Jeanne L. Nel

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Senior Researcher at Wageningen University & Research

The Mansholt Lecture is an annual event held in Brussels, organised by Wageningen University & Research (WUR). Its purpose is to inspire European policymakers and stakeholders on critical societal issues, particularly those related to sustainable agri-food systems and the living environment. This 2024 Mansholt Lecture focuses on the future use of l...

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 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...

Currently, the food sector is the single largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, accounting for some 30% of all emissions. Moreover, agriculture is responsible for 80% of global deforestation – a major cause of global biodiversity decline – and accounts for 70% and 50% of terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity loss respectively. These numbers...

Free‐flowing rivers (FFRs) are important surrogates for freshwater biodiversity as there are increasingly fewer rivers that reflect intact habitat and species diversity from source to sea. The status and changes in the ecological condition or protection of FFRs is not explicitly reported on in global biodiversity targets. Indices are proposed for r...

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...

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...

Co-production, the collaborative weaving of research and practice by diverse societal actors, is argued to play an important role in sustainability transformations. Yet, there is still poor understanding of how to navigate the tensions that emerge in these processes. Through analyzing 32 initiatives worldwide that co-produced knowledge and action t...

The South African National Ecosystem Classification System Handbook: First Edition.

Future scenarios and pathways of potential development trajectories are powerful tools to assist with decision-making to address many sustainability challenges. Such scenarios play a major role in global environmental assessments (GEAs). Currently, however, scenarios in GEAs are mostly developed at the global level by experts and researchers, and l...

Africa's range-restricted subtropical-temperate coastal forested wetlands are facing interlinking threats of climate and anthropogenic pressures. We assessed their conservation status using the criteria of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Their total areal extent was hind-casted to the reference epoch 2000, followed by the...

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...

Africa’s range-restricted and transitional subtropical-temperate coastal forested wetlands are facing interlinking threats of climate and anthropogenic pressures. We assessed their conservation status using the criteria of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Their total areal extent was hind-casted to the reference epoch 2000...

The promise of co-production to address complex sustainability challenges is compelling. Yet, co-production, the collaborative weaving of research and practice, encompasses diverse aims, terminologies and practices, with poor clarity over their implications. To explore this diversity, we systematically mapped differences in how 32 initiatives from...

Global Environmental Assessments (GEAs) are in a unique position to influence environmental decision-making in the context of sustainability challenges. To do this effectively, however, new methods are needed to respond to the needs of decision-makers for a more integrated, contextualized and goal-seeking evaluation of different policies, geared fo...

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...

The improved representation of freshwater and estuarine ecosystems and associated data was a key component of the 2018 National Biodiversity Assessment, and is an essential step in enhancing defensible land use planning and decision making. This paper reports on the enhancement of the National Wetland Map (NWM) version 5 for South Africa and other...

Full text: https://rdcu.be/bVy8H | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0412-1 | doi: 10.1038/s41893-019-0412-1 | Regional and global assessments periodically update what we know, and highlight what remains to be known, about the linkages between people and nature that both define and depend upon the state of the environment. To guide resear...

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...

Systematic conservation planning is intended to inform spatially explicit decision making. Doing so requires that it be integrated into complex regulatory and governance processes, and there are limited instances where this has been achieved effectively. South Africa is a global leader in the application of conservation plans, the outputs of which...

The improved representation of inland aquatic (freshwater) and estuarine ecosystems and associated data was a key component of the 2018 National Biodiversity Assessment, and is an essential step in enhancing defensible land use planning and decision making. This paper reports on this enhancement of the National Wetland Map version 5 (NWM5) for Sout...

The National Biodiversity Assessment of 2011 found freshwater ecosystems to be highly threatened and poorly protected. However, a number of studies have shown that the National Wetland Map (NWM) Version 4 represents less than 54% of wetlands mapped at a fine scale. A more comprehensive South African Inventory of Inland Aquatic Ecosystems (SAIIAE) w...

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...

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 ability to monitor changes in biodiversity, and their societal impact, is critical to conserving species and managing ecosystems. While emerging technologies increase the breadth and reach of data acquisition, monitoring efforts are still spatially and temporally fragmented, and taxonomically biased. Appropriate long-term information remains th...

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...

FWBON is a voluntary community of practice dedicated to tracking change in global biodiversity of inland waters FWBON currently has 136 Members from 52 countries. The membership profile is well matched to the current priorities and 2020 vision. However, Some major geographic gaps remain. FWBON is now ready to start working on: macroinvertebrate and...

Ecosystem services are increasingly incorporated into explicit policy targets and can be an effective tool for informing decisions about the use and management of the planet's resources, especially when trade-offs and synergies need to be taken into account. The challenge is to find meaningful and robust indicators to quantify ecosystem services, m...

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...

This paper provides an in-depth review of experiences and insights from mainstreaming biodiversity and development in South Africa. More specifically, it describes how biodiversity considerations have been mainstreamed in five key sectors/areas, namely: land use planning, mining, water, infrastructure, and the agricultural sector. It discusses the...

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...

Data sets on wetlands required for the representation of aquatic ecosystem biodiversity and systematic wetland conservation planning are typically not available or are inadequate, particularly at country‐wide scale, which hinders conservation planning. The improvement in hierarchical classification systems and increased availability of broad‐scale...

South Africa is one of seven pilot countries involved in a global initiative called Advancing SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting,1 led by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), with funding from the Government of Norway. Within S...

Achieving the policy and practice shifts needed to secure ecosystem services is hampered by the inherent complexities of ecosystem services and their management. Methods for the participatory production and exchange of knowledge offer an avenue to navigate this complexity together with the beneficiaries and managers of ecosystem services. We develo...

Ecosystem services research needs to become more transdisciplinary.•ecoSERVICES will advance co-designed, transdisciplinary ecosystem service research. Ecosystem services have become a mainstream concept for the expression of values assigned by people to various functions of ecosystems. Even though the introduction of the concept has initiated a va...

35 Ecosystem services have become a mainstream concept for the expression of values assigned by people to various functions of ecosystems. Even though the introduction of the concept has initiated a vast amount of research, progress in using this knowledge for sustainable resource use remains insufficient. We see a need to broaden the scope of rese...

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

In response to growing demand for ecosystem-level risk assessment in biodiversity conservation, and rapid proliferation of locally tailored protocols, the IUCN recently endorsed new Red List criteria as a global standard for ecosystem risk assessment. Four qualities were sought in the design of the IUCN criteria: generality; precision; realism; and...

Ecosystem extent and condition accounts for South Africa's rivers

Hydrogeomorphic approaches to wetland classification use landform classes to distinguish wetland functionality at a regional scale. Space-borne radar technology enabled faster regional surveying of surface elevations to digital elevation models, which allowed for automated terrain attribute and landform classification using geographical information...

These guidelines have been produced to support the development of ecosystem service indicators at the national and regional level for uses in reporting, assessments, policy making, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem management, environmental management, development planning and education. The guidance contains four key sections: 1. Introduction...

Communities worldwide are increasingly affected by natural hazards such as floods, droughts, wildfires and storm-waves. However, the causes of these increases remain underexplored, often attributed to climate changes or changes in the patterns of human exposure. This paper aims to quantify the effect of climate change, as well as land cover change,...

Background/Question/Methods As ecosystem services take centre stage in science and policy arenas, ecosystem service indicators have become a topic of major interest. Currently many indicators measure the levels of ecosystem services provided by an area (e.g. litres of water), but do not provide an indication of the actual benefits gained by peopl...

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...

Communities worldwide are increasingly affected by natural hazards such as floods, droughts, wildfires and storm-waves. However, the causes of these increases remain underexplored, often attributed to climate changes or changes in the patterns of human exposure. This paper aims to quantify the effect of climate change, as well as land cover change,...

An area of convergence appears to be emerging between the approaches of conservation planning and the concepts of multifunctional landscapes, which if exploited correctly may assist in overcoming the resource and other constraints faced by biodiversity conservation, while at the same time furthering the aims of multifunctional landscapes to improve...

Synthesis report for South Africa's National Biodiversity Assessment 2011

A spatial assessment was conducted in the semi-arid area of South Africa, to: (1) identify priority areas for the conservation of river and groundwater ecosystems; (2) examine surface and groundwater quality for human consumption and (3) investigate the rehabilitation of degraded areas to highlight ‘win-win’ situations for both environmental and hu...

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...

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...

Integrated water resources management offers an ideal platform for addressing the goals of freshwater conservation and climate change adaptation. Environmental flow assessment and systematic conservation planning have evolved separately in respective aquatic and terrestrial realms, and both are central to freshwater conservation and can inform inte...

1. River systems have strong linear linkages. Innovative solutions to capture these linkages are required from aquatic conservation planners. 2. We apply an approach to freshwater conservation planning to freshwater ecosystems of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa), using generic conservation planning software. We used a two-step, hierarchical process to...

1. We review recent advances in systematic conservation planning in fresh waters. Most modern systematic planning approaches are based on the CARE principles: comprehensiveness, adequacy, representativeness and efficiency. Efficiency is usually provided by a complementarity-based strategy, aiming to select new conservation areas in the light of pre...

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...

The number of Crozet shags or cormorants Phalacrocorax [atriceps] melanogenis breeding at subantarctic Marion Island decreased by 68% from 841 pairs in 1994/95 to 272 pairs in 2002/03. The mean number of pairs at colonies also decreased and was significantly related to the overall number of birds breeding in any given season. The decreases coincide...

Copyright: 2007 Water Research Commission Freshwater biodiversity is globally threatened due to human disturbances, but freshwater ecosystems have been accorded less protection than their terrestrial and marine counterparts. Few criteria exist for assessing the habitat integrity of rivers and data used for such assessments are generally of limited...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Plant invasions are a serious threat to natural and semi-natural ecosystems worldwide. Most management-orientated research on invasions focuses on invaders that are already widespread and often have major impacts. This paper deals with "emerging" invaders-those alien species with the potential to become important problems without timely interventio...

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...

1. A number of parallel initiatives in South Africa have been addressing the prioritization and management of invasive alien plant species, the prioritization of rivers for the conservation of biodiversity, and broad-scale planning for water resource management. This paper has combined aspects of these approaches to develop a composite index of pri...

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...

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...

South Africa's National Spatial Biodiversity Assessment 2004, Summary Report

Copyright: 2004 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Most national or regional initiatives aimed at managing biological invasions lack objective protocols for prioritizing invasive species and areas based on likely future dimensions of spread. South Africa has one of the most ambitious national programmes for managing plant invasions in the world. There is, ho...