Biodiversity Monitoring
It is one of SANBI's compulsory functions under the National Environmental Management Biodiversity Act (NEMBA) to monitor and report on the status of South Africa's biodiversity. The unit's goal is to design, calculate and distribute statistics on South Africa's biodiversity. This information will be reported to the Minister of Environment Affairs, and can be used by people in the biodiversity sector and the general public to better understand the trends in our biodiversity.
The unit was only established in August 2006. An initial national stakeholder workshop was held in November 2006 to look at an overall framework for biodiversity monitoring and reporting in South Africa. A further workshop was held in January 2007 to look specifically at indicators to monitor the status and trends in species. Workshops were held in 2011 to further refine the indicators and frameworks from these initial discussions.
Proceedings or workshops to download
- Proceedings on Species Indicators Workshop. Pretoria, January 2007
- Proceedings of Workshop on Monitoring Freshwater Biodiversity. Pretoria, October 2007.
- Proceedings of Workshop on National Biodiversity Monitoring & Reporting Framework. November 2007.
- Proceedings of Workshop on Monitoring Marine Biodiversity. Kirstenbosch, September 2007.
Services and Achievements
The unit has successfully launched the SANBI Biodiversity Monitoring Framework and has completed indicators within this framework, however these are still awaiting official publication. The unit has also recently produced a monitoring progress report discussing biodiversity monitoring activities within SANBI.
Link with other programmes in SANBI
The Biodiversity Monitoring Unit has links to all other research and ecosystem programmes such as the Marine Programme and the Threatened Species Programme. The role of the programme is to aggregate and interpret data or information from different programmes and produce simple statistics on a national scale. As such, the unit draws data from existing research and monitoring programmes rather than engaging in on-the-ground data gathering.
Useful links
www.enviroindicator.deat.gov.za
Contact Details
Heather Terrapon (National Biodiversity Monitoring Coordinator)
E-mail: Heather Terrapon
Tel: 021 799 8799
Smiso Bhengu (Biodiversity Monitoring and Reporting Officer)
E-mail: Smiso Bhengu
Tel: 012 843 5231
Nhlanganiso Biyela (GIS Officer)
Email: Nhlanganiso Biyela
Tel: 012 843 5000