Africa needs strong wildlife ecosystems

Africa 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, transform urban and rural areas.

Meanwhile, 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 our natural heritage abroad.

Each year, more than 20,000 elephants — and possibly as many as 35,000 — are killed by poachers for their tusks, and more than 1,300 rhinos were poached in 2015 across the continent. And while Africa’s “lion economies” continue to grow and flourish, the continent’s lions are in a state of serious decline.

Today there are an estimated 23,000 lions, whereas there were an estimated 100,000 lions in the early 1990’s. Clearly, we are not undertaking a complete environmental accounting of our success.

This week, Nairobi hosted the second session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-2), 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 and reserves. 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 for Sustainable Development calls on nations to work toward eradicating poverty and hunger alongside protecting and restoring ecosystems.

While poverty eradication and ecosystem protection might seem like disparate issues, they are in fact interlinked. Poverty begets environmental degradation, but so does wealth if we do not ensure our consumption and production activities are carried out in a sustainable way.

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

The health of our bodies is tied to the health of the air we breathe, the soil in which we grow our food, and the water we consume. History, too, has shown us that the progress toward democracy can be upended when natural resources become scarce or compromised.

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.Above all, it must be the African voice that calls on our political and industry leaders to prioritise environmental protections as they sketch out the path of development.