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South Africa wants to develop national biodiversity goals similar in scale to those it’s pursuing to transition its economy to the use of climate-friendly energy, its environment minister said. They include boosting the amount of land designated for conservation to allow the large-scale harvesting of meat from antelopes and other wild animals, increasing the production and marketing of products from indigenous plants and promoting leisure hunting and tourism.

“If you think about the climate space 10 years ago, it’s a bit like that space. 

There were good ideas, there was a vision, there were lots of little projects,” Barbara Creecy, said in an interview at a conference to launch the strategy east of Johannesburg. 

“If you look at the climate space now, we are talking about very serious whole of society, whole of economy approaches, which we are realising.”

While South Africa is struggling to lessen its dependence on coal it has put in place a R1,5 trillion (US$79 billion) five-year plan to develop renewable energy, green hydrogen and electric vehicle industries and won US$9,3 billion of climate finance from some of the world’s richest nations to do so. 

“Currently its biodiversity plans consist mainly of small unconnected projects,” Creecy said.

The new strategy will aim to capitalise on South Africa’s abundant wildlife, unique ecosystems and experience with conservation models that see wild areas harvested in a sustainable manner. It will also seek to create jobs and income earning opportunities in some of the poorer areas of a country with one of the world’s highest unemployment rates.

“In a country where you have very, high unemployment, particularly in rural areas, if you are going to be able to put more land under some form of conservation and restore ecosystem services, you’re going to have to find viable forms of economic activity,” Creecy said. — Bloomberg.