Nature Positive Cities Efforts to Advance the Transition Durban 2024

2 Assessment of enabling environment CASE STUDY 1: BIODIVERSITY STEWARDSHIP Overview Durban’s Biodiversity Stewardship programme25 is led by conservation authorities to promote the protection and management of land and biodiversity in collaboration with private and communal landowners. Landowners volunteer to participate in a stewardship agreement and are given decision-making support. Objectives The programme aims to promote conservation and the sustainable management of resources for sites that are pre-identified as important for biodiversity – such as nature reserves and protected environments. It also aims to expand the area across which biodiversity conservation is conducted, improve the municipality’s protection and management of the environment, and ensure that any private, communal and state-owned areas with high biodiversity value receive secure conservation status. Benefits and outcomes The involvement of local chiefs in the biodiversity conservation process is integral to the stewardship programme, as the municipality is focused on working with traditional councils to promote climate- change adaptation. Land stewardship is a highly cost-effective mechanism for expanding protected areas when compared with the cost of the government purchasing and protecting land. Additionally, biodiversity stewardship is an appropriate mechanism for both agricultural and metropolitan regions. Stewardship agreements vary in design and include both non-binding and long-term arrangements. Areas under collaborative management contribute to the broader ambition of eThekwini biodiversity. Nature reserves and protected environments are the two highest levels of biodiversity stewardship provided under the Protected Areas Act, 2003, and they contribute directly to meeting the targets for national protected areas. TABLE 1 Nature Positive: Cities’ Efforts to Advance the Transition 32