by Maxwell Chivasa
African government leaders face a multiple of challenges to rid the continent of poverty, and most importantly to avoid armed conflicts arising from political instability – the primary impediment to development in most of the continent.
A new book entitled Global Environmental Outlook (GE0-1) by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warns that the social, economic, and environmental impacts can be immense due to armed conflicts that can result in massive displacements and loss of human life.
Recent armed conflicts had shown that the causes for the outbreaks have been largely internal to the countries in question and the wider implications, such as violence spill over, refugee flows, and regional destabilisation problems could have been avoided before armed conflict.
Due to instability, coupled with environmental damage in countries with economies based on natural resources which most African countries are, the continent had failed to fully utilise its potential to achieve economic growth or self-sufficiency.
While significant progress had been made in confronting environmental problems in the last 10 years, UNEP expresses its concern in the book that the environment continues to degrade as nations take a snail pace approach to major problems that still persist. Significant progress was made in public and private sector action and participation, international cooperation and institutional development.
But when it comes to practical measures towards an environmentally sustainable future, “the pace is simply too slow”, says the book, launched early this year as GE0-1, a ground breaking report in a series of the state-of-environment reports to follow.
GE0-1 also looks at the world wide regions from ·\s1a and the Pac1fic, Europe and other countries.
Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, to West Asia and the Polar regions under the same categories of environmental assessments.
The series is being published by UNEP in collaboration with 20 other worldwide organisations and universities, which include the Southern African Research and Documentation
Centre (SARDC).
In the foreword, UNEP executive director, Elizabeth Dowdeswell says through the GEO series, UNEP is providing the world with an essential tool to speed up the pace of environmental action, set priorities, provide an early warning system, and to support informed decision-making at all levels of the society.
Dowdeswell also notes that in the early 1990s, there was a sense of urgency in solving environmental problems, but that is now lacking.
“UNEP hopes that GE0-1 will give a new impetus to international action on the protection and conservation of the environment, while at the same time promoting and caring for the development aspirations of nations and regions,” she said.
The GEO series will place high priority on reflecting regional perceptions and realities, while at the same time reporting on the status of the global environment.
GE0-1 points out that Africa is still at a critical turning point, with poverty continuing to perpetuate underdevelopment and mismanagement of resources, creating more pressure on the natural resource base.
However, the impacts of peace and stability on the environment in many parts of Africa, particularly in Mozambique and South Africa, and the implementation of economic structural adjustment programmes, are yet to be assessed.
One of the major problems common to Africa relates to the great imbalance in the use of its natural resources, such as soil and vegetation which are over-exploited while water, energy, minerals, and organic resources are underutilised or exported raw.
“Striking a balance between economic development and sustainability for the growing number of people remains the major environment and development challenge. The two are interlinked, requiring a coherent and integrated regional approach for their solution.
“The difficulty of finding the right path is compounded by the region’s great variance in cultural heritage and natural resource endowments,” says one of the chapters.
Most African leaders are aware of the challenges faced by their governments.
These are: land degradation; desertification affecting food security and self-sufficiency; protection and sustainable use of forests; effective management; protection of biodiversity; water scarcity and efficient water management; pollution; climatic problems; and population pressures on natural resources and in urban areas.
The book urges African leaders to recognise the fact that they are “sitting” on the world’s largest expanse of drylands, covering about 2 billion hectares of the continent or 65 percent of Africa’s total land area.
All they need is sustainable utilisation of the resources.
Two-thirds of Africa consists of arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas – home to about 400 million people. One-third is hyper-arid deserts.
But the land wealth is at risk of being degraded as a result of soil erosion and loss of vegetation cover, the major threats to Africa’s environment.
The main causes of soil degradation are overgrazing, particularly in drylands, extensive clearing of’ vegetation for agriculture, deforestation, extensive cultivation of marginal lands, and droughts,” the book explains.
Soil erosion constraints the agricultural production capacity of many lands, seriously contributing to poverty.
“Agriculture is the fundamental economic activity in most African countries, averaging 20-30 percent of gross domestic product in the sub-Saharan Africa and 55 percent of the total value of the exports, excluding oil,” it adds.
While Africa’s total area of tropical forests is now estimated to be under 530 million hectares, deforestation still poses a major problem throughout the continent. Of all tropical regions, GE0-1 notes that the continent’s forests are the most depleted with only 30 percent or so of the historical stands still remaining.
The major cause of deforestation is related to forest clearance for agriculture, particularly commercial farming and to some extent shifting cultivation and the harvesting of fuelwood. Clearing land for refugee camps, construction of materials, tobacco curing, and tsetse fly controls are some of the causes.
Africa’s wealth in terms of biological diversity, is an economic living asset, offering a wide spectrum of habitats and ecosystems, with high species diversity and impressive wildlife populations.
Some island states in the Indian Ocean are rich in endemic species,” scientists point out in the book.
Savannas, the most extensive ecosystem in Africa, also provide a home for the majority of humans, livestock and wildlife.
Scientists also observe that Africa’s savannahs are the richest grassland regions in the world, with a high incidence of indigenous plants and animals and the world’s greatest concentration of large mammals, particularly in northern Tanzania.
Several African mountains and highlands have unique and rich biodiversity, with a number of endemic animal and plant species.
Although Africa has some 4,000 billion cubic metres of renewable water annually, water availability is still a problem as it is highly variable in time and space.
Only 4 percent is used, reports the book. “The infrastructure and technical and financial means do not exist to use effectively the water available. The continent’s ground-water resources. Although widespread are limited.
“In the sub-Saharan Africa, about 15 percent of the renewable water resources is ground water and more than three quarters of the population uses this as their main source of supply.” the book notes.
Africa faces a serious problem of urbanisation which is increasing rapidly yet it was the least urbanised continent in the world. The book attributes the main causes of urbanisation to the rapid population growth, natural disasters, ethnic tensions, and armed conflict.
About 7 million refugees and 17 million internally displaced people, Africa has the highest number of people in the world forced to leave their homes. Man, people are leaving their homes in search of jobs and higher incomes in urban areas. Poverty and lack of land in rural areas and declining returns from agricultural commodities.
Environmental services in the urban centres in most African cities have not been able to develop the basics to match with the population explosion. Waste disposal systems, sewage treatment, and adequate industrial and vehicle pollution control cannot keep pace with the new arrivals, old and the newly born.
Air pollution levels, neither monitored nor controlled in most cities in Africa, are still low but are becoming a problem at local levels. Especially in major cities.
Primary sources of air pollution are coal and biomass burning, mining and manufacturing industries, and vehicles. Household burning of fuel wood, charcoal and coal creates indoor pollution and health hazards and the burning of grasslands and forests also contributes to particulates and elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
“The harmful effects of pollution are exacerbated by poor nutrition. Air pollution is emerging as a major problem in South Africa and to some extent in Zimbabwe, in areas where energy use and industrial development are essentially based on mineral coal,” warns the book.
The underlying causes of environmental deterioration in Africa is linked to poor economic performance and poverty.
Rapid population growth and poverty accelerate deforestation and the expansion of agriculture into
marginal areas, leading in turn to land degradation, which exacerbates food insecurity, loss of biodiversity, decline in water quality and decrease in health status.
Africa’s external debt continues to be a major impediment to the achievement of accelerated economic growth and development.
The continent’s debt stock stood at US$313 billion in 1994, equivalent to 234 percent of export income and 83 percent of gross domestic product. The debt burden is higher than that of any other region and yet of the 30 poorest countries of the world. 21 are in Africa.
With such environmental and economic problems. African government leaders do not seem to have much time and choice to rid the continent of poverty, but maintain political stability, avoid armed conflicts that cause refugee problems and redirect their efforts toward development.
(SARDC)
