewardship practice in South Africa and is often combined with other approaches for sustainable landscape management. A broader understanding of stewardship, for example through the concept of social-ecological stewardship, can enable more integrated, collaborative approaches to landscape management, addressing the wide range of environmental and social development challenges faced in rural landscapes across South Africa.

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“…In conservation policy, stewardship is often used as a simple rewording for wise resource use or sustainable management of wildlife or ecosystems. However, the attention given to the concept of stewardship is growing in the contemporary environmental sciences and conservation literature, especially in the natural resource use (Rawat, 2017), the agri-environmental (Hejnowicz et al, 2016) and protected areas-related literature (Wells and McShane, 2004;Mathevet et al, 2016;Jepson et al, 2017). About 75% of the citations and 62% of publications on stewardship as a key concept or a pathway for action in conservation and environmental science have appeared within the last five years (Fig.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%