Why is biodiversity data-deficiency an ongoing conservation dilemma in Africa?

doi:10.1016/j.jnc.2019.125719

Journal for Nature Conservation

Volume 50, August 2019, 125719

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnc.2019.125719 Get rights and content

Abstract

Recent reports illustrate deficiencies in knowledge about current conditions and long-term trends in population sizes of hundreds of African plants and animals’ species. In this commentary, I discuss the lack of standardized data for assessing and monitoring biodiversity in Africa. I present my own views on the causes for these knowledge and data gaps, their consequences for conservation, and future directions that could improve the current situation.

There are many reasons for lack of standardized data including; ongoing conflicts and political instability in many biodiversity-rich countries; absence of regular and policy-driven monitoring programs; weak facilities; and irregular or insufficient funding. Existing biodiversity monitoring initiatives are often short-term, poorly-designed surveys, largely dependent on volunteer researchers or international partners, biased towards large “charismatic” animal species, and published in difficult-to-access outlets. Consequently, up-to-date and rigorous reports about conditions and trends of African biodiversity are limited, and conservation planning, comparative studies and accurate valuation of ecosystem services continue to be difficult.

Urgent actions include: 1) commitments and support of local governments to implement effective conservation monitoring programs; 2) establishment of a network of carefully designed long-term and continent-wide monitoring initiatives for endangered species and biodiversity; and 3) involvement of universities, research centers, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and local communities in such monitoring efforts. Such actions could stimulate further in-depth studies and systematic analysis of the root causes and solutions for the decades-long African biodiversity knowledge gap. Examples of highly needed systematic analysis and documentation in the coming efforts towards filling up the biodiversity data gap in Africa should clearly define biodiversity data-deficiency by taxonomic groups and by countries.

Section snippets

Background

Recently, the news reported the death of the last known male white Rhinoceros in Kenya that had been under 24 h guarded surveillance for two years. Similarly, the Great Elephant Census recently reported that the abundance of elephants in the African savannah are declining at an unprecedented rate, from about 20 million during pre-colonization era to only 352,271 individuals in 2016; 30% of this decline has come in the last decade alone (Chase et al., 2016; see also //www.greatelephantcensus.com/

Deficiency in biodiversity data is a global challenge

Deficient, incomplete, and biased biodiversity data is a global issue (e.g., Donaldson et al. 2016), but it is a chronic challenge in Africa for several reasons. First, Africa continues to suffer from conflicts and political instability across the continent. Decades of unrest have contributed substantially to the decline of habitats and plant and animal populations, while limiting biodiversity monitoring and reporting efforts of current status and trends (e.g. Brito et al. 2018). In some areas,

Consequences of ongoing deficiencies in biodiversity data

There are many issues that can be considered a result of a shortage of information about current biodiversity conditions. Here I list the most critical consequences:

•
Absence of rigorous reports about current states of biodiversity components, thus demonstrating the failure of African countries to fulfill their international commitments and role in conventions (e.g. Convention on Biological Diversity – CBD).
•
Conservation planning and prioritization will be a hard task due to the absence of

Urgent interventions and ways forward

Obviously, decades of biodiversity data-deficiency in Africa, as indicated by many recent reports (e.g. International Union on the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 2016; UNEP 2013), has proven to be a failure of local governments in their conservation exercise (Ellison 2016), as well as documented inefficiency of current conservation monitoring approaches (i.e. monitoring for the sake of monitoring – see Lindenmayer et al., 2013) to provide reliable biodiversity information. Unfortunately, and in

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Aaron Ellison from Harvard Forest for encouraging me to write this paper as well as his considerable editing in this work. Many thanks go to Carsten F. Dormann at the University of Freiburg and John S. Richardson at the University of British Columbia for the kind reception and mentorship during my postdoctoral research that supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD - P.R.I.M.E., grant agreement No. 605728) as well as comments and edits in this paper. I also

References (19)

K. Anderson-Teixeira et al.
CTFS-ForestGEO: A worldwide network monitoring forests in an era of global change
Global Change Biology
(2015)
T. Amano et al.
Four barriers to the global understanding of biodiversity conservation: Wealth, language, geographical location and security
Proceedings of the Royal Society
(2013)
M.J. Chase et al.
Continent-wide survey reveals massive decline in African savannah elephants
PeerJ
(2016)
F. Courchamp et al.
The paradoxical extinction of the most charismatic animals
PLoS Biology
(2018)
P. Collier
The bottom billion: Why the poorest countries are failing and what can Be done about it
(2008)
M.R. Donaldson et al.
Taxonomic bias and international biodiversity conservation research
FACETS
(2016)
A.M. Ellison
It’s time to get real about conservation
Nature
(2016)
R.A. Gitzen et al.
Design and analysis of long-term ecological monitoring studies
(2012)
J.E. Hobbie et al.
The US long term ecological research program
BioScience
(2003)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (21)

Amphibian communities along a forest degradation gradient in an East African forest reserve
2023, Ecological Informatics
The amphibian communities in Africa's tropical forests are of global conservation importance, but disturbances derived from anthropological activities threaten to dismantle this irreplaceable diversity. We explored the impacts of forest degradation on the amphibian community in Mabira Central Forest Reserve, Uganda. We sampled amphibians from March to July of 2015 in plots that were positioned along a gradient of forest degradation. We conducted visual encounter surveys across three categories of forest degradation with six 300-m transects in each (four surveys per transect). From 216 h of surveyor effort, we detected 3563 individual frogs representing 30 species from eight families and 13 genera. Hyperoliidae was the most diverse family represented by 13 species in four genera. Hyperolius had the highest number of species (nine) followed by four genera each represented by three species (Phrynobatrachus, Pytchadena, Leptopelis, and Sclerophrys). Comparisons among plots along a gradient of forest degradation revealed differences in species richness, composition, and frequency of encounters. The regenerating and degraded forest plots were similar in species composition to each other and were dominated by mostly widespread, open-canopy species. Several forest-dependent species were recorded in both the regenerating and mature forest plots but were absent from the degraded plots. In the regenerating and mature forests, species presence was significantly associated with high canopy cover, high relative humidity, and dense leaf litter, whereas the microhabitat variables of high grass cover and high temperature were most influential in the degraded forests. Our study provides important data on an Afrotropical amphibian community and suggests that forest degradation has dramatically altered the habitat to the detriment of forest specialist species.
A temporospatial assessment of environmental quality in urbanizing Ethiopia
2023, Journal of Environmental Management
Global environmental quality has been negatively affected by urbanization, particularly vulnerable in the Sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, understanding the underlying mechanism and driving forces for the change of environmental quality with urbanization process is essential to improve the environmental sustainability. In this study, the compounded night light index (CNLI) and remote sensing ecological index (RSEI) were used respectively to evaluate the urbanization level and environmental quality in Ethiopia from 2010 to 2020. On this basis, a temporospatial assessment framework was proposed, followed by methods of coupling coordination degree, spatial autocorrelation, elasticity, and decomposition. The results showed that 63 out of 690 woredas experienced environmental deterioration. Socioeconomic effect, carbon intensity, and climate change were decomposed as drivers to environmental quality, with socioeconomic effects contributing >68% of environmental improvement, while carbon intensity and climate change were responsible for >51% and >58% of environmental deterioration from 2010 values. Continuous increase in impervious surfaces resulted in a six-fold increase in surface runoff, which raised the flooding risk in sub areas and rural landscapes. This demands reforms of climate strategies and proper livestock management.
Drowning in data, thirsty for information and starved for understanding: A biodiversity information hub for cooperative environmental monitoring in South Africa
2022, Biological Conservation
Citation Excerpt :
GBIF (including the South African Biodiversity Information Facility, SABIF), the Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN), Map of Life (MOL), and other effective global systems, are growing rapidly, providing invaluable data for global ecosystem monitoring (Stephenson and Stengel, 2020). For areas where these global systems are limited (Yesson et al., 2007; Boakes et al., 2010; Zizka et al., 2020), especially in Africa (Siddig, 2019), local systems help bridge the geographic and taxonomic divide (Maldonado et al., 2015). The vast majority of both global and local systems are focused on species distributions, including GBIF (Petersen et al., 2021), with very few that combine occurrence records with underlying abundance and/or environmental data (Stephenson and Stengel, 2020).
The world is firmly cemented in a notitian age (Latin: notitia, meaning data) – drowning in data, yet thirsty for information and the synthesis of knowledge into understanding. As concerns over biodiversity declines escalate, the volume, diversity and speed at which new environmental and ecological data are generated has increased exponentially. Data availability primes the research and discovery engine driving biodiversity conservation. South Africa (SA) is poised to become a world leader in biodiversity conservation. However, continent-wide resource limitations hamper the establishment of inclusive technologies and robust platforms and tools for biodiversity informatics. In this perspectives piece, we bring together the opinions of 37 co-authors from 20 different departments, across 10 SA universities, 7 national and provincial conservation research agencies, and various institutes and private conservation, research and management bodies, to develop a way forward for biodiversity informatics in SA. We propose the development of a SA Biodiversity Informatics Hub and describe the essential components necessary for its design, implementation and sustainability. We emphasise the importance of developing a culture of cooperation, collaboration and interoperability among custodians of biodiversity data to establish operational workflows for data synthesis. However, our biggest challenges are misgivings around data sharing and multidisciplinary collaboration. We recommend a system that is free, user friendly, functional, stable, integrative and designed to cater for different data access agreement levels. Sharing data through this pipeline will directly advance the science and practice of conservation, giving multiple stakeholders and decision-makers access to valuable biodiversity data to support research and biodiversity conservation.
Monitoring the spatial spillover effects of urbanization on water, built-up land and ecological footprints in sub-Saharan Africa
2021, Journal of Environmental Management
Citation Excerpt :
According to some analysts, 56 percent of urban growth will occur in Africa, with three countries Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya, representing 35 percent of the total global urban population increase from 2018 to 2050 (World Cities Report, 2020). The rapid pace of urbanization has directly or indirectly led to a number of major threats to biodiversity, such as water scarcity, food insecurity, ecological depletion, land degradation and biodiversity loss (Agyemang et al., 2019; Siddig, 2019). While developed countries have breached the post-urbanization stage, the least developed countries in the continent are still in the primary urbanization stage characterized by substantial pressure on natural capital stocks.
Despite the considerable attention given to the environmental implications of urbanization, evidence on the role of urbanization in the ongoing biodiversity loss lacks from an African perspective. In this perspective, we explore the threats urbanization poses on biodiversity with a focus on water, land, and the overall ecosystems across 28 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period 2000–2017. Specifically, we employ water, land, and ecological footprints as metrics to characterize human-induced pressures on biodiversity. Unlike previous studies, we demonstrate that urbanization displays heterogeneous effects on footprint indicators, and the consideration of a single footprint item may underestimate the impact of urbanization on biodiversity loss. The results show that urbanization contributes to the expansion of human-induced pressures on water and built-up landscape. Furthermore, there is evidence that being surrounded by highly urbanized countries increases the per capita water and built-up land footprints. These spatial spillover effects of urbanization should be considered when establishing pathways to conservation policies.
Artificial intelligence, systemic risks, and sustainability
2021, Technology in Society
Citation Excerpt :
Growing volumes of environmental, social and ecological data are a fundamental prerequisite for the application of artificial intelligence in, for example, conservation and digital farming (e.g. Refs. [10,50]. Environmental and ecological data have well known limitations however, both in their temporal coverage, and geographical spread [59–61]. While the rapid growth of data from mobiles and satellites offer vast opportunities to map and respond to social vulnerabilities such as poverty and malnutrition, it has become increasingly clear that solutions supported by “big data” and AI-analysis can be strongly skewed since the “most disadvantaged people tend to be the least represented in new sources of digital data” [62].
Automated decision making and predictive analytics through artificial intelligence, in combination with rapid progress in technologies such as sensor technology and robotics are likely to change the way individuals, communities, governments and private actors perceive and respond to climate and ecological change. Methods based on various forms of artificial intelligence are already today being applied in a number of research fields related to climate change and environmental monitoring. Investments into applications of these technologies in agriculture, forestry and the extraction of marine resources also seem to be increasing rapidly. Despite a growing interest in, and deployment of AI-technologies in domains critical for sustainability, few have explored possible systemic risks in depth. This article offers a global overview of the progress of such technologies in sectors with high impact potential for sustainability like farming, forestry and the extraction of marine resources. We also identify possible systemic risks in these domains including a) algorithmic bias and allocative harms; b) unequal access and benefits; c) cascading failures and external disruptions, and d) trade-offs between efficiency and resilience. We explore these emerging risks, identify critical questions, and discuss the limitations of current governance mechanisms in addressing AI sustainability risks in these sectors.
Drivers of scarcity in the globally threatened Taita Falcon Falco fasciinucha: Competition and habitat quality in the eastern escarpment region of South Africa
2023, Bird Conservation International

View all citing articles on Scopus

View full text

Why is biodiversity data-deficiency an ongoing conservation dilemma in Africa?

Abstract

Section snippets

Background

Deficiency in biodiversity data is a global challenge

Consequences of ongoing deficiencies in biodiversity data

Urgent interventions and ways forward

Acknowledgements

CTFS-ForestGEO: A worldwide network monitoring forests in an era of global change

Global Change Biology

Four barriers to the global understanding of biodiversity conservation: Wealth, language, geographical location and security

Proceedings of the Royal Society

Continent-wide survey reveals massive decline in African savannah elephants

PeerJ

The paradoxical extinction of the most charismatic animals

PLoS Biology

The bottom billion: Why the poorest countries are failing and what can Be done about it

Taxonomic bias and international biodiversity conservation research

FACETS

It’s time to get real about conservation

Nature

Design and analysis of long-term ecological monitoring studies

The US long term ecological research program

BioScience