South Africa is one of the 100+ countries to adopt the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems standards globally. The IUCN RLE is a global standard that provides a consistent approach across different realms for identifying ecosystems at risk of losing their biotic and abiotic features such that the native biota can no longer be sustained. It is designed to complement the existing Red List of Species standards as an important informant in reducing or even halting the rates of biodiversity loss. Its rapid uptake has been supported by numerous high-impact scientific publications focusing on the RLE concepts and implementation. In addition, preliminary desktop assessments have been conducted in many parts of the world including Africa. These RLE assessment efforts are aligned with the global monitoring, assessment, and reporting processes linked to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At a national scale, the goal of these assessments are to guide a wide range of environmental processes, including spatial planning and biodiversity prioritisation interventions.
Figure 1: Key components of the IUCN RLE standards
South Africa is one of several countries to independently develop indicators of ecosystem threat status prior to the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems (RLE) which dates as far back as the early 2000s. These indicators met a recognised need for an indicator similar to the IUCN Red List of Species that could identify risks for higher-levels of biodiversity organisation such as ecological communities. This indicator was implemented across all realms (terrestrial, marine, freshwater, and estuarine) including coastal ecosystems to paint a holistic picture of how well the country is performing in averting biodiversity loss at an ecosystem level.
Having adopted the ecosystem threat status indicator more than a decade ago, it progressed into a legislated national listing of threatened terrestrial ecosystems. A phased approach of gazetting the national list of ecosystems was adopted, starting with terrestrial ecosystems. This decision was largely informed by the availability of the well-established wall-to-wall terrestrial ecosystem map that serves as baseline data for conducting red-listing assessments. The gazetting of the national list of threatened ecosystems has strengthened South Africa's environmental policies and legislative frameworks through its entrenchment into various land use planning and decision-making processes (e.g. through the Environmental Impact Assessment processes) to enhance long-term positive changes towards combating the rates of biodiversity loss.
In South Africa, the adoption process of the IUCN RLE was first rolled out between 2017 and 2018 where all 456 terrestrial ecosystems were assessed to determine how close terrestrial ecosystems are to collapse. This new list has since been published in the Government Gazette ( Gazette Number 47526, Notice Number 2747) and it came into effect on 18 November 2022. The 2022 “National list of terrestrial ecosystems that are threatened and in need of protection” serves as a replacement for the former list published in 2011 in terms of NEMBA (Government Gazette 34809:1002). This transition was largely informed by the difference in the applied assessment methodologies, the significant improvements of the ecosystem type map over the years, and the use of land cover change data in the 2022 assessments. The formal adoption of the IUCN RLE standards has since stablised the assessment methodology, awarding the country with an opportunity to now report on trends of risk of ecosystem collapse. Materials such as published peer-reviewed papers, summary of threatened ecosystems, gazette notice, implementation guidance note, and spatial datasets can be accessed at http://ecosystemstatus.sanbi.org.za.
See our contact details below:
Maphale Monyeki (RLE scientist) - M.Monyeki@sanbi.org.za
Andrew Skowno (NBA lead) - A.Skowno@sanbi.org
