The success of the biodiversity planning project will be measured by how effectively the products are used and therefore time and energy needs to be dedicated to incorporating the products into the policies, decisions and actions of a wide-range of other sectors. Products have often been successfully incorporated where stakeholders have been involved from the beginning of the process and help guide the production of the products to meet the needs of the end-users.
INSERT IMAGES ON THE RIGHT
Posters produced for the Mpumalanga Biodiversity Conservation Plan (left) and the Eastern Cape Biodiversity Conservation Plan (right).
There are a wide range of users of systematic biodiversity plans including the following:
Provincial environmental departments and conservation agencies, to streamline environmental decision-making using the best available information and to identify and prioritize protected area expansion.
Municipalities, to strengthen forward planning (e.g. SDFs) and improve day-to-day decision-making that impacts on natural resources.
Department of Agriculture, to inform agricultural authorizations such as ploughing and subdivision applications.
Department of Minerals & Energy, to inform decisions about prospecting and mining licences.
Developers, to inform project planning so that conflicts between development and biodiversity can be avoided.
EIA consultants, to inform environmental assessments.
Planning consultants, to incorporate critical biodiversity areas into SDFs and other sector plans.
Working for Water and Working for Wetlands, to help prioritise alien clearing and wetland rehabilitation.
Catchment Management Agencies, to inform allocation of scarce water resources and management of land in priority catchments.
Welcome to Biodiversity Advisor 2.0!
Biodiversity Advisor, developed by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and its Data Partners, is a system that will provide integrated biodiversity information to a wide range of users who will have access to geospatial data, plant and animal species distribution data, ecosystem-level data, literature, images and metadata.
The integrated information comes from our much-loved Botanical Database of Southern Africa (BODATSA) also known as Plants of Southern Africa (POSA), Zoological Database of Southern Africa (ZODATSA), Biodiversity Geographic Information System (BGIS), SANBI's institutional repository (Opus) and others.
The system is still under development, so you may find a few bugs/issues. If you do, please report it via the error reporting button available in various sections of the website or provide us with any useful feedback you may have via the ‘Give us feedback’ option available in the sidebar menu. You can create a free account for yourself by clicking on the user profile icon which will take you through to the login page. Here you can choose the ‘Create an account’ option or simply fill in your details if you have an account already. Having an account on Biodiversity Advisor will provide users with free access to biodiversity resources.
In future, Team SANBI will be able to log in using their day-to-day login details, BGIS users will be able to use their existing accounts and details, and general users will be able to log in using their LinkedIn profile, but for now you will need to create an account.
