GOAL 5:
CREATE CONDITIONS AND INCENTIVES THAT SUPPORT THE CONSERVATION AND SUSTAINABLE USE OF BIODIVERSITY

The effective implementation of the biodiversity policy requires the creation of conditions and incentives that support the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. South Africa's approach towards achieving this goal has two main components:

• promoting and developing economic opportunities that are compatible with and which complement the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity; and
• creating and implementing incentives that support the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity.

5.1. BENEFICIATING BIODIVERSITY

Policy objective 5.1.

Promote and develop economic opportunities that are compatible with and which complement the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

Adding Economic Value to South Africa's Biodiversity

Examining the economic aspects of biodiversity is becoming increasingly important within the South African context. As the custodian of a national asset, the State has a responsibility to increase the financial investments required to conserve biodiversity. However, this must be reconciled with the fact that the basic needs of South Africa's people have not yet been met. Innovative ways must therefore be found to add to and reinforce the fundamental economic value to biodiversity, and to promote and develop economic activities that are compatible with and which complement the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

There are many opportunities to do this. In some instances, such as the informal medicinal plant trade, a thriving industry exists but the importance of traditional medicine for primary health care is poorly recognised. Consequently, few measures are in place to ensure that resources are harvested sustainably, that the cultivation of harvested species is promoted, and that the local economic value of such resources is maximised. In other cases, such as biodiversity prospecting, opportunities to reap benefits are not optimised because of the absence of an enabling policy framework that controls access to genetic resources and sets conditions for benefit-sharing and sustainable use. This uncertainty is a major deterrent to potential investors. And in industries such as tourism, South Africa's natural beauty and well-developed protected area system are renowned drawcards for tourists, but the full spectrum of benefits arising from tourism-related activities are often only partially realised.

These examples, and many others such as the under-development of indigenous crops (e.g. sorghum, millet), livestock breeds (e.g. ostrich), floral varieties, and ornamental plants point towards the fact that South Africa has largely failed to develop and benefit from its biological diversity. This has been due in part to the country's isolation from the international community and the effect of accompanying sanctions, but also because there have been few incentives established, and little interest in the domestic development of such resources. Many missed opportunities have resulted from this neglect. Clearly, we can ill-afford not to reap the full spectrum of benefits available from the inordinate potential value of our biodiversity.

Policy and Strategy

Government recognises that South Africa's biodiversity presently provides substantial economic benefits for its people, and holds remarkable future economic potential if adequate investments are made in its further development and conservation. There can be few countries in the world which have the combined benefits of democracy, a comprehensive scientific capacity and knowledge base, a well- developed private sector, a well-established system of protected areas, and most importantly, some of the most biologically diverse resources to be found on Earth. Government policy will require that these resources are used to best effect in the alleviation of poverty and conservation of the country's biodiversity, and will enlist the support of the private sector in doing so wherever this is appropriate.

To achieve the objective, Government, in collaboration with interested and affected parties, will:

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   1. Continue to support programmes that utilise indigenous and traditional wildlife sustainably for subsistence purposes and commercial gain;
   2. Encourage the development of indigenous and traditional livestock and crop utilisation programmes, natural product industries, and agricultural programmes which show economic potential and which create economic and other incentives for the retention, rehabilitation, maintenance and management of natural habitats; and
   3. Support research which identifies new areas of economic potential for South Africa's indigenous and traditional biological and genetic resources.
2. Ensure the rapid establishment of institutional structures and legal arrangements to control access to genetic resources, and to thereby create the conditions for equitable benefit-sharing arrangements to be developed.
3. Through effective implementation of its tourism policy:
   1. develop tourism as a sustainable and responsible economic activity;
   2. support the integration of tourism into broader land-use plans, and the development of tourism as a competitive form of land use;
   3. promote the linking of tourism benefits to the environmental products it depends upon, and the cross- subsidisation of conservation by tourism;
   4. require tourism projects to be subject to Integrated Environmental Management procedures; and
   5. encourage the development of partnership tourism ventures between local communities, the private sector and conservation agencies.
4. Recognise and quantify the local economic value derived from the use of biological resources (e.g. traditional medicines, building materials, wild food) by the informal sector in development and land-use planning efforts. This will include consideration of the social economic and environmental costs and benefits of having to use alternative resources if natural biological resources are lost or degraded.
5. Recognise and quantify the direct and indirect economic costs and benefits derived from conserving and using biodiversity sustainably, including the conservation of protected areas.
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   1. Introduce measures to encourage local communities to add economic value to products harvested from the wild, or cultivated off site, whilst ensuring the sustainable use of such resources;
   2. Promote the local beneficiation of genetic resources developed for commercial gain; and
   3. Promote the development of value-added indigenous products, and investigate the formation of marketing and information networks to broaden access to local, regional and international markets.
7. Support efforts of the Medicines Control Council to develop a regulatory framework for the approval of traditional herbal medicines.
8. Balance the need to encourage private sector investment in South Africa's genetic resources through conferring intellectual property rights for novel inventions with that of ensuring equitable benefit-sharing and the transfer of appropriate technology.

5.2. INCENTIVES

Policy objective 5.2.

Create and implement incentives that support the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity.

The Importance of Incentives

South Africa has a substantial amount of legislation in place governing the use and conservation of natural resources. However, as is the case for other countries, these "command and control" mechanisms have not been adequate to address the underlying forces resulting in the loss of biodiversity.

New approaches, such as those embraced by the Convention on Biological Diversity, are increasingly turning towards the use of incentives as instruments and mechanisms to induce people to change their behaviour. Because people behave rationally by basing decisions on an assessment of costs and benefits, the introduction of incentives by Government is an important way in which people can be motivated to conserve and use biodiversity sustainably.

Some incentives are direct, and can be either financial, such as providing subsidies to restore threatened habitats, or in kind, such as providing nursery plants to traditional healers. Other incentives are indirect, and may be fiscal (e.g. tax breaks for funding conservation projects), service-orientated (e.g. awareness raising and skills training), voluntary (e.g. private nature reserves), or social (e.g. improving quality of life through tenure reform). In contrast, disincentives encourage desirable behaviour. A pollution tax for example, motivates businesses to reduce pollution. Some incentives, sometimes called "perverse incentives", actively encourage the depletion of biodiversity (e.g. drought relief subsidies).

Incentives for conserving biodiversity already exist in South Africa, and are applied with varying success. For example, conservancies, private nature reserves and South African Natural Heritage Sites accord recognition to landowners taking actions to conserve biodiversity. Similarly, education programmes and extension services provide motivational incentives to conserve biodiversity. Conservation strategies determine priorities and provide direction, and various tax concessions, aid and compensation schemes provide financial incentives for conservation. However, the effectiveness of these mechanisms is not known, and there are many "perverse incentives" in place which may counter such efforts.

Policy and Strategy

Government is aware of the need to pursue innovative approaches to prevent the further loss of biodiversity in South Africa, and is of the opinion that regulatory approaches are a necessary, but insufficient mechanism to ensure biodiversity conservation. In conjunction with legislation, the use of economic instruments as well as non-fiscal incentives such as education and tenure reform, are considered important mechanisms to be used for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, and the promotion of new uses of biological resources. In introducing new incentives, Government will give consideration to (a) the need to remove existing incentives that discourage biodiversity conservation (so-called "perverse incentives"); and (b) the need to use an array of different instruments, based upon bioregional and social characteristics as well as the nature of the threat to biodiversity, to encourage biodiversity conservation in different areas.

Government recognises that there are several initiatives underway in other policy processes which are considering the introduction of incentives and disincentives (e.g. taxes, levies) related to the conservation and use of natural resources. Such proposals will be coordinated and streamlined to ensure that Government adopts a uniform, and rational approach to the introduction of incentives and disincentives.

Government acknowledges that insufficient financial resources are presently invested in conserving biodiversity and ensuring its sustainable use. As the custodian of a national asset, and party to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the State recognises its responsibility to increase, through a number of external and internal financing mechanisms, the financial resources necessary to achieve the goals of this policy.

To achieve the objective, Government, in collaboration with interested and affected parties, will:

1. Optimise the use of existing funds allocated for conservation-related activities, based upon identified priorities for biodiversity conservation (see Chapter 4).
2. Identify and progressively remove incentives that encourage the loss of biodiversity and the unsustainable, inefficient, and inequitable use of biological resources, taking into consideration social, economic and environmental costs and benefits.
3. Maintain, adjust or develop new financial and other incentives that support the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, and stimulate local stewardship of terrestrial, aquatic and marine and coastal areas.
4. Investigate and institute innovative mechanisms to raise new finances for biodiversity conservation, including:
   1. the use of taxes, levies, and charges linked to activities directly using and/or affecting biodiversity, to generate revenue for biodiversity conservation;
   2. the establishment of a Biodiversity Trust Fund;
   3. royalties generated through biodiversity prospecting activities; and
   4. the introduction of conditions and incentives (e.g. tax relief) to strengthen the involvement of the private sector in the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.
5. Develop measures that would enhance the capacity of existing conservation agencies in both the public and private sector to receive, generate, invest and employ funds to promote their objectives, and to enter into contractual arrangements with private landowners.
6. Support efforts of the Land Reform Programme to encourage investment in land resources through extending security of tenure to all South Africans.
7. Support the development of methods to determine the social, economic, and environmental values of biodiversity, and the application of such methods to support the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

GOAL 6:
PROMOTE THE CONSERVATION AND SUSTAINABLE USE OF BIODIVERSITY AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL

Policy and Strategy

Government recognises that the conservation of biodiversity is a global issue, requiring global action. Countries depend upon each other's biodiversity, and the loss of biodiversity represents a loss to all people. Moreover, the impacts of ecosystem degradation reach beyond national boundaries, requiring transfrontier cooperation to be a necessary component of this policy.

In ratifying the Convention on Biodiversity, Government demonstrated a commitment to safeguarding the planet's biotic wealth, recognising that the conservation of global biodiversity is a common concern of all nations. This commitment is reflected in the active participation of South Africa in the range of international agreements to which the country is a party, and in numerous other scientific and technical collaborations. Nonetheless, years of political isolation from the international community have meant that South Africa must strengthen efforts to cooperate on environmental matters at the international level. In addition to global cooperation, Government will continue to work as a member of the Africa group in international forums, of the Organisation of African Unity, and of the Southern African Development Community, to solve the problems of biodiversity loss on the continent and in the region, and to advance the interests of Africa internationally.

To achieve the objective, Government, in collaboration with interested and affected parties, will:

1. Review the status of South Africa's participation in all bilateral and multilateral agreements relevant to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, and ensure that activities undertaken are mutually supportive and harmonised.
2. Promote the effective implementation of existing international agreements of relevance to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, and in particular the Convention o International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Flora (CITES), the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, Especially as Waterfowl Habitat (the "Ramsar Convention"), and the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals.
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   1. Actively participate in new agreements and arrangements that are relevant to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, and that are in keeping with the needs and priorities of South Africa's people;
   2. Promote the speedy ratification of agreements relevant to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity to which South Africa is a signatory (e.g. The World Heritage Convention, the Convention to Combat Desertification, the Framework Convention on Climate Change); and
   3. Support the participation of civil society in negotiations and discussions concerning the development and ratification of new international agreements.
4. Support efforts to establish a Southern African regional forum to consider biodiversity issues of relevance to the region, including international funding, transfrontier conservation initiatives, regional approaches to regulate access to genetic resources, joint management strategies, regional tourism linkages, and bioregional approaches to environmental management.
5. Maintain and strengthen South Africa's participation in multilateral efforts concerned with the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, through international organisations such as the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, the United Nations Environment Programme, UNESCO, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the International Maritime Organisation, the Global Environment Facility, the World Conservation Union, as well as through various international programmes.
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   1. Encourage collaboration among the private sector, research institutions, government and non-governmental organisations, and communities to promote the transfer of environmentally sound technologies; and
   2. Identify and implement steps to remove impediments to technology transfer.
7. Compile a national inventory of all governmental and non-governmental areas of international cooperation concerning the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, with a view to identifying gaps in cooperation and strengthening existing efforts.
8. Enhance international collaboration in scientific and technical research related to biodiversity.
9. Promote and support the development of educational and training courses, workshops, and other professional development exercises on biodiversity management of relevance to the southern African region and other developing countries.
10. Pursue external financing sources through bilateral and multilateral agencies, the Global Environment Facility, and the private sector, to secure funding for programmes and projects identified as priorities by the South African community.

In accordance with the Constitution, encourage the participation of non-governmental organisations in international fore convened to report on and discuss existing agreements relating to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, and in international efforts to implement the Convention.

Chapter 4