Evaluating environmental policy integration and policy coherence across service sectors: The case of South Africa’s inland water biodiversity

Abstract

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 protected areas are critically endangered. This article reviews the Water Research Commission (WRC) project that has facilitated the development of cross-sector policy objectives to enable the inclusion of the systematic conservation of inland water ecosystems in the strategic planning processes of several sectors impacting on South Africa’s inland water biodiversity. The authors use environmental policy integration (EPI) research approach to analyse the rationale and process whereby the cross-sector policy objectives were developed. The focus then shifts to the limitations and successes of the process and suggestions are made about how implementation of the cross-sector policy objectives at both the local and national level could be achieved.