Adopting early dry season fires in African conservation areas has been proposed as ecologically desired and a means of generating sufficient carbon revenues for their management. We interrogate available peer-reviewed information on the ecology and biogeochemistry of fire in Africa to offer an informed perspective on the full implications of the proposal. We conclude that there is insufficient evidence that a shift to early dry season fires will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, that resultant biodiversity and ecosystem service outcomes may not be desired, and that adopting a single burning regime limits the use of fire to achieve a diverse range of goals. Adopting early dry season fires has been proposed as a means of generating sufficient carbon revenues to pay for conservation in Africa. However, the climatic impact thereof is deeply questionable and may have unforeseen detrimental effects.

Many alien tree species were introduced into grassland ecosystems in South Africa by the commercial forestry industry for paper and timber for furniture. Over decades some of these introduced species escaped into neighbouring farms and community land. Adult trees from these alien species now provide other ecosystem services, notably fuelwood. Depending on the spatio-temporal context, many of these species can also negatively affect ecosystem services. We collected interview data from commercial and communal farmers in the upper Umzimvubu catchment in South Africa to compare farmers' knowledge and perceptions of invasive wattle species invasion and their associated ecosystem services and disservices. Fuelwood and fencing poles were the most common uses of wattle by commercial (83%; 67%) and communal (99%; 49%) farmers. On the other hand, the reduction of grass cover and loss of grazing land were the most commonly mentioned negative impacts of wattles by commercial (83%; 75%) and communal (92%; 80%) farmers. Although both groups recognise the importance of wattles in providing ecosystem services, most communal farmers perceived wattles to have more negative effects than benefits. The findings demonstrate that both farmer groups highly depend on ecosystem services and are affected by disservices of wattles. However, while large-scale commercial households favour the presence of wattles in the landscape, communal households prefer complete removal of the wattles from the landscape. This may be due to lack of locally available alternative options or inability to replace or purchase ecosystem services affected by wattles from other sources or markets like commercial farmers.

Trends in rhinoceroses (rhinos) in Kruger National Park (Kruger) is of key concern. Poaching drives trends in the Park. Reconciling annual population estimates with yearly reports of poached carcasses fuels public critique. We account for trends in rhinos by extracting time series of estimates. Progressively modelling influences of man-agement introductions and removals, effects of environmental variation and rhino density, direct impacts of poaching, consequences of imperfect carcass detection, and indirect impacts of deaths of dependent calves form the basis of accounting for rhinos. Models that considered all these influences explained 93% of white and 83% of black rhino population trends. In addition, the models predicted 2,515 white and 225 black rhinos, similar to estimates of 2,607 (95% CI: 2,475-2,752) and 202 (95% CI: 172-237) during 2020 respectively. The best model, however, predicts slow recovery with a white rhino population equivalent to pre-poaching achieved between 2030 and 2040. For black rhinos, recovery to pre-poaching population size would be between 2040 and 2050. The poaching onslaught in Kruger disrupted eruptive white rhino dynamics and prevented black rhinos from transitioning into eruptive dynamics. Authorities require innovative approaches within and beyond Kruger to help re-ignite rhino conservation.

1 Coastal Oceans Research and Development in the Indian Ocean (CORDIO) East Africa, Mombasa, Kenya, 2 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America, 3 Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT of the CGIAR/EAT Forum, Montpellier, France, 4 Independent Biodiversity Consultant; South African National Biodiversity Institute, Cape Town, South Africa, 5 South African National Parks, Pretoria, South Africa, 6 Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa, 7 Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), Trondheim, Norway, 8 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Rome, Italy, 9 The University of Western Australia Oceans Institute, Crawley, Australia, 10 MARBEC (Univ. Montpellier, Ifremer, IRD, CNRS), Sète, France, 11 Instituto de Investigaciones en Recursos Naturales, Agroecologı́a y Desarrollo Rural (UNRNCONICET), Rı́o Negro, Argentina, 12 Institute for Enhanced Livelihoods (IEL), Montreal, Canada, 13 TRAFFIC, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 14 IUCN SSC/CEESP Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 15 International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), London, United Kingdom

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 in southern Africa over the past decade, linked to the international Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS). This community consists of a network of researchers who carry out place-based SES research in the southern African region. They interact through various cross-cutting working groups and also host a variety of public colloquia and student and practitioner training events. Known as the Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (SAPECS), its core objectives are to: (1) derive new approaches and empirical insights on SES dynamics in the southern African context; (2) have a tangible impact by mainstreaming knowledge into policy and practice; and (3) grow the community of practice engaged in SES research and governance, including researchers, students and practitioners. This paper reflects on experiences in building the SAPECS community, with the aim of supporting the development of similar networks elsewhere in the world, particularly in the Global South.

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 transformations are substantially different from the Global South. This paper synthesises emerging insights on SES dynamics that can inform actions and advance research to support sustainability transformations specifically in the southern African context. The paper draws on work linked to members of the Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (SAPECS), a leading SES research network in the region, synthesizing key insights with respect to the five core themes of SAPECS: (i) transdisciplinary and engaged research, (ii) ecosystem services and human well-being, (iii) governance institutions and management practices, (iv) spatial relationships and cross-scale connections, and (v) regime shifts, traps and transformations. For each theme, we focus on insights that are particularly novel, interesting or important in the southern African context, and reflect on key research gaps and emerging frontiers for SES research in the region going forward. Such place-based insights are important for understanding the variation in SES dynamics around the world, and are crucial for informing a context-sensitive global agenda to foster sustainability transformations at local to global scales.

Limited mapping of migrations hampers conservation

The chapter references enclosed in curly brackets (e.g.{2.3.1, 2.3.1.2,2.3.1.3})are traceable accounts and refer to sections of the chapters of the IPBES Global Assessment.A traceable account is a description within the corresponding texts of these chapters, reflecting the evaluation of the type, amount, quality, and consistency of evidence and the degree of agreement for that particular statement or key finding.

During 2020, South Africa reported 394 poached rhinoceros (rhino) carcasses -34 at private properties and 360 at state properties. 1 Poaching since 2008 has degraded South Africa's rhino populations.By the start of 2020, South Africa had 14 410 southern white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum simum) and 1900 black rhinos, mostly south-central (Diceros bicornis bicornis) and south-western black rhino (D. b. minor) sub-species and a few nonnative eastern black rhinos (D. b. michaeli) (Table 1).Rhinos occur in national parks managed by SANParks, reserves managed by provincial conservation authorities and non-state areas comprising private and communal ownership.Of these, the Kruger National Park (Kruger) has experienced the highest number of poaching losses reported for state land.Kruger has an operational area the size of Israel (approximately 2 000 000 ha).In contrast, privately owned nature reserves containing rhinos in South Africa have a national average of 10 000 ha (1 300 000 ha distributed across 132 properties studied 2 ).Therefore, privately owned reserves are, on average, approximately 200 times smaller than the size of Kruger.National parks other than Kruger, provincial and communal reserves are also smaller relative to Kruger, with the other national parks averaging approximately 33 000 ha, excluding Addo Elephant National Park (Addo), which is 173 000 ha. Addo, however, has five disconnected sections, three of which have rhinos present.

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 obstacles, including a paucity of documented lessons from existing adaptive management practices and inadequate attention to the complex social aspects of learning. Here we address these two impediments through (i) a case study of an established version of adaptive management and its application in the context of protected area management plans, and (ii) its critical comparison and conceptual integration with the seminal theory of organizational knowledge creation (TOKC), which emphasizes the social aspects of learning. As case study, we focus on Strategic Adaptive Management (SAM), which has been iteratively developed and implemented by South African National Parks for more than 20 years. We used TOKC as a conceptual sounding board to reflect on and appraise the learning that takes place through SAM. A comparison of the main steps of the SAM cycle with corresponding stages outlined by TOKC revealed remarkable complementarity between these two approaches, but also important differences. The conceptual comparison deepened our understanding of SAM's learning performance as well as potential, revealing strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for improvement. Key insights include that valuable and different forms of learning takes place during each step of the SAM cycle. This learning can be enhanced through careful attention to approaches for creating, sharing and making explicit the tacit knowledge of individuals. Furthermore, dialogue and co-learning with stakeholders should be maintained beyond the visioning and objectives setting step of SAM. Based on insights gained, we developed a new and complementary conceptualization of SAM, as a spiraling process of organizational learning enabled by the interplay between tacit and explicit forms of knowledge, which in turn is mediated by different types of social interactions, media and engagement with practice. We believe that this conceptualization can help to better acknowledge and enable learning as one of the most fundamental purposes and outcomes of SAM, and adaptive management more generally.

Global COVID-19 responses by governments restricted international travel, imposed national lockdowns, reduced economies, and influenced people's livelihoods. Travel restrictions and national lockdowns may constrain international illegal supply chains of high value wildlife products such as rhinoceros (rhino) horn. We evaluated whether the COVID-19 lockdown responses by South Africa induced a poaching pause on rhinos in Kruger National Park. We collated information on poaching incidences from 2017 and made predictions for expected incidences during 2020 using trends noted between 2017 and 2019. Rangers observed substantially fewer incidences of poaching during South Africa's hard lockdown. As restrictions eased, poaching incidences increased. Despite the COVID-19 poaching pause, both black and white rhinos continued to decline in Kruger National Park as recruitment could not offset poaching and natural deaths.

Throughout the world, biodiversity and nature's contributions to people are under threat, with clear changes evident. Biodiversity and ecosystem services have particular value in Africa– yet they are negatively impacted by a range of drivers, including land use and climate change. In this communication, we show evidence of changing biodiversity and ecosystem services in Africa, as well as the current most significant drivers of change. We then consider five plausible futures for the African continent, each underlain by differing assumptions. In three out of the five futures under consideration, negative impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services are likely to persist. Those two plausible futures prioritizing environment and sustainability, however, are shown as the most likely paths to achieving long term development objectives without compromising the continent's biodiversity and ecosystem services. Such a finding shows clearly that achievement of such objectives cannot be separated from full recognition of the value of such services.

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 management agency. Quantitative and qualitative information, sourced from ongoing monitoring, organizational reports, questionnaires and discussions with agency staff, were used to make sense of the challenges and opportunities. In the short term, lockdown regulations limited people's ability to access benefits from PAs with 50,000 educational visits lost between April and June 2020 and recreational visits in access-controlled national parks decreasing by ~96%. Consequently, tourism revenue dropped by 90% highlighting the fragility and risk of single primary income stream reliance. This resulted in loss of community development revenues and implementation of cost curtailment measures. Increased anxiety regarding health and job security impacted employee morale and complicated operational challenges. Navigating this period required good communication, re-prioritisation and adaptive responses by park managers. Whilst we report on short-term impacts and responses, lagged and longer-term impacts are anticipated. The pandemic highlighted the interconnectedness of people and ecosystems and the complex interdependencies between the sustainability principles which must be considered for increased PA resilience and sustainability.

Zoonoses account for about 25% of the infectious disease burden in low-income countries Poverty might increase the risk for zoonotic disease where the active human--livestock and human--wildlife interfaces can increase the likelihood of disease transmission A combined disease burden exists for people in areas such as tropical and subtropical Africa, where there is likelihood of co-infection with zoonotic diseases and other pathogenic or infectious diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV Many endemic zoonoses remain widely neglected in such settings, undetected and underreported, because their impacts are borne largely by impoverished and marginalized communities Here, Wernecke et al discuss how to 'prevent the next pandemic' by interrogating what is known about zoonotic diseases and how best one can break the chain of transmission

Understanding nature's contributions to people (NCP) can improve people's ability to manage earth systems effectively, equitably, and sustainably (Chaplin-Kramer et al. 2019; Brauman et al., 2020). NCP can be perceived as a benefit or detriment depending on the cultural, temporal, or spatial context (Diaz et al. 2018). According to IPBES (2019), beneficial contributions from nature include food provision, water purification, flood control, and artistic inspiration. In contrast, detrimental contributions include disease transmission and predation that causes damage to people or their assets. Pascual et al. (2017) observed that previous studies that focus on the valuation of nature’s contributions to people's good quality of life are often not sufficiently inclusive and tend to neglect conflicting perspectives. To address this, the NCP concept and framing is being promoted in inclusive ways and encompasses multiple ways to understand how nature benefits people, for instance, via the concept of ecosystem services (ESs) and embracing diverse world views, including those of indigenous people and local communities. Therefore, more multidisciplinary scientific research is essential to deal with NCP. Increasing overexploitation of natural resources and unprecedented transformation of land, freshwater, and seascapes over the past century have paralleled technological advances and supported better living standards for many but have also led to changes in climate and the accelerating decline of biological diversity worldwide. This overexploitation negatively impacts many aspects of a good quality of life (Diaz et al. 2019). In particular, global climate change is also associated with irreversible changes in NCP (Runting et al. 2017; Arneth et al. 2020; Pörtner et al. 2021). Maintaining or enhancing nature's beneficial contributions to a good quality of life without compromising nature's ability to provide the sustainability of NCP is one of the most urgent contemporary challenges (Diaz et al. 2018, 2019) and underpins the fulfillment of the Sustainable Development Goals (Griggs et al. 2013). To achieve this, decision-makers must understand how human activities affect nature and its ability to provide NCP. Multiple academic disciplines increasingly provide NCP information at regional and local scales and among different social groups. It is a valuable input that can help policy to help catalyze changes in attitudes and behavior. In addition, understanding the way NCP values and institutions (conventions, norms, and rules) are interlinked can help identify urgent needs to reform institutions (including Valuation of Nature and Nature’s Contributions to People

ABSTRACT The degree to which invasive Acacia species affect South Africa’s livestock production has received little attention. We investigated the ecological impacts of Acacia mearnsii invasion on forage quality and quantity and on soil resources, along A. mearnsii invasion gradients, on South African rangelands and the subsequent conditions following clearing. Grazing capacity was reduced by 72% in densely invaded sites, whereas clearing improved grazing capacity by 66% relative to densely invaded sites within 5 years. In densely invaded sites total grass species basal cover was reduced by up to 42%. As a result, A. mearnsii reduced grazing capacity, from 2 to 8 ha required to support one large stock unit (ha/LSU) in uninvaded and densely invaded sites, respectively. Soil moisture content was lower in densely invaded sites compared with lightly invaded and cleared sites. Plant litter increased from 1.3% to 4.2%, carbon content of the soil increased from 2.0% to 4.0% and nitrogen concentrations increased from 0.1% to 0.2% in response to invasion by A. mearnsii. Clearing resulted in improved grazing capacity within 5 years. These results also showed that, if left uncontrolled, wattle species can reduce livestock carrying capacity within montane grasslands in South Africa. EDITED BY James Aronson

Current understanding of the effects of condensed tannins (CTs) on productivity of mixed-feeding ruminants is largely based on simple laboratory and feeding experiments. These experiments do not allow mixed feeders such as goats to adequately employ their behavioural and physiological responses to plant secondary metabolites. In a field experiment, we investigated the effects of CTs on growth performance of goats. We hypothesized that CTs reduce blood circulatory nutrient and increase nitrogen in faeces. We divided 45 yearling females into three groups of 15 animals that were orally dosed daily with either CTs, polyethylene glycol 6000 (PEG, a polymer that neutralizes dietary tannins), or water (control). We measured the average daily gains, live weights, faecal nitrogen and four blood metabolites from each goat during dry and wet seasons. Live weights increased over time in both dry (P < 0.001) and wet seasons (P < 0.001). The average daily gain was consistently greatest for animals dosed with PEG and least for those dosed with CTs. Goats dosed with CTs had the greatest faecal nitrogen and the least blood protein concentrations, while the opposite was true for PEG goats in both seasons. Blood urea and non-esterified fatty acids indicated a negative influence of CTs on energy and protein metabolism. We concluded that CTs limit growth and PEG mitigates the negative effects of CTs on growth performance of free-ranging mixed feeding ruminants.

Although condensed tannins (CTs) are known to reduce forage intake by mammalian herbivores in controlled experiments, few studies have tested these effects in the field. Thus the role of CTs on foraging ecology of free-ranging herbivores is inadequately understood. To investigate the effects of CTs under natural savanna conditions, we pre-dosed groups of goats with polyethylene glycol (PEG, a CT-neutralising chemical), CT powder or water before observing their foraging behaviour. While accounting for the effects of season and time of the day, we tested the hypothesis that herbivores forage in ways that reduce the intake rate (g DM per minute) of CTs. We expected pre-dosing goats with CTs to reduce CT intake rates by (1) consuming diets low in CTs, (2) reducing bite rates, (3) increasing the number of foraging bouts, or (4) reducing the length of foraging bouts. Lastly, (5) expected CT to have no influence the number of dietary forage species. In both wet and dry seasons, pre-dosing goats with CTs resulted in lower CT consumption rates compared to PEG goats which seemed relieved from the stress associated with CT consumption. During dry season, the number of dietary forage species was similar across treatments, although goats that were dosed with PEG significantly increased this number in the wet season. Dosing goats with PEG increased the number and length of browsing bouts compared to goats from the other treatments. Pre-loading goats with PEG also tended to increase bite rates on browse forages, which contributed to increased consumption rates of CTs. Based on the behavioural adjustments made by goats in this study and within the constraints imposed by chemical complexity in savanna systems, we concluded that herbivores under natural conditions foraged in ways that minimised CTs consumption. More research should further elucidate the mechanism through which CTs regulated feeding behaviour.

Citation: Stringer, L., Osman-Elasha, B., DeClerck, F., Gebremikael, M. B., Barau, A. S., Denboba, M. A., Diallo, M., Molua, E., Ngenda, G., Pereira, L. ORCID: 0000-0002-49967234, Rahlao, S., Kalemba, M. M., Ojino, J. A., Belhabib, D., Sitas, N., StrauS, L. and Ward, C. Options for governance and decision-making across scales and sectors. In: Archer, E., Dziba, L., Mulongoy, K-J., Maoela, A. and Walters, A. (Eds.), The IPBES regional assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services for Africa. (pp. 353-414). Bonn, Germany: Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. ISBN 978-3-947851-05-8