Director of Ceremonies, Professor Paul Skelton
Dr Albert van Jaarsveld, President of the NRF
Dr Saleem Badat, Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes University
Professor Tebello Nyokong, Member of the NRF Board
Distinguished guests
I’m delighted to be here with you today to open the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity’s new library and to share some thoughts with you.
Let me begin by paying tribute to Professor JLB Smith and Prof. Margaret Smith and to recognise their important personal contribution to the study of fish.
In particular, I wish to recognise the important contribution made by Professor Margaret Smith both to the essential knowledge infrastructure that enhances South Africa’s ongoing contribution to the field of ichthyology and to the primary challenge of building and developing future generations of scientists.
How many fish are there in the sea? This is a question I often asked my parents as a child. I was also curious about the number of stars in the sky. I thought I could count the stars, but I was stumped by fish.
A couple of months ago a group of marine scientists counted the species of fish in the sea. It took them ten years. But they did it. And now we know that there are more than 230,000 species in our oceans.
It is not quite the same as knowing the number of fish in the sea, but it is better than knowing no numbers at all.
And they suggest that for every species known, there are four others unknown.
Of course, it was only 10 years ago that you found a population of Coelacanths living in the deepwater off Sodwana, one of our most well frequented coastal areas in the country, some 60 years after Professor Smith found the first one.
The coelacanth, the remarkable “fossil fish” so closely associated with the Aquatic Institute, dates back over 400 million years.
The coelacanths are our only known, living link to pre-historic life on earth.
Their discovery launched a scientific rocket into the research of marine life.
The South African coastal and marine environment is one our most important assets.
It plays the major role in regulating our climate, has tremendous natural biodiversity and supports numerous communities through fisheries, tourism and mining.
The marine environment is the most threatened of all on earth at this point in time. Marine resources are under increasing stress and pressures from a wide range of human activities, as the recent Deepwater Oil Rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico reminds us.
And global warming is affecting the marine environment with sometimes devastating consequences for people – as when widespread coral bleaching occurred following extraordinary high sea temperatures.
This year is, as I’m sure you all know, the UN’s International Year of Biodiversity.
Next month, in a much signalled report, the UN is to make a powerful economic case for global action to stop the destruction of the natural world. It has already been compared to the Stern report. Some of you will remember that in 2007 Nicolas Stern wrote a report on climate change for the British Treasury in which he argued that a 2 percent spend of global wealth now would reap a 5 to 20 return in the longer term.
In a similar vein, the biodiversity report will apparently argue that the economic value of saving the natural world – so that we have fertile soil, and clean air and water – is even more persuasive than the argument for acting on climate change.
In fact, as Ahmed Djoghlaf, the secretary-general of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity says, climate change and protecting biodiversity are two sides of the same coin. “Climate change cannot be solved without action on biodiversity, and vice versa."
The diversity of life is crucial to our health, wealth and well-being.
The message is clear. We need to cherish the natural world and not to destroy it. Communities should be paid, the UN will suggest, to conserve the resources that swim in the sea. A network of protected areas would cost something like $45 billion a year, but the benefits of preserving biodiversity would run into the trillions.
South Africa is the third most biodiverse country in the world, with between 250 000 and a million species of organisms, most of which occur nowhere else in the world.
Science and technology initiatives to support and conserve our rich biodiversity have always been a major area of focus for the Department of Science and Technology.
Some of the important initiatives supported by the department include the South African Biosystematics Initiative (SABI), the South African Biodiversity Information Facility (SABIF), the Biobank South Africa, managed by the National Zoological Gardens at the NRF, and the South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON).
And of course, the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB), the Elwandle Node of the South African Environmental Observation Network and the African Coelacanth Ecosystem Programme or ACEP.
Ladies and gentlemen, libraries are at the heart of a university.
We mark today the launch of a library, which is the product of a long and close history between Rhodes University and the Institute. The partnership here is one where the Institute provides both staff and housing and the university providing a subsidy, the library ‘system’ and much of the actual content.
I understand that this new facility is part of the on-going refurbishment programme of the Institute’s building. The new library is fitting recognition of the Institute’s national prominence. It marks a significant contribution to the advancement of science in South Africa, and the documenting of the country’s knowledge and resources in aquatic biodiversity.
As a shared facility with the Rhodes University, the Margaret Smith Library has access to online electronic information resources, which greatly enhance researchers’ access to international literature.
The Library is a resource for students registered at all the region’s universities: Rhodes, Fort Hare, Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. It will serve scientists, researchers and institutes working in the fields of aquatic biodiversity, drawing interest and participation from across South Africa, the African continent and abroad.
In closing, I would like to thank you for making time to be part of this celebration.
I declare the new facility, the Margaret Smith Library officially open.
Thank you.
