For well over a decade, climate change has been recognized as a significant threat to biodiversity in the Convention on Biological Diversity, Convention on Migratory Species, Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, and United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Biodiversity is already under pressure from changes in weather patterns and intensity of storms and droughts, and from changes in human use of land, water and other resources. This is especially so in wetland, coastal, agricultural and fire-affected mountain environments. All member states of these and other conventions have complex reporting requirements that can be greatly assisted and streamlined by the policy support tools provided by a coherent biodiversity early warning system. The Convention on Migratory Species, for example, requires national updates on species that regularly cross national borders, some of which may be profoundly affected by climate change impacts across the entire African continent. The long-term and large-scale spatial biodiversity databases highlighted in this booklet are being built into our national early warning system as a central support tool for South Africa's policy, planning, management and reporting needs under the CMS and other environmental conventions.