State of the
Environment Reporting Network for Southern Africa |
SOENETSA NEWSLETTER
Vol. 1 No. 1, December 1999
The state of the environment in Africa
has declined:
According
to the report, published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with
contributions from 850 individuals and over 20 environmental institutions worldwide,
environmental degradation and resource depletion have escalated drastically over the past
three decades. This is attributed to the cumulative impacts of rapid growth in population,
intensive agriculture, urbanisation and industrialisation.
The
priority list of environmental challenges includes land degradation, deforestation,
declining biodiversity and marine resources, water scarcity, and deteriorating water and
air quality.
Poverty is
the main contributory factor to the adverse environmental trends in Africa. It is both a
cause and a consequence of environmental degradation. However, the main cause of many
environmental problems is the persistence of economic, agricultural, energy, industrial
and other sectoral policies, which largely neglect and fail to avoid harmful impacts on
the environment and natural resource base.
Some startling statistics from the GEO-report include that:
· Africa is the only continent on which poverty is expected to rise during the next century.
· An estimated 500 million hectare of land have been affected by soil degradation since about 1950, including as much as 65 percent of agricultural land.
· As a result of declining food security, the number of undernourished people in Africa nearly doubled from 100 million in the late 1960s to nearly 200 million in 1995.
· Africa lost 39 million hectares of tropical forest during the 1980s and another 10 million hectares by 1995.
· 14 African countries are subjected to water stress or water scarcity, and a further 11 will join them by 2025.
