About US$245 million is currently spent annually by the
international community for protected area management in Sub-Saraha
Africa (SSA). The efficacy of these investments depends partly on the
availability and reliability of information on the spatial distribution
and condition of biodiversity. The currently available information on
biodiversity is inadequate in several respects:
- It is
biased towards terrestrial biodiversity, and towards large mammals and
birds. The greatest proportion of Africa’s biodiversity, invertebrates,
is not well known to science.
- For most species, only parts
of their distribution ranges are documented. In many areas there is
inadequate documentation, including in Ethiopia, the Congo basin,
Angola and Mozambique.
- Information on the biodiversity
actually conserved in protected areas (eg in the form of species
inventory lists) is widely lacking but is essential to document the
success of conservation measures currently undertaken and to guide
further conservation activities.
- A vast amount of locally
and regionally available biodiversity information is not connected and
standardized, which is a significant impediment to making priorities
comparable at regional to global scales.
- Data on
biodiversity condition (ie population size and trend, rather than
simple presence or absence) is virtually absent. This information is
essential for effective conservation of viable populations and for
giving warning of impending problems well before they are irremediable.
- Biodiversity measures are still commonly restricted to how
many species there are, while there is very little information on
qualitative aspects of biodiversity such as phylogenetic or functional
Other important areas of research that would
support effective biodiversity policy include: quantification of the
current and potential economic benefits provided by ecosystem services,
and the consequences and costs of ecosystem destruction; understanding
the link between ecosystem diversity and ecosystem integrity;
methodologies for the integration of climate change adaptation
strategies into conservation planning; and the development of a
conceptual basis and methodology to incorporate biodiversity sustaining
and generating processes and functional biodiversity into conservation