OTHER EFFECTIVE AREA-BASED CONSERVATION MEASURES (OECMs) AND WHY THEY ARE IMPORTANT

by Romy Antrobus-Wuth

South Africa is a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which is an agreement between countries from all around the world based on natural and biological resources. The CBD has three main goals: to protect biodiversity; to use biodiversity without destroying it; and, to share any benefits from genetic diversity equally. To assist nations, the CBD sets various conservation targets and time periods that countries should strive to reach.

Aichi Target 11 of the CBD Strategic Plan for 2011-2020 calls on countries to achieve 17% coverage of terrestrial areas and 10% of marine areas through protected areas and “other effective area-based conservation measures”. While protected areas like national parks and nature reserves are easy to identify and report on, how do nations go about measuring Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures or OECMs?

Just because an area is not recognised as a protected area (in terms of the Protected Areas Act), does not mean that it is not making a valuable contribution to biodiversity conservation. OECMs are intended to work in conjunction with protected areas within a landscape, allowing for alternative options to contribute to conservation. This allows for more inclusive conservation approaches.

BirdLife South Africa, in partnership with the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries (DEFF), the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and the Kruger to Canyons Biosphere Region, is currently conducting a project to create an assessment tool to help identify OECMs in the South African context. South Africa is one of the leading countries in the world with regards to protected area legislation, biodiversity planning and reporting, and we hope that this project will assist in keeping South Africa at the forefront of conservation policy in the international arena. It will provide guidance to authorities reporting to the CBD on our conservation targets, while producing a template for other countries to apply and test in their own contexts.

The novel assessment tool is being tested on the ground within the Kruger to Canyons Biosphere region, which has a patchwork of different land uses and conservation measures ranging from undeveloped military land to communal grazing areas and private eco-tourism properties. Many of these properties are making a meaningful contribution to conservation, despite conservation not being their primary focus. The map below showing the case study pilot sites within the K2C, in relation to protected areas and key biodiversity areas (KBAs), indicates how OECMs can be used to create corridors to “link” protected areas in a landscape and conserve important biodiversity.

With the majority of South Africa being owned by private landowners and communities, reaching conservation targets purely within protected areas is unlikely. While South Africa has not yet reached the goal set by Aichi Target 11 (we currently protect about 8%), we may be much closer to the goal if we knew how to identify and report on what constitutes an OECM. This is an issue which countries across the globe are grappling with.

We hope that the formal recognition of OECMs in the future will allow for many landowners within the K2C Biosphere Region, outside of the formal protected area network, to meaningfully contribute to South Africa’s (and the world’s) conservation targets.