M Mangena: Annual Congress of Society for Conservation Biology

2 July 2007

Programme Director
Distinguished guests and delegates
Ladies and gentlemen

South Africa is truly honoured to host the 21st Annual Meeting of the
Society for Conservation Biology. Ours is an exceptionally diverse country, not
only in terms of our people's languages and culture, but also in terms of our
biological resources. South Africa occupies about two percent of the world's
land area, but is also home to nearly ten percent of the world's plants and
seven percent of the reptiles, birds and mammals.

We have three globally recognised biodiversity hotspots; the Cape Floristic
Region, which falls entirely within our boundaries; the Succulent Karoo, shared
with our neighbour Namibia and Maputaland-Pondoland, shared with Mozambique and
Swaziland.

Our seas straddle both the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans and include an
exceptional range of habitats from cool-water kelp forests to tropical coral
reefs. The southern African coast, in particular, is home to almost 15% of
known coastal marine species, providing a rich source of nutrition and
supporting livelihoods of coastal communities. This unique biological diversity
is an asset of local, national and international value.

In addition, South Africa is one of the three most biologically diverse
countries in the world, containing between 250 000 and one million species of
organisms, most of which occur nowhere else in the world. The abundance and
diversity of our biological resources is one of the key defining features of
our country. It is, therefore, a fitting tribute to South Africa that this 21st
Congress is held on our shores this year to celebrate our conservation efforts
and biological diversity.

Delegates to this Congress would also remember that the Nepad Science and
Technology Consolidated Plan of Action, adopted in Dakar in 2005, places
Africa's biodiversity at the centre of the continent's economic and social
transformation. Indeed, our biodiversity has enormous potential for
transforming Africa's agricultural and industrial activities into systems that
can contribute enormously to economic change and poverty reduction. Africa is
home to a large number of unique species of plants and animals, as well as
ecosystems constituting the continent's natural wealth.

Nevertheless, what remains cause for concern is that this biodiversity is
being lost at an alarming rate, making conservation and promotion of the
sustainable use of our biodiversity one of the pressing challenges that African
countries have committed themselves to addressing. This is manifested, among
other things, by the number of countries that have ratified the United Nations
Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD) and its Cartagena Protocol on
Bio-safety and such regional treaties as the African Convention on the
Conservation of Nature, commonly known as the Algiers Convention.

This then brings us to the next point: in order to conserve and use
biodiversity in a sustainable manner, African countries will need to optimally
harness and apply science and technology. This is because conservation and
sustainable use are knowledge-intensive activities and they cannot be attained
without investments in the generation of new scientific knowledge and the
application of technological innovation.

That is why the Nepad framework document on biodiversity and the UNCBD
explicitly recognise this reality. For example, the UNCBD contains specific
provisions on the need to strengthen scientific and technological capacities
for conservation and further calls on contracting parties to invest in research
and innovation to generate technologies for conservation and sustainable use of
biodiversity. Article nine of this UN Convention focuses particularly on
strengthening ex situ conservation, while Article 12 is about research and
training with an emphasis on the need to establish programmes for scientific
and technical training.

On the other hand, the Nepad framework commits African countries to
establishing regional networks of centres of excellence in science for
conservation and sustainable use of the continent's biodiversity. This is to be
welcomed, given the valid concern worldwide that human activities such as
habitat destruction, overexploitation and pollution are resulting in the
ever-increasing loss of the earth's biological resources.

No one here can dispute that we stand to lose crucial life-support systems
through the loss of important habitats; we undermine rural livelihoods when we
destroy the natural resource base on which people depend and ruin economic
opportunities, when options for developing medicines and foods are reduced and
the natural resource base for ecotourism is damaged.

We understand that currently, the rate at which the world's biodiversity
loss is happening is anything between 100 and 1 000 times higher than ever
before in the history of the earth. Many species are disappearing without ever
being named. This congress will therefore need to urgently address the drivers
of biodiversity loss, including habitat destruction, over-harvesting, pollution
and inappropriate introduction of exotic plants and animals. We also need to
address the imminent threat of global climate change, which in South Africa, is
predicted to have the potential of driving thousands of species to extinction
in the next 50 to 80 years.

Distinguished delegates, a range of now well known commitments were made
during the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg in
2002. One of these was the endorsement of the objectives of the UNCBD and a
commitment to reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. We need to
translate this commitment into the actions needed to ensure that our crucial
life support systems are not further eroded.

In this context, my department has a responsibility to support research
efforts in areas requiring a multi-disciplinary effort and those in fields
where the research outputs have strategic importance for a number of different
sector departments and local governments in investment planning. This is
particularly the case where research efforts also have a strong likelihood of
impacting on future science-based information demands, such as information
based on long-term environmental research that is undertaken by the South
African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON) Programme.

Among other things, our National Research and Development Strategy (NRDS)
recognises the natural resource advantage South Africa holds as one of the few
Mega-Bio-diverse countries in the world and has thus established a 'Science
Mission' focusing on the research, science and technology (S&T)
infrastructure and S&T human capital development in the area of
biodiversity. My department recognises the Biodiversity Science Mission as one
of the priority areas.

Accordingly, the department has established a few key interventions to
promote scientific research within the environmental sciences field, in
particular, the biodiversity area. It is to these that I shall now turn our
attention to.

1. The South African Biodiversity Information Facility (SABIF)

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is a mega-science
facility, which was established in 2001, through collaborations among countries
and international organisations. Its aim is to make the world's biodiversity
data freely and openly available on the internet. South Africa became a voting
participant of GBIF in April 2003, thus committing itself to establishing
national nodes that are linked to GBIF.

My department undertook to work through its research grant funding agency,
the National Research Foundation, to establish the local node to the GBIF in
the form of the South African Biodiversity Information Facility (SABIF).
Launched in June 2005, the SABIF represents a partnership of more than four
South African data providers, including other role players such as the Council
for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South African Integrated Spatial
Information System (SA-ISIS), South African Society for Systematic Biology
(SASSB), Endangered Wildlife Trust, Bio-bank South Africa or Wildlife
Biodiversity Resources, the Biomap initiative and museums.

Through the SABIF, our country will be able to respond to pertinent
biodiversity challenges through innovative applications of Information
Technology. Key to the operations of SABIF, are the data providers and their
associated databases. Four data providers have long signed the SABIF data
sharing agreements and thereby agreeing to openly and freely sharing their
biodiversity data through the SABIF Portal. These data providers include the
Avian Demography of the University of Cape Town, the South African Institute
for Aquatic Biodiversity, the Albany and Iziko Museums.

We are proud of the work that the SABIF is doing in contributing to South
Africa�s sustainable development by facilitating access to biodiversity and
related information on the internet. The SABIF will continue to contribute to a
co-ordinated international scientific effort to enable users throughout the
world to discover and put to use vast quantities of global biodiversity data.
In this way, it will advance scientific research in many disciplines, promote
technological and sustainable development, facilitate the equitable sharing of
the benefits of biodiversity, and enhance the quality of life of many of our
citizens.

2. South African Biosystematics Initiative (Sabi)

The South African Biosystematics Initiative, which was established in 2002,
aims to take a leading role in the application of innovative approaches to
systematics and taxonomy as fundamental sciences underpinning biological
research. In this way, it plans to unlock the full potential of South Africa's
biological and human resources through the enhanced practice of bio-systematic
science and to use modern technology to build on an existing rich historical
scientific legacy, including indigenous knowledge systems.

Some of Sabi's primary objectives include the establishment of a framework
and strategy to:

* address the diminishing national capacity in biological systematics and
taxonomy
* provide leadership and co-ordination to promote innovative research in the
field of biosystematics
* empower South African bio-systematics to employ and develop modern scientific
technologies and approaches with regard to the documentation and use of
biological resources
* enhance the ability of South African biosystematics to contribute to the
national System of Innovation and the information society, and thus respond to
national priorities in agriculture, health, sustainable development and
conservation
* assist the broader scientific community and government to fulfil national and
global biodiversity-related commitments
* Promote awareness about the importance of biosystematics research in the
broader community through education and outreach projects.

3. South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON)

As already alluded to, the South African Environmental Observation Network
(SAEON) is a facility of our National Research Foundation whose main aim is to
establish and maintain nodes, that is, environmental observatories, field
stations and sites, linked by an information management network to serve as
research and education platforms for long-term studies of ecosystems, in order
to provide for incremental advances in our understanding of ecosystems and our
ability to detect, predict and react to environmental changes.

As delegates to this meeting would attest, natural systems influenced by
human activity are complex to understand, and current South African research
efforts are typically based on short-term and small scale-observations of
environmental changes. The SAEON recognises that many environmental processes
that are essential to human well-being and life on earth tend to change slowly.
If one is hoping to detect the so-called �noise in the signal� while the
observation record is short, detection becomes impossible; and even worse and
the wrong conclusion can be made, possibly with disastrous consequences.

For these reasons, a country needs long-term, large-scale,
multi-disciplinary ecosystem research programmes to be able to detect slow or
sudden changes in the context of the ubiquitous variability within and among
ecosystems. This is important to government as it feeds directly into policies
and management actions that affect current and future generations.

The SAEON satisfies this need for public-decision support by generating
long-term information relevant to the sustainable management of our natural
resources and habitats over a spectrum of eco-regions and land uses, ranging
from pristine to urbanisation transformed landscapes.

4. Wildlife Biodiversity Resources or Bio-bank South Africa

With the growing global market in biomaterials and biodiversity informatics,
developing countries like ours, especially those that are recognised as
�mega-diverse countries, face the enormous challenges of setting up systems for
governing access to biodiversity and the sustainable utilisation of their
biodiversity heritage. The biosciences field is recognised as the driving force
behind the next revolutionary wave of scientific and technological advancement.
It is, therefore, critical to position our country and continent strategically
if we want to derive maximum benefits from this important resource.

Moreover, bio-banking facilities (gene-banks) are increasingly becoming a
key strategic research infrastructure for countries worldwide. Their importance
in the conservation and sustainable utilisation of biodiversity has, amongst
others, been emphasised in the Consolidated Plan of Action for Science and
Technology we earlier referred to.

This realisation led to our collaboration with Wildlife Biodiversity or
Bio-bank South Africa to help us facilitate, through its member organisations,
an integrated and coordinated drive to access, collect, enhance and bank a
representative range of biomaterials from key South African and African
wildlife and indigenous livestock species for conservation, research and
biotechnology development purposes. Naturally, this facility also provides
general custodianship to South Africa's wildlife biomaterial and or genetic
resources.

5. National Public Assets: Genebanks

The National Public Assets: Genebanks, which my department, together with
the Agricultural Research Council (ARC), is supporting for the maintenance,
management and development of National Public Assets for the benefit of the
broader science community, are our Agricultural Public Good Assets. They are
our national repositories of genetic information and terrestrial data related
to the environment, and include the specimens of and facilities that house all
insects, Arachnids, Nematodes, Fungi and various other gene-banks.

As a country, South Africa has international obligations that compel it to
keep reference collections of all agricultural specimens with respect to the
import and export of agricultural produce. The National Collections and
Genebanks, therefore, house these reference collections, and make an important
contribution to scientific studies, biodiversity replenishment, sustainable
development and production, food security and invader pest identification.
Moreover, these collections and gene-banks provide beneficial and pathogenic
microbial strains to other researchers, and provide critical diagnostic support
to the government phyto-sanitory services.

In a nutshell, this is the essence of South Africa's role in the
conservation and promotion of our biodiversity for the greater preservation and
perpetuation of species, human life and our environment. We are convinced that
the proceedings of this meeting and the resolutions reached by the delegates
will no doubt promote the interest of our continent and all the inhabitants of
the world. Finally, it is now my singular pleasure and privilege to declare the
21st Annual Congress of the Society for Conservation Biology officially
opened.

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Science and Technology
2 July 2007