ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Cities
Sec. Cities in the Global South
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsc.2025.1513673
Local Government Response to Urban Biodiversity Conservation within a Global Biodiversity Hotspot
Provisionally accepted
- 1EThekwini Municipality, Durban, South Africa
- 2University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
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The post 2020 Global Biodiversity Framework advocates for a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to address the global biodiversity crisis, with increasing calls for local governments to play a more active role in biodiversity conservation. We present a local government led examination of tools aimed at increasing biodiversity protection, management, and ecosystem restoration in the City of Durban, located in a global biodiversity hotspot. Using analytical frameworks and local government data, we assessed the efficacy of tools applied, and identified barriers and potential enablers to improve conservation outcomes. We confirmed areas of success in the development of fit-for-purpose town planning tools that have contributed towards avoided loss of biodiversity, and the implementation of tools that have increased the protection of important biodiversity sites. Development of land management and restoration functions have further advanced conservation outcomes through restored ecological processes, and improved management of threats. Despite positive contributions to biodiversity conservation, several challenges persist, including unequal biodiversity protection and investment in relation to local population socio-economic status, cross-sectorial barriers, governance silos, and inadequate incentives for protection and management. Increasing biodiversity conservation on landholdings under traditional and private land tenure represents an important next step for the City. Upscaling of successful management tools, improving financial incentives for landowners, and adopting a more community centred approach to conservation governance, represent key opportunities for the City. We emphasise the important role that a local government can play in contributing towards broader biodiversity goals and identify opportunities and challenges in the development and application of biodiversity conservation tools at the local government scale, through the lenses of governance, equity and justice, and inclusivity.
Keywords: urban biodiversity, conservation expansion, Local Government, ecological management, Durban
Received: 18 Oct 2024; Accepted: 19 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 McLean, Roberts and Slotow. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Cameron T McLean, EThekwini Municipality, Durban, South Africa
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