Dirk J Roux

• Researcher at South African National Parks

Research in protected areas (PAs) is often dominated by scientists from outside the conservation agencies managing them. This can potentially lead to misalignment with local needs, insensitivity to the local context and a lack of investment in and use of local expertise. These issues often arise when international researchers work in another countr...

This report represents the first comprehensive inventory of Addo Elephant National Park’s rivers and wetlands, aiming to provide essential information for park management and biodiversity assessments.

The theory and practice of adaptive management and adaptive governance have been widely studied in the complex social contexts that mediate how humans interact with ecosystems. Adaptive governance is thought to enable adaptive management in such contexts. In this study, we examine four often-used principles of adaptive governance (polycentric insti...

This chapter critically reflects on the current governance and management of Knysna Estuary and focuses on the challenges of and requirements for governing the estuary as a common-pool resource. It also makes suggestions as to how governance and management of Knysna Estuary might be improved to promote achievement of both conservation and socio-eco...

This report contributes to an overarching aim to mainstream the conservation of aquatic ecosystems – rivers, inland wetlands (fresh or saline) and estuaries – within the national parks of South Africa. Specifically, it provides statistics of the status of aquatic ecosystems and explores options for improvement, guided by two objectives: Objective...

Sustainability-focused research networks and communities of practice have emerged as a key response and strategy to build capacity and knowledge to support transformation towards more sustainable, just and equitable futures. This paper synthesises insights from the development of a community of practice on social-ecological systems (SES) research i...

As the United Nations develops a post-2020 global biodiversity framework for the Convention on Biological Diversity, attention is focusing on how new goals and targets for ecosystem conservation might serve its vision of ‘living in harmony with nature’1,2. Advancing dual imperatives to conserve biodiversity and sustain ecosystem services requires r...

Assessment of social relations, including social network analysis, is central to understanding collaborative processes for environmental decision-making and action. The capacity of network role players to learn and adapt appropriately to uncertainty and change is a critical determinant of the resilience of socialecological systems. Poor social netw...

Social-ecological systems (SES) research has emerged as an important area of sustainability science, informing and supporting pressing issues of transformation towards more sustainable, just and equitable futures. To date, much SES research has been done in or from the Global North, where the challenges and contexts for supporting sustainability tr...

Adaptive management is a systematic approach for linking learning with implementation to facilitate ongoing improvement in natural resource management. The idea of learning from experience and adapting subsequent policies, strategies and actions, is intuitively appealing. However, application of adaptive management has been hindered by several obst...

Globally, there is a trend towards conserving biodiversity by promoting co-management with multiple stakeholders at landscape scales. Environmental policies emphasize stakeholder engagement in decision-making, yet landscape conservation is typically a bureaucratic–scientific endeavour. Building trusting relationships with stakeholders is key to neg...

Protected areas are complex social‐ecological systems, hence their management should be guided by engagement and co‐learning with diverse stakeholders. The challenge of effective stakeholder participation has generated a body of literature on the design and facilitation of coproduction processes. In this study, we used this literature to develop a...

The Ramsar Convention (or the Convention on Wetlands), signed in 1971, was one of the first international conservation agreements, promoting global wise use of wetlands. It has three primary objectives: national designation and management of wetlands of international importance; general wise use of wetlands; and international cooperation. We examin...

Protected areas (PAs) play a critical role in safeguarding Earth's biodiversity and contributing to human wellbeing. Maintenance of ecological intactness, financial viability and social relevance influence PA sustainability. We explore how COVID-19 and associated lockdown regulations influenced the sustainability of South Africa's largest PA manage...

Transdisciplinary collaborative processes like knowledge co-production have been promoted as valuable mechanisms to address complex environmental management issues. Their value is based on epistemic and participatory ideals involving academic and non-academic knowledge and values being elicited and deliberated upon. While idealised processes of par...

Original article: https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2020/7598 The ORCID identifier [https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7311-3223] given for one of the authors, Stefanie Freitag (South African National Parks, South Africa), is incorrect. This ORCID identifier is assigned to a different individual also named Stefanie Freitag. The person to whom this ORCID ID co...

Protected area managers rely on relevant, credible, and legitimate knowledge. However, an increase in the rate, extent, severity, and magnitude of the impacts of drivers of change (e.g., climate change, altered land use, and demand for natural resources) is affecting the response capacity of managers and their agencies. We address temporal aspects...

Discrepancies between desired ecosystem services (the types, amounts and qualities of services a person would ideally like to benefit from) and the actual provision of ecosystem services (services actually obtained) reflect people’s inability to receive the benefits they would like from nature, and can lead to conflict. We developed a novel process...

Given limited time, staffing and specialist expertise, management of wetlands within biodiversity-rich protected areas of developing countries is often held back by a lack of information on the extent and nature of wetland resources. Rapid, realistic and effective wetland ecosystem assessment methods are needed to develop a baseline for monitoring...

River flows connect people, places, and other forms of life, inspiring and sustaining diverse cultural beliefs, values, and ways of life. The concept of environmental flows provides a framework for improving understanding of relationships between river flows and people, and for supporting those that are mutually beneficial. Nevertheless, most appro...

A key reason for undertaking transdisciplinary processes such as knowledge co-production in natural resource management is to access and apply different knowledge systems to complex issues. However, the value of co-production is predominantly framed by academics. They have focused on research design and outcomes in the form of 'science informing po...

Although protected areas represent a pivotal response to escalating anthropogenic threats, they face many pressures, inside and outside their boundaries. Amid these challenges, effective conservation is guided by evidence‐based decision making supported by dynamic processes of learning and knowledge exchange. Although different models promote knowl...

Protected areas are increasingly expected to justify their existence in terms of their importance to society. However, this importance, and the complex ways in which people relate to protected areas, cannot be captured by instrumental and intrinsic value framings alone. Rather, our understanding of the role of protected areas in society needs to ta...

A hundred research priorities of critical importance to protected area management were identified by a targeted survey of conservation professionals; half researchers and half practitioners. Respondents were selected to represent a range of disciplines, every continent except Antarctica and roughly equal numbers of men and women. The results analys...

The inherent connectivity of most freshwater ecosystems necessitates that protected area authorities engage in water planning processes both within their protected area boundary and beyond in associated catchments. For planning to be effective and achieve its desired outcomes, it needs to be embedded in a management approach that acknowledges the i...

Education opportunities, capacity building and scientific knowledge are poorly studied intellectual ecosystem services (IES), especially as generated by protected areas (PAs). Based on the cascade model of ecosystem services, we use simple indicators to quantify IES generated in the Kruger National Park (KNP), South Africa. IES are potentially valu...

Protected areas are increasingly being viewed and acknowledged within broader social-ecological landscapes as providing a range of ecosystem services, which offer an important connection between nature and society. We explore non-mechanised adventure racing as a form of nature-based tourism, how this activity enables access to a suite of cultural e...

Strategic water source areas are those areas that have a relatively high natural runoff in the region of interest, which is made accessible for supporting the region’s population or economy. These areas contribute substantially to development needs, often far away from the source. This disconnect between ecosystem service supply and use means that...

The ecosystem services (ES) concept can frame the value of protected areas (PAs) to society and identify management actions that bridge biodiversity conservation and human benefits. In this special issue on ES flows to and from southern African PAs we consider two themes: (1) water as a biophysical and social-ecological connector; and (2) cross-sca...

A key aim of transdisciplinary research is for actors from science, policy and practice to co-evolve their understanding of a social–ecological issue, reconcile their diverse perspectives and co-produce appropriate knowledge to serve a common purpose. With its concurrent grounding in practice and science, transdisciplinary research represents a sig...

Most intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams (IRES) are managed for their water resources, ecosystem services, and/or environmental values but seldom as a social-ecological system. The spatial connectivity of IRES across a catchment makes them particularly complex social-ecological systems where there are interlinking social and governance proces...

There is growing appreciation that protected areas, like all social-ecological systems (SES), are inherently complex and face an unpredictable future under the influence of global environmental change. Adaptive management is the accepted approach for managing complex SES to ensure their resilience, but unless it is supported by a governance system...

Sense of place (SoP) refers to the meanings and values that people attach to places. The concept can be used to frame how people engage or form a connection with the natural environment. At a sensory level, SoP is influenced by people’s visual experiences, which in turn can be linked to the concept of viewsheds. Viewsheds can be transformed, either...

Stewardship is a popular term for the principles and actions aimed at improving sustainability and resilience of social-ecological systems at various scales and in different contexts. Participation in stewardship is voluntary, and is based on values of altruism and long-term benefits. At a global scale, ‘earth stewardship’ is viewed as a successor...

1. Conservation targets are useful policy tools, indicating a degree of political intent and allowing purposeful conservation planning. However, target setting and implementation often occur at different scales. A largely unmet challenge is to establish mutual feedbacks between national-scale target setting and local-scale ecological realities and...

The concepts of knowledge co-production and boundary work offer planners a new frame for critically designing a social process that fosters collaborative implementation of resulting plans. Knowledge co-production involves stakeholders from diverse knowledge systems working iteratively towards common vision and action. Boundary work is a means of cr...

Transdisciplinary research practice has become a core element of global sustainability science. Transdisciplinary research brings with it an expectation that people with different backgrounds and interests will learn together through collective problem solving and innovation. Here we introduce the concept of " transdisciplinary communities of pract...

Governments charge their conservation agencies to safeguard biodiversity through protected areas and threat mitigation. Increasingly, conservation management and policy need to be supported by rigorous evidence provided by science. As such, institutional arrangements should consider and enable effective scientific research and information dissemina...

This book is available online at http://press.anu.edu.au

In this article we reflect on how freshwater research has evolved in South Africa from its beginnings in the early 20th century and how it has altered over time to align with the post-1994 socio-political environment. We situate aquatic science within a research question to explore why aquatic science has developed in the manner it has done, provid...

This paper contends that natural resource management (NRM) issues are, by their very nature, complex and that both scientists and managers in this broad field will benefit from a theoretical understanding of complex systems. It starts off by presenting the core features of a view of complexity that not only deals with the limits to our understandin...

Since the 1970s, at approximately 10-year intervals, 4 national-scale freshwater conservation plans have been developed for South Africa. These 4 plans reflect different but broadly advancing approaches to conservation planning. We provide an overview of 3 historical plans and a more detailed discussion of the most recent plan which is based on a s...

Since the 1970s, at approximately 10-year intervals, 4 national-scale freshwater conservation plans have been developed for South Africa. These 4 plans reflect different but broadly advancing approaches to conservation planning. We provide an overview of 3 historical plans and a more detailed discussion of the most recent plan which is based on a s...

This study explores and interprets relevant literature to construct a typology of benefit sharing arrangements for the governance of social-ecological systems in developing countries. The typology comprises three generic categories of benefit sharing arrangements: collaborative, market-oriented, and egalitarian. We contend that the three categories...

Adaptive management is the problem-solving approach of choice proposed for complex and multistakeholder environments, which are, at best, only partly predictable. We discuss the implications of this approach as applicable to scientists, who have to overcome certain entrained behaviour patterns in order to participate effectively in an adaptive mana...

The National Freshwater Ecosystem Priority Areas (NFEPA) project was a multi-partner project between the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), Water Research Commission (WRC), Department of Water Affairs (DWA), Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA), Worldwide Fund for Natur...

1. The progression of approaches in systematic conservation planning from representation to representation and persistence has greatly enhanced its potential applicability to freshwaters. However, conceptual frameworks that consolidate principles for incorporating persistence into freshwater conservation planning are still lacking. 2. We present fo...

Adaptive management is an appealing approach to deal with inherent uncertainty in complex and interactive social-ecological systems (Holling 2001; Rogers 2003). In short, adaptive management is about learning-by-doing in a scientific way, adapting behaviour and overall direction as new information becomes available. It provides a structured way for...

Adaptive management is the problem-solving approach of choice proposed for complex and multistakeholder environments, which are, at best, only partly predictable. We discuss the implications of this approach as applicable to scientists, who have to overcome certain entrained behaviour patterns in order to participate effectively in an adaptive mana...

The responsibility for managing and conserving freshwater ecosystems is typically shared by multiple organizations with sometimes conflicting policy mandates. However, scorecard-based approaches for measuring management effectiveness in natural resource management are usually confined to single organizations. This paper describes a social learning...

The ability of an organisation to recognise the value of new external information, acquire it, assimilate it, transform, and exploit it, namely its absorptive capacity (AC), has been much researched in the context of commercial organisations and even applied to national innovation. This paper considers four key AC-related concepts and their relevan...

c1 Correspondence: Dr Belinda Reyers e-mail: breyers@csir.co.za

In response to the increasingly complex social–ecological issues facing society, there is a growing trend to conduct environmental research in large collaborative programs. This approach is described as transdisciplinary research as it transcends formal disciplinary boundaries, explicitly acknowledges that many different perspectives are relevant t...

Decision makers responsible for natural resource management often complain that science delivers fragmented information that is not useful at the scale of implementation. We offer a way of negotiating complex problems by putting forward a requisite simplicity. A requisite simplicity attempts to discard some detail, while retaining conceptual clarit...

Despite substantial growth in the field of conservation planning, the speed and success with which conservation plans are converted into conservation action remains limited. This gap between science and action extends beyond conservation planning into many other applied sciences and has been linked to complexity of current societal problems, compar...

It is the responsibility of catchment management agencies (CMAs) to manage water resources in their respective water management areas. The nature of the functions they have to perform and the complicating and complex internal and external realities within which they operate create very demanding circumstances. It is therefore imperative that CMAs a...

There has been very little consideration of freshwater ecosystems in identifying and designing protected areas. Recent studies suggest that protected areas hold enormous potential to conserve freshwater biodiversity if augmented with appropriate planning and management strategies. Recognizing this need, South Africa’s relevant government authority...

South Africa has committed to address freshwater conservation at the catchment scale, using a combination of landscape-level and species-level features as surrogates of freshwater biodiversity. To support this work, we examined fishes in the Olifants River catchment, where multiple anthropogenic pressures affect streams. Patterns in fish assemblage...

Freshwater ecosystems and their associated biota are among the most endangered in the world. This, combined with escalating human pressure on water resources, demands that urgent measures be taken to conserve freshwater ecosystems and the services they provide. Systematic conservation planning provides a strategic and scientifically defensible fram...

Most modern approaches to water resource management acknowledge that the entire river basin or catchment should form the basic management unit if water resources are to be managed effectively and efficiently. In addition, since surface and ground water are inextricably linked via the hydrological cycle, it is also logical for water resource manager...

Copyright: 2009 UNISA Press The conservation of South Africa’s inland water biodiversity has until recently only been incidental to the formal protection of terrestrial ecosystems. As a result, only 50% of the main rivers contained in South Africa’s protected areas are ecologically intact and 54% of main river types outside of or bordering protecte...

Copyright: 2008 Wiley To achieve effective conservation of freshwater ecosystems, close coordination and cooperation is required among sectors responsible for protection and management of water resources, biodiversity conservation, land-use management (including agricultural resources), and integrated development planning (MacKay & Ashton 2004). Of...

Research on ecosystem services has grown markedly in recent years. However, few studies are embedded in a social process designed to ensure effective management of ecosystem services. Most research has focused only on biophysical and valuation assessments of putative services. As a mission-oriented discipline, ecosystem service research should be u...

Scientific information is not always effectively incorporated into decision-making processes. This phenomenon seems to hold even when the information is aligned with an articulated need, is generated according to sound scientific procedures, and is packaged with end-user preferences in mind. We propose that contextual or cultural differences contri...

The process of designing protected areas to represent all ecosystems in an area adequately is becoming increasingly sophisticated. To date freshwater aquatic ecosystems have seldom been considered in this process. How much of a difference does it make when they are considered as well?This study examined the conservation of riverine biodiversity wit...

Copyright: 2006 Water Research Commission The legal requirement for an Ecological Reserve established in South Africa’s water law is commonly regarded by stakeholders as being in direct competition with the needs of humans. This has resulted in much debate and varying interpretations of the meaning and purpose of the Ecological Reserve. However, th...

This paper establishes a framework within which a rapid and pragmatic assessment of river ecosystems can be undertaken at a broad, subcontinental scale, highlighting some implications for achieving conservation of river biodiversity in water-limited countries. The status of river ecosystems associated with main rivers in South Africa was assessed b...

The key biodiversity areas (KBA) approach aims to identify globally important areas for species conservation. Although a similar methodology has been used successfully to identify Important Bird Areas, we have identified five limitations that may apply when considering other taxa: The KBA approach is overly prescriptive in identifying important con...

Complexity and, by implication, change and uncertainty, are inherent features of ecosystems. In managing ecosystems, or linked social-ecological systems, decisions are often based on insufficient or uncertain data and information. Appropriate and sufficient knowledge, which essentially resides in people, is a critical factor for making informed dec...

The concept of governance, and especially good governance, is pivotal to the achievement of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM). The concepts of governance used in much of the current literature on IWRM indicate that it is often used in a contradictory way and sometimes used interchangeably with the word government. This chapter proposes a...

The last two decades have been marked by a dramatic increase in global attention to the concept of governance, especially in relation to the eff- tive and sustainable management of natural resources. During this period, issues of water governance have received particular attention, for example in relation to the provision of reliable water supplies...

"Sustainable ecosystem management relies on a diverse and multi-faceted knowledge system in which techniques are continuously updated to reflect current understanding and needs. The challenge is to minimize delay as ideas flow from intent through scientific capability, and finally to implementation to achieve desired outcomes. The best way to do th...

WISA 2006 Biannual Conference and Exhibition A current initiative aims to develop a set of operational policy objectives for facilitating national-level coordination in the conservation of freshwater ecosystems and their associated biodiversity. This initiative draws from the relatively new discipline of freshwater conservation planning, which inco...

This paper discusses the long-term implementation of the South African National Water Policy of 1997, and addresses some of the difficult issues of the management and leadership of large change processes. Although the vision established by the water policy is clear, actually achieving that vision on the ground will require a robust, flexible, long-...

"A strategy for assigning priorities in biodiversity conservation was developed for the rivers of the proposed Greater Addo Elephant National Park (GAENP) in South Africa. Due to the limited availability of biological information on the freshwater ecosystems of this area, a desktop approach, supplemented by aerial and land surveys, was used to devi...

Copyright: 2001 Acad Science South Africa Since the era of great water engineering works in South Africa, there has been a major shift in the thinking and approach to water resources management. Previous focus on water supply has been replaced by demand management initiatives and the recognition that aquatic ecosystems require protection in order t...

This article explores the strategies that were, and are being, used to facilitate the transition from scientific development to operational application of the South African River Health Programme (RHP). Theoretical models from the field of the management of technology are used to provide insight into the dynamics that influence the relationship bet...

Copyright: 2000 Water Research Commission Catchment management agencies (CMA's) have no tested precedent in South Africa and will have to evolve in complex and changing business, social and natural environments as they strive to ensure that equity and social justice are achieved within ecological limits. Traditionally, very different styles of mana...