Fitz Research: Climate Change Vulnerability & Adaptation

Biodiversity faces few greater challenges today than that posed by climate change. While barely six years ago, anthropogenic climate change was still regarded as a peripheral and controversial issue, the international scientific consensus on its magnitude, causes and types of consequences is now virtually complete.

Climate change impacts on southern African biodiversity are expected to be highly significant. Africa is widely accepted to be the continent least equipped to adapt to climate change. Nonetheless, its biodiversity science community lags badly behind those of the northern hemisphere and Australia in understanding these impacts.

Climate change does not operate in isolation, but in concert with other global change drivers, such as land use change, biotic invasion and desertification. These other drivers have already significantly altered southern African ecosystems, and the ways in which they compound the impacts of climate change are complex and often difficult to predict in detail. The magnitude and pace of these problems demands a concerted research response, coupled to concrete tools for conservation planners, policy policymakers and habitat managers.

The PFAIO thus participates in the South African National Biodiversity Institute’s (SANBI’s) Birds and Environmental Change Partnership, based in the Climate Change and BioAdaptation Division at Kirstenbosch, and has established a joint programme with SANBI on the vulnerability of bird species to climate change and other environmental change drivers. The scientific research work is done jointly by the PFIAO, Animal Demography Unit of UCT, and SANBI, with international partners. The policy and planning translation is undertaken mainly by SANBI with partners’ inputs.

This programme is co-ordinated by Dr Phoebe Barnard and Dr Rob Simmons. See Climate Change Vulnerability & Adaptation for more details.