Successes
and Challenges Highlighted in Africa Environment
Outlook-2
Nairobi, 27 June - Poverty in
Africa can be made history if the region’s wealth
of natural resources is effectively, fairly and
sustainably harnessed a new report by the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says.
Outstanding issues like rapid
rates of deforestation, high levels of land degradation,
wasteful water use in agriculture and climate
change remain and need to be urgently addressed.
Other challenges are emerging.
These range from genetically modified organisms
and the costs of alien invasive species up to
a switch of chemical manufacturing from the developed
to the developing world, says the Africa Environment
Outlook-2.
However many African countries
are now parties to a wide range of international
environment treaties and new cooperative agreements
are being born covering shared river and ecosystems
like the Limpopo up to the management of the Congo
basin’s globally important forests.
Meanwhile initiatives like the
African Union’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development
(NEPAD) promise to propel the region and its people
onto a more prosperous path that balances economic,
social and environmental concerns.
Several African countries, like
the Gambia and Zambia, are mainstreaming the environment
in their Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and
other countries are starting to use tax and other
market mechanisms to conserve ecosystems like
forests.
Only last week Tanzania announced,
in its budget, VAT exemptions for liquefied petroleum
gas in order to reduce energy production from
charcoal and wood. Kenya has announced that solar
panels and related equipment will be zero rated.
Achim Steiner, UNEP’s Executive
Director, said today: “The report challenges the
myth that Africa is poor. Indeed, it points out
that its vast natural wealth can, if sensitively,
sustainably and creatively managed, be the basis
for an African renaissance—a renaissance that
meets and goes beyond the internationally agreed
Millennium Development Goals. But this is not
inevitable and, as the AE0-2 points out, African
nations face stark choices”.
“If policies remain unchanged,
political will found wanting and sufficient funding
proves to be elusive, then Africa may take a far
more unsustainable track that will see an erosion
of its nature-based wealth and a slide into ever
deeper poverty,” he added.
“Such a track will have disturbing
consequences not just for many of the 800 million
people here but for the rest of the world. Nevertheless,
I am convinced that we are fast reaching a watershed
in Africa’s response and that the pieces of a
sustainable jigsaw puzzle are being steadily put
into place” said Mr Steiner.
“Governments are signaling an
increased willingness to cooperate and to engage
over a wide range of pressing regional and global
issues. The economic importance of the environment
is increasingly recognized by Africa’s leaders
as an instrument for development, for livelihoods,
for peace and for stability. I sincerely believe
we have a real opportunity to take this impetus
a long way,” he concluded.
Henry Djombo, Ministre de l’Economie
Forestiere et de l’Environnement of the Republic
of Congo and the new President of the African
Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN),
said: “The production of the AEO-2 is a key response
to one of the priorities expressed by our Heads
of State in the context of the revitalized African
Union and its New Partnership for Africa’s Development”.
“AMCEN is proud to have worked
closely with UNEP and other specialized institutions
of the African Union, Regional organizations,
major stakeholders and the UN family to capture
the key priorities of the region while emphasizing
policy options and actions for enhanced investment,
economic growth, poverty reduction and reduction
of human vulnerability which are critical for
the sustainable management of our resources,”
he added.
The AEO-2, compiled on behalf
of AMCEN with funding from UNEP and the governments
of Belgium, Luxembourg and Norway, is the work
of researchers and scientists from across the
region.
Untapped Potential
From freshwaters to forests
and from minerals to the marine environment, the
region is only realizing a fraction of its nature-based
economic potential says the AEO-2, which is sub-titled
Our Environment, Our Wealth.
The report says, for example,
that the potential for tourism based around nature
and cultural sites is huge but relatively untapped.
“Africa has numerous tourist
attractions, yet it contributes only four per
cent annually to the multi billion dollar global
tourism industry,” it notes.
Similar arguments are made in
terms of food in a region with “sufficient land
resources to produce enough to feed its people
and yet one in three is presently undernourished”.
The report also overturns the
popular view that Africa is short of water, rather
it underlines how little of it is utilized for
irrigation, drinking water and power generation.
Africa’s renewable freshwater
resource is, at close to 4,000 cubic km per year,
about 10 per cent of the global freshwater resource
and closely matches Africa’s share of the world
population.
Yet in 2005 only about five
per cent of the development potential is being
used for ‘industry, tourism and hydropower,” notes
the report.
It points out that Africa “is
a mining giant” producing nearly 80 per cent of
the world’s platinum, more than 40 per cent of
the globe’s diamonds and more than a fifth of
its gold and cobalt. Yet its industrial base is
insignificant”.
The report argues that, in the
case of minerals as well as areas like forest
products, there is a pressing need to ‘add value
to natural resources”.
“There is a need for Africa
to move from being a major exporter of primary
resources to being one” with a vibrant industrial
and manufacturing base.
The AEO-2 assesses the state
of the environment and draws plausible scenarios
as to the likely impacts of different policies
over the coming decades.
The kinds of tough choices facing
African leaders, business and civil society are
most clear cut in the scenarios on Freshwater
and Land.
Land
If food production in Africa
is driven purely by Market Forces, the level of
land degradation is likely to rise to between
25,000 and 35,000 hectares a year under a worst
case scenario.
This rapid intensification of
farming will hit forests in particular with forest
cover declining ‘drastically’ during the 2005
to 2025 period.
Under a more promising scenario, dubbed The Great
Transition, agricultural land expands by 10 per
cent between 2005 and 2025.
Under this scenario much of
this comes not from greater exploitation of existing
agricultural land but as a result of putting government-held
lands into production.
Revised tax systems also promote good land use
with a switch towards agriculture tailored to
local climatic, geographical, demographic and
cultural factors.
Land degradation declines to
0.1 million hectares a year by 2015 with restoration
programmes leading, from about the same year,
to an increase in forest cover.
Freshwater
Under a worse case scenario,
competition for water will rise as industrial
expansion grows with the losers likely to be the
general public.
Industrial growth in the region
is likely to be as a result of developed world
companies shifting factories, such as chemical
plants, into developing parts of the world such
as Africa and in particular North and South Africa.
The new industries will generate
employment but will take up to 16 per cent of
supplies putting increasing pressure on underground
water supplies, says the report.
Water prices for domestic consumers
could soar in many African cities forcing people
to buy cheaper but more polluted sources.
Under this scenario over a third
of Africans in future will not have adequate access
to water.
Under the more optimistic scenario, industries
are required to meet proper pollution control
standards and, although industrial use of water
climbs to just under a fifth of total water use,
discharges do not pollute lakes or rivers.
Increases in industrial demand are balanced by
water efficiency gains in agriculture through,
for example, the adoption of drip as opposed to
spray systems.
Currently agriculture in Africa
accounts for up to 90 per cent of water use. Under
the Great Transitions scenario it declines to
under 60 per cent as a result of governments introducing
and encouraging tariffs and modern water saving
irrigation systems.
However, the availability of
greater quantities of clean and safe drinking
water allied to rising living standards and incomes
generated by industrial growth will probably result
in higher public use if not ‘over use’ in growing
urban areas.
Thus the proportion of Africa’s
citizens without access to adequate water supplies
under this scenario will be 26 per cent by 2050
from a total population then of 1.5 billion.
It indicates that to meet and
maintain the internationally agreed development
goals will require even greater efforts in areas
of consumer awareness and water efficiency in
homes and cities.
Emerging Issues
Alien invasive species from
toads to trees are among the emerging issues facing
Africa says AE0-2.
Experts have pinpointed large numbers of life
forms, deliberately or accidentally introduced
into Africa, which are poisoning cattle, damaging
water supplies, carrying infections and affecting
tourism.
The highest numbers of alien
species are estimated to be found in South Africa
followed by Mauritius, Swaziland, Algeria, Madagascar
and Kenya.
Their impacts may equate to
hundreds of millions of dollars in damage annually
and may also be contributing to the undermining
of economic progress and the delivery of the MDGs.
Black wattle, a tree introduced into South Africa
about 150 years ago to provide bark products,
is undermining river banks and harming wildlife
in the Cape Floral Kingdom, one of the world’s
great biodiversity hot spots.
Since 1995, the South African government has removed
and destroyed some five billion black wattle trees.
The annual bill for manual and chemical control
of all alien species in the Cape Floral Kingdom
is around $40 million.
Meanwhile stockpiles of obsolete
and hazardous chemicals, a switch of chemical
production from developed to developing countries
and gaps in the safe handling of toxic substances
are becoming another new area of concern.
The issue is underscored in
a study of wetlands in Senegal where agricultural
and industrial chemical pollution has more than
halved fish catches in some places.
The AEO-2 call for a raft of
measures to be put in place to ensure Africa maximizes
the benefits of any chemical industrialization.
These include improved risk
assessments, monitoring, effective waste management,
labeling of products to enable sound consumer
choice and emergency response systems.
The recommendations echo those
proposed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development
in 2002 and that were agreed by environment ministers
under the Strategic Approach to International
Chemicals Management at UNEP’s Special Session
of its Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment
Forum in Dubai earlier in the year.
The third emerging issue focuses
on how the region is responding to the promises
and potential pitfalls of gene modified plants.
The report notes that nearly
20 African countries are now growing or field
testing GMOs from Morocco and Egypt to Kenya,
Zimbabwe and South Africa across to Benin, Cameroon
and Mali in West Africa.
The report accepts that such
high tech crops could help in the war against
famine and hunger and thus play a part in meeting
internationally agreed development goals.
But there are worries that such
crops may be seen as ‘silver bullets’ deflecting
attention from more fundamental issues of hunger
like poor food distribution systems, the inability
of the poor to get access to crop lands and environmental
mismanagement.
There is also concern that too
few African countries have the scientific, legal,
risk assessment and administrative structures
in place to deal with this new generation of crops.
A multi million dollar capacity
building project, being undertaken by UNEP and
funded by the Global Environment Facility, aims
to bridge theses gaps so that 100 developing countries,
including over 30 African ones, have the necessary
skills and laws needed to accept or reject GMOs.
Notes to Editors
The Africa Environment Outlook-2:
Our Environment, Our Wealth is available at www.unep.org
Copies of Africa Environment Outlook 2 can be
ordered through UNEP's online bookstore at: www.earthprint.com
The price per copy is US$60. Purchases from developing
countries attract a 50% discount and those from
the least developed countries, 75%.
Fact Sheets covering the emerging
issues of Invasive Alien Species, chemicals and
Genetically Modified Organisms are available at
www.unep.org with the press release
The secretariat of the African Ministerial Conference
for the Environment is hosted by UNEP at http://www.unep.org/roa/Amcen/default.asp
Nick Nuttall
