Volume II - The Northern Cape Provincial Spatial Development ...

Northern Cape PSDF
Volume 2
C.3 BIODIVERSITY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
December 2011
As stated in Volume 1, the PSDF recognises that natural biodiversity 5 is essential to human
survival. On the genetic level, for example, biodiversity underpins the development of
cultivated food crops varieties and animal breeds. Many of the Northern Cape’s people have
livelihoods dependent on direct use of species, including the gathering, harvesting or
hunting of animals and plants for food, medicine, shelter, fuel and fibre (Wynberg, 2002).
Ecosystem services such as the maintenance of soil fertility, climate regulation and natural
pest control, as well as intangible benefits such as aesthetic and cultural values, all support
human activity and sustain human life (Chapin et al, 2002). Biodiversity provides a variety of
environmental services, including the regulation of the gaseous composition of the
atmosphere, protection of coastal zones, regulation of the hydrological cycle and climate,
generation and conservation of fertile soils, dispersal and breakdown of wastes, pollination
of many crops, and absorption of pollutants. Biodiversity is no longer an issue confined to
conservation and wildlife proponents, rather its importance to farmers, to indigenous people
and their livelihoods, to human rights, political dispensations and global trade issues, is now
well recognised (CSIR, 2004).
According to the Northern Cape State of the Environment Report (2004), a rational and
consolidated system of formally protected areas is essential to ensure effective conservation
of biodiversity. Current trends indicate that a landscape or regional approach to
conservation is more effective than designing conservation efforts around protecting
individual species (DEAT, 2001). Such an approach is effective if the designated protected
areas are located in areas that contribute to the representation of the local/regional
biodiversity (Margules and Pressey, 2000). Within South Africa the existing protected area
system poorly represents biodiversity patterns and processes. As many as 50 of of South
Africa’s 68 vegetation types are less than 10% conserved.
C.3.1 FLORA
The five biomes 6 that occur in the Northern Cape are illustrated and decribed below (refer
to Map C.8):
C.3.1.1 NAMA KAROO BIOME
The Nama Karoo Biome is dominated by grassy, dwarf shrubland and covers 25% of the land
surface of South Africa and more than 50% of that of the Northern Cape Province. Within
this biome grasses (hemicryptophytes) tend to be more common in landscape depressions
5
The Convention on Biological Diversity defines it as ’the variability among living organisms from all
sources including terrestrial, marine, and other aquatic ecosystems, and the ecological complexes of which
they are part; this includes diversity within, and between, species and of ecosystems’.
6
A group of ecosystems, which may differ considerably in the species they contain, but function in
ecologically similar ways. In practice, although biomes contain both plants and animals, for purposes of
identifying biomes and mapping them, the vegetation type is used to define the biome boundaries.
Biomes are classified according to their predominant vegetation. Biomes are defined by factors such as
plant structures (such as trees, shrubs, and grasses), leaf types (such as broadleaf and needleleaf), plant
spacing (forest, woodland, savanna), and climate.
Office of the Premier &
Department of Rural Development & Land Reform
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Dennis Moss Partnership