Key Biodiversity Areas in Africa

Abstract

The destruction of natural habitats remains a key driver of biodiversity loss and is accelerating despite increased responses by the conservation community in recent decades. Pinpointing sites of particular importance for biodiversity to guide conservation efforts and inform development decisions has become ever more urgent, but such spatial planning is hamstrung in many African countries by a lack of data and capacity. An umbrella standard for the identification of Key Biodiversity Areas was launched at the 2016 World Conservation Congress, along with a partnership of 11 (now 12) international conservation organisations to support this identification. The quantitative, thresholdbased criteria in the global KBA standard can be used to identify sites in terrestrial, freshwater and marine environments that contribute significantly to the global persistence of threatened biodiversity, geographically restricted biodiversity, ecological integrity, biological processes, and sites of high irreplaceability.KBA identification is a bottom-up process, largely driven by local organisations and experts, essential to ensure the future safeguard and conservation of these sites. KBA data, stored on the World Database of Key Biodiversity Areas, are being used in many different ways to promote biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. These include guiding the strategic expansion and strengthening of protected area networks by governments and civil society as they work to achieve Aichi Target 11 and the Sustainable Development Goals; informing private sector safeguard policies, environmental standards, certification schemes, and biodiversity financing; and supporting conservation planning and priority-setting at national, regional and local levels.African countries, such as South Africa, Mozambique, Uganda and Kenya are at the forefront of developing functional KBA processes to support the identification of KBAs through local expertise and knowledge. However, data on species and ecosystems, and institutional capacity and resources remain a challenge for many African countries to effectively identify the most important sites for biodiversity, and to mainstream these into spatial planning. Through the KBA Partnership, and through projects such as Biodiversity Assessment for Spatial Planning in African (BASPA), African countries are being supported to overcome these challenges and improve their biodiversity planning and spatial prioritisation.