By Lebone Rodah Mosima
Gauteng has formally conserved less than 1% of its Highveld Grassland even though more than 80% of the province falls within the threatened ecosystem, Environment MEC Ewan Botha said.
Speaking at Gauteng’s commemoration of the International Day for Biological Diversity on Tuesday at Roodeplaat Nature Reserve, Botha said the country’s economic heartland was also one of its most ecologically vulnerable regions.
“Gauteng is the smallest province in South Africa (by land area). We are also the most densely populated, the most economically pressured, and the most ecologically compromised,” Botha said, according to his prepared remarks.
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“We carry over 3,300 plant species and approximately 720 recorded animal species. The biological inheritance of 16.4 million people. And it is disappearing faster than most of us are willing to admit.”
South Africa is facing mounting pressure to meet the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework targets of conserving 30% of land and restoring 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030.
The global framework, adopted in 2022, sets 23 targets for urgent action by 2030, including the conservation of at least 30% of terrestrial, inland water, marine and coastal areas.
Botha said the province had added more than 80,000 hectares to its conservation estate and managed more than 5,000 wetland sites, but said the scale of ecological loss demanded faster action.
“More than 80% of our province falls within the highly threatened Highveld Grassland ecosystem. Less than 1% of that grassland is formally conserved,” he said.
“Eighty percent threatened. One percent protected. We need to sit with the weight of those two numbers and let them demand something of us.”
The South African National Biodiversity Institute’s 2025 National Biodiversity Assessment found that Gauteng had the highest share of threatened habitat by extent among the country’s nine provinces, with 52.4% of remaining natural habitat classified as threatened. Nationally, nearly one-third of recognised terrestrial ecosystem types are threatened.
Botha said the Highveld Grassland was not only a conservation concern but a service-delivery and economic issue because it filtered water, stored carbon, supported pollinators and stabilised soils.
“When we lose it, we do not lose scenery. We lose services that no infrastructure budget can replace,” he said.
He said communities most affected by collapsing ecosystems were often not responsible for the destruction.
“Environmental injustice and biodiversity loss are the same wound,” he said. “I will not stand before you and manage your alarm. You should be alarmed. And so should I.”
The country’s biodiversity sector is also facing a funding squeeze. Deputy Forestry, Fisheries and Environment Minister Narend Singh said at a national biodiversity event last week that a Biodiversity Expenditure Review for 2016 to 2024 showed a “significant and growing finance gap” that was undermining South Africa’s ability to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity.
Botha said biodiversity needed to be treated as part of the economy, not only as an environmental concern. Gauteng had permitted more than 130 game farmers and about 50 wildlife processors into the province’s wildlife economy, he said.
“Because biodiversity must show up in our GDP. Not just our policy documents,” he said.
He told government, business, scientists and communities to treat conservation as an immediate obligation rather than a long-term aspiration.
“To government: We do not get to permit our way into an ecological collapse and call it development,” Botha said.
“Every approval signed without rigorous environmental assessment is a debt we are passing to our children.”
