Newsletter of the Southern African Botanical Diversity - SANBI

which translates roughly to USD 9.75/assessment.
Funds were applied to employ
a full-time co-ordinator and part-time
assistants, cover the co-ordinator’s travel
and accommodation expenses,
and meet running expenses of
general office administration.
This investment towards efficient
co-ordination and networking
ensured collaboration with the
right people from the start and
the delivery of satisfactory products at
the end.
SABONET developed a distinct co-ordination
model to become effective in delivering
the products. It adopted a devolved
structure, collaborators had a sense of
ownership, there was power to change
the direction of the project through assessments
via the workshop processes, and
people had access to training, thus making
the process mutually beneficial. Furthermore,
it was pivotal in ensuring that SA-
BONET received international recognition
for its contribution to plant conservation
through the Red List project.
The role of volunteers
Data collection and building a network of
volunteers was probably the most cost-effective
exercise of the project (20 percent
of allocated funds). A lot of information
was already available and all management
had to do was find the sources and
add to it where necessary. If the project
had been conducted outside the botanical
community, then we might not have
known how to access and build on existing
information.
Unlike so many donor-funded projects that
have to pay for information, SABONET
obtained most of the data by involving
experts from the region that were willing
to share their knowledge to ensure that a
useful product could be made available
for southern Africa. This voluntary involvement
and passion for the local flora
allowed for more funds to be channelled
towards the training and data dissemination
processes.
Therefore, funds were used to cover the
accommodation and travel expenses of 236
delegates from 128 institutions to attend
15 training, technical and implementation
workshops. Consultation was broad-based
and involved a wide spectrum of expertise
(Table 2). Workshops brought together
regional experts to equip them with necessary
knowledge of the IUCN assessment
process, to run sessions during which a
category of threat was assigned to plants
of the region and to reach consensus on
these assessments.
Field observations, ecological aspects,
threats and taxonomic information were
taken into consideration to make wellfounded
assessments. This voluntary
“…with a functional network and sound project
management in place, future Red List projects in
Africa should be able to assess threatened species
at about USD 17/taxon.”
participatory approach yielded more
robust, multi-dimensional assessments
than previous accounts that generally
relied exclusively on herbarium specimen
information and taxonomists. At USD
7.55/species for this exercise, it proved
less expensive to determine what species
in southern Africa could possibly become
extinct, than it did to set up and manage
the programme.
Workshops for stakeholders
Stakeholders that use Red Data list information
for on-the-ground conservation
constituted nearly two thirds (63 percent)
of the workshop participants. They formed
an integral part of the process and were
actively involved in tailor-making a product
for their own purposes and needs.
Interestingly, 71 percent of the workshop
participants were male. Approximately
60 percent of participants were African
and 40 percent were resident Europeans.
This is ascribed to the historical legacy
that white men have traditionally been
the holders of botanical knowledge in
southern Africa.
Considering the small amount spent on
obtaining information about the status
of threat of plant species of southern Africa,
the costs involved in preparing and
making the information available to civil
society came as a revelation. USD 84,000,
or 54 percent of the allocated funds, were
spent on this process. The preparation
Boophane disticha. (Photo: SABONET)
of the publication involved the skills of
consultants to edit the text, design the
page layout and develop the database.
Production comprised the printing of the
book and burning of the compact
disc. The list and database were
distributed free of charge to all
interested parties.
The cost of making the information
available to the public adds
up to USD 21.55/species, which is more
than twice as much as it cost to produce
the information. This illustrates that a well
co-ordinated data acquisition process
is cheaper than disseminating it to the
stakeholders, which involves the use of
specialist services from outside the botanical
fraternity.
Red Lists are a first step
Therefore, it can be safely said that with
a functional network and sound project
management in place, future Red List
projects in Africa should be able to assess
threatened species at about USD 17/taxon
(excluding the dissemination of information).
This is a worthwhile investment
considering the amount of information
made available through this process and
its potential for providing baseline data for
future research that could possibly save a
species from extinction (Golding & Hurter
2003). However, a Red List in itself is not
the answer to conservation problems and
is merely the first of many steps to alleviate
these (Golding & Siebert 2002). Many
countries are mainstreaming Red Data
List concepts into relevant policies and
legislation in order to strengthen the case
for decision-making concerning sustainable
development and conservation. The
Global Strategy for Plant Conservation
(Bramwell et al. 2002) presents one such
vehicle.
The approach Down Under
In recent years, the Australian Government
paid USD 7.8 m towards a national
endangered species programme (Source:
http://www.budget.gov.au/1999-00/ministerial/ch4/ch4-THREATEN.html).
This
provided core resources for the conservation
of nationally threatened species
and endangered ecological communities,
primarily through recovery and threat
abatement plans. The programmes focus
on threatening processes and involve
civil society through community education
and co-operative research. This is a
process that could be followed in southern
Africa and in other parts of the continent,
but would require a lot of effort because
socially and politically, the trade-offs that
would be required are too high.
16 SABONET News Vol. 9 No. 1 September 2004