Conservation Farming with Biodiversity in South Africa: A Preliminary Evaluation of Ecosystem Goods and Services in the Bokkeveld Plateau

Abstract

Much of the worlds biological diversity exists outside of a formal protected reserve network, often on land that is managed for some form of agricultural production and the maintenance of rural livelihoods. Effective biodiversity conservation will therefore require innovative ways to merge the needs of farmers and rural communities with the need to conserve globally significant biodiversity. One of the key questions in this process is who actually benefits from biodiversity conservation. If farmers and rural communities do not benefit from biodiversity conservation, then society needs to provide incentives to achieve conservation objectives on agricultural lands. However, farmers and rural communities rely on healthy ecosystems to provide goods and services to sustain agricultural production (Pagiola et al. 1997) and to improve their quality of life, and the maintenance of healthy ecosystems may also provide benefits for biodiversity conservation. An important first step is to identify and promote conservation farming practices that can meet both these needs.