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Holistic Biodiversity Conservation in the Anthropocene: A Southern African Perspective

Document Cited authorities 1 Cited in Related
Vincent
Published date01 February 2019
DOI10.3366/ajicl.2019.0260
Author
Pages76-99
Date01 February 2019
INTRODUCTION

There seems to be general agreement that the world is experiencing a global socio-ecological crisis. The currency of popular terms such as ‘climate crisis’, ‘environmental refugees’ and ‘water wars’ is convincing evidence of the existence of the deepening crisis, as are the statistics contained in various international environmental reports such as the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Global Environmental Outlook 5; UNEP's Vital Water Graphics: An Overview of the State of the World's Fresh and Marine Waters; the Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) State of the World's Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture: Managing Systems at Risk; and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biodiversity's Global Biodiversity Outlook 3.1 Virtually all global environmental indicators show that the Earth system has entered a critically unstable and unpredictable state.2 It is in this context that scientists have recently suggested that we have entered a potentially apocalyptic people-dominated geological epoch called the Anthropocene. The term-of-art Anthropocene was first introduced in 2000 to express the geological significance of anthropogenic change.3 Emphasising the central role of mankind as a major driving force in modifying the biosphere, the term, while still not formally accepted as delineating a new geological epoch, suggests that the Earth is rapidly moving into a critically unstable state, with Earth systems gradually becoming less predictable, less stable and less harmonious as a result of the global human imprint on the biosphere.4 In stark contrast to the relatively harmonious Holocene (still officially viewed as the current epoch), the implications of the coinage of the term Anthropocene are that we have entered a period of unprecedented global socio-ecological disorder precipitated by avoidable human action.

A major concern of those aware of this global socio-ecological crisis is the steady loss of global biodiversity as a result of preventable human action. The realisation that further loss of biodiversity is likely to exacerbate the conditions that are leading to a state shift in the biosphere5 suggests that the governance of people and their institutions, including the institution of law, should now be very closely intertwined with endeavours to protect all forms of life on Earth, including the biological diversity that sustains all of this life.6 Law, after all, ‘is [and continues to be] deeply implicated in the systems that have caused the end to the Holocene, and at once is central also to the reforms needed to cope with the emerging Anthropocene.’7 Law has contributed to enabling a multitude of actions and events (some of which are related to biodiversity loss) which are implicated in bringing about the Anthropocene, such as the enclosure of the commons; the colonial dispossession of indigenous peoples; land grabbing practices in the context of foreign agricultural investment; continuing corporate neo-colonialism and the resulting ecological destruction; and asymmetrically distributed patterns of advantage and disadvantage that prevail in society.8 Another contentious aspect of law and consequently of governance that drives biodiversity loss is fragmentation, which is the main focus of our present inquiry.

The Convention on Biological Diversity, 1992 (CBD) defines biodiversity as:9

the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems.

The CBD's preambular provisions acknowledge that biodiversity is crucial for evolution and for maintaining the life-sustaining systems of the biosphere; biodiversity has intrinsic ecological, genetic, social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic value; and biodiversity conservation is a common concern of all humankind.10 Biodiversity clearly is essential to sustaining all human and non-human life on Earth, to maintaining ecosystem integrity and health, and to ensuring the stability and resilience of the Earth system. Reflecting on its integrated nature, one concludes that biodiversity is a comprehensive and all-encompassing phenomenon consisting of three main elements: genetic diversity, species diversity and ecosystem diversity.11 Yet biodiversity continues to be governed by fragmented law and governance regimes.12 Biodiversity law and governance is fragmented as a result of the existence of man-made borders that align with distinct sovereign interests, specific jurisdictions and fragmented land use activities that carve up land and its biodiverse resources.13 Fragmentation is also evident in the different political ideologies that inform different political regimes and play out in the design of different laws and governance arrangements. This fragmentation gives rise to the particular social, economic and environmental actions of each state, which together influence the way in which the environment is governed, including the design of regulatory responses to biodiversity governance through the framing of law.14

In response to our perception of the need for the development of a more integrated law and governance model directed at the protection of an integrated biosphere, and as a measure to counter the existing fragmentation, it is our thesis that global biodiversity law and governance should be based on the connectivity conservation approach.15 Connectivity conservation is described as:

actions taken to conserve landscape connectivity, habitat connectivity, ecological connectivity or evolutionary process connectivity for natural and semi-natural lands that interconnect and embed established protected areas. It may be represented by direct interconnections or by the ecological interconnectedness of disjunct conservation areas. The strong connectedness of people to natural and semi-natural connectivity lands is also recognized.16

This description recognises connectivity at two basic levels, i.e. the connectivity of nature (landscapes, habitat and other ecological attributes) and the connectivity of nature and people. In practice, connectivity would ideally require that protected areas within which biodiversity is conserved be linked to restore the natural integrated ecological state of global biodiversity in an interconnected Earth system. While the connectivity debate could occur across various geographical levels, we focus for our present purposes on regional biodiversity governance in Southern Africa. It is our central hypothesis that a holistic approach to biodiversity conservation at this regional level that is based on connectivity conservation might go a long way towards countering the fragmentation of law and governance that is enabling the human encroachment on the environment that has become so urgently evident in the Anthropocene

We accordingly set out to answer the following central question in this article: considering the dire state of biodiversity in the Anthropocene, to what extent could connectivity conservation promote a more integrated approach to biodiversity law and governance in Southern Africa? We do so first by reflecting on the extent of global biodiversity loss in the context of the Anthropocene and by highlighting that this loss and the measures to counter it have become global regulatory concerns. Second, we narrow the geographical focus by briefly investigating biodiversity loss in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), including an analysis of biodiversity law and governance in the SADC and the extent to which this regime is fragmented. Third, with reference to the SADC, we discuss the issue of the fragmentation of law and governance in relation to biodiversity and we highlight how fragmentation manifests and what its causes and consequences are. While section IV investigates the idea of holistic biodiversity conservation, in it we also identify and elaborate some considerations that would require states' attention in an effort to achieve holistic biodiversity conservation in the SADC. These include state sovereignty, the ecosystem approach, sustainable use and good governance.

 CROSSING PLANETARY BOUNDARIES IN THE ANTHROPOCENE: BIODIVERSITY LOSS AS A GLOBAL REGULATORY CONCERN

It was suggested above that one of the defining features of the Anthropocene is the extent to which people are impacting on the Earth. There is evidence today that we have transformed more than three-quarters of the terrestrial biosphere into anthropogenic biomes.17 These anthropogenic transformations of the terrestrial biosphere are ‘causing unprecedented global changes in biodiversity as native species are driven to extinction locally and globally and domestic and exotic species are rapidly becoming established’.18 Such anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity are further reflected in some of the key findings of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of 2005, including:

human actions are fundamentally and to a significant extent irreversibly changing the diversity of life on Earth;

the changes in biodiversity have been more rapid in the past 50 years than at any other time in human history;

almost all ecosystems have now been dramatically transformed through human actions;

across a range of taxonomic groups, the population size and range of the majority of species are declining;

the distribution of species on Earth is becoming less diverse and more homogenous;

the drivers that lead to changes in ecosystem services are increasing in intensity;

the rates of change in biodiversity are projected to continue or to accelerate;

the conversion of natural ecosystems to human-dominated ecosystems is responsible for the current changes in biodiversity; and

the most important direct drivers of biodiversity loss and ecosystem service changes are habitat change, climate change, the...

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