For Africa to be strong it needs strong ecosystems

What you need to know:

  • Climate change, population growth, increased water demand and environmental degradation are all putting pressure on our freshwater resources.
  • In other words, if we want to succeed in building peaceful and productive societies, it is imperative that we understand the role our ecosystems play in the development process.
  • Poverty begets degradation, but so does wealth if we do not ensure our consumption and production activities are done sustainably.

Our continent is undergoing an unprecedented and rapid transformation. Some of the world’s fastest growing economies are in Africa. Our cities and our populations are exploding.

The “wild” side of Africa is changing as new infrastructure to accommodate this boon, as well as increased regional and global trade, are transforming urban and rural areas.

In this, many are writing the first chapters of Africa’s rise. But are we seeing the full story?

Climate change, population growth, increased water demand and environmental degradation are all putting pressure on our freshwater resources.

In a number of African countries, demand for water outstrips available resources.

More than half of Africa’s population still relies on forests for their livelihood yet the continent lost 3.4 million hectares of forest per year between 2000 and 2010 to human activities.

For wildlife, the future doesn’t look much brighter. As trade routes between Africa and other parts of the world open and multiply, so do the opportunities for smuggling of our natural heritage.

Each year, more than 20,000 elephants are killed by poachers for their tusks, and more than 1,300 rhinos were poached in 2015 in Africa.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPORTANCE

And while Africa’s “lion economies” continue to grow, Africa's lions are in a state of serious decline. Clearly we are not undertaking a complete environmental accounting of our success.

Last week, Nairobi hosted the second session of the United Nations Environment Assembly, the world’s highest-level governing body on the environment.

Protecting the environment is not merely about saving elephants and rhinos, or safeguarding national parks.

It is about protecting the very foundation on which our growth, progress and prosperity are built, and it underpins all other critical global issues, from health and poverty to peace and security.

That’s why the 2030 Agenda falls on nations to work towards eradicating poverty and hunger alongside protecting and restoring ecosystems.

While poverty eradication and ecosystem protection might seem like disparate issues, they are interlinked.

Poverty begets degradation, but so does wealth if we do not ensure our consumption and production activities are done sustainably.

Food and water security are ultimately impacted by how we manage our forests, combat climate change and cultivate our lands.

Our health is tied to the health of the air we breathe, the soil in which we grow our food, and the water we consume.

In other words, if we want to succeed in building peaceful and productive societies, it is imperative that we understand the role our ecosystems play in the development process.

ALL INCLUSIVE

Our ministries of environment and our conservationists can’t be the only ones who are environmentally literate. We must all possess this literacy.

Development and the protection of our ecosystems need not be mutually exclusive, however.

Without stopping the pace of development, we can choose places better suited for drilling, paving and extracting that allow us to minimise the negative consequences.

Fortunately we have the knowledge and the science to identify and distinguish the areas suitable for infrastructure development, communities and wildlife.

What we lack, perhaps, is the political will. We must do a better job of securing political commitment at the highest level to allocate adequate resources for the conservation of wildlife and wild lands.

We have to integrate the protection of wildlife and wild lands into national and regional planning so as to secure the economic, cultural and environmental value of Africa’s unique natural heritage.

If we do not resolve to tackle these issues while we are still in the first chapters of our story, our growth and growing prosperity could be short-lived, while the socioeconomic, political and environmental repercussions will be anything but.

We are the authors of our fate, and we are in a unique position to write a new kind of success story.

The writer is president of the African Wildlife Foundation.