SA climate change = extinction
2007-07-02 19:32
Port Elizabeth - Science and Technology Minister Mosibudi Mangena says climate change in South Africa could drive thousands of species to extinction in the next 50 to 80 years.
Mangena was speaking at the opening of the annual conference of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB), an organisation that advance the science and practice of conserving biological diversity.
Mangena said that South Africa was one of the three most biologically diverse countries in the world, containing between 250 000 and one million species.
However, he said the rate of the world's biodiversity loss was anything between 100 to 1 000 times higher than ever before in the history of the earth.
"Many species are disappearing without ever being named," he said.
Mangena said there would be harsh repercussions if conservation measures were not taken in Africa.
"We stand to lose crucial life-support systems through the loss of important habitats. We undermine rural livelihoods when we destroy the natural resource base on which people depend, and ruin economic opportunities when options for developing medicines and foods are reduced and the natural resource base for ecotourism is damaged."
Data on biodiversity will be available online
This year's conference marks the first time the SCB has met in Africa in its 21 years' existence.
Mangena said conservation and the sustainable use of biodiversity were knowledge-intensive activities that needed scientific knowledge and technological innovations to be successfully implemented in Africa.
He said his department had established a number of key interventions to promote scientific research, particularly in the biodiversity area.
These included the establishment of a South African information facility that made data on biodiversity available online.
It also included the establishment of a network of various field stations and observatories for the long-term study of eco-systems and the prediction of environmental change.
Mangena also said gene banks and bio-banks had been established in South Africa to collect and store representative ranges of genetic information and biomaterials from across the country and the rest of Africa.
- SAPA