Mining and Biodiversity in South Africa: A Discussion Paper

By Kristal Maze, Susie Brownlie, Amanda Driver

View Publication

This paper focuses on biodiversity conservation planning and how it provides a useful tool for land-use planning and impact assessment in the mining sector in South Africa. The mining sector is a major landowner and land user in South Africa,
and has considerable obligations in terms of our policy and legal framework to take biodiversity into account in its plans and activities. Recent advances in biodiversity conservation planning provide tools that can help achieve exactly that. We use an example from the Succulent Karoo biome, a global biodiversity hotspot, to illustrate
how conservation planning can build the basis for effective engagement between the conservation sector and the mining sector, to reduce the impact of mining on biodiversity and in some cases to promote a net benefit to conservation.