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Africa's environment under siege
Sifelani Tsiko, The Herald (Zimbabwe)
September 18, 2006

http://allafrica.com/stories/200609190881.html

LATEST satellite images of the natural resources of Africa show that it is under an environmental assault of bigger proportions which could have disturbing consequences on the livelihood of people across the continent in future.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which launched a new atlas at an international water conference held in the Swedish capital of Stockholm last month, Africa's river basins, fresh water lakes, forests, coastal lagoons and wildlife sanctuaries are under siege from unsustainable exploitation.

The atlas shows the present state of the earth and the changes to the environment in Africa over the past few decades.

UNEP says the remotely-sensed data collected from satellites provides a unique source of information for the assessment and monitoring of the environment as well as the early warning of emerging environmental threats.

The satellite images, for example, documented the shrinking of Lake Chad, the spread of water hyacinth in Lake Victoria, the destruction of rainforests, the deadly effects of oil spills and other major environmental changes on the continent's ecosystem.

"I hope that the images in the atlas will sound a warning around the world that if we are to overcome poverty and meet internationally agreed development goals by 2015, the sustainable management of Africa's lakes must be part of the equation," said UNEP executive director Achim Steiner.

"Otherwise we face increasing tensions and instability as rising populations compete for life's most precious of precious resources."

Experts say Africa's wealth of natural resources has always been an asset and has sustained people on the continent in good and hard times.

They say there is a vast world of untapped traditional medicine and knowledge systems that, if well managed and protected, can make a difference to the lives of people in Zimbabwe and Africa.

For years, herbs from trees and shrubs, roots, leaves, flowers and bark have been used to cure a range of ailments through the linkage of spirituality and other traditional African religious practices.

Domestic knowledge has been used extensively for medicinal plants for human and animal health care, selection and breeding of livestock through the utilisation of Africa's river basins, fresh water lakes, forests, coastal lagoons and wildlife conservancies.

"If policies remain unchanged, political will found wanting and sufficient funding proves 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," said Steiner.

"Governments are signalling an increased willingness to co-operate and to engage over a wide range of pressing regional and global issues."

The economic importance of the environment, he says, is increasingly recognised by Africa's leaders as an instrument for development, livelihoods, peace and stability.

UNEP as part of the Africa Environment Outlook process, including the Africa Environment Information Network (AEIN), is distributing to each ministry of environment in the region complete national coverage of Landsat satellite images and elevation data for the country.

The images were also being distributed to sub-regional data and information management centres as well as African collaborating centres in the Global Environment Outlook and AEO processes.

The distribution of these images, UNEP said, was not an end in itself but a commitment by the agency to support Africa and enhance its access to relevant and up-to-date data and information for effective environmental assessment and reporting at different levels from regional to national.

The UN agency also said this was a commitment to build capacity in the area of environmental data and information management as highlighted in the AEIN framework.

"The 20th century was an industrial age, the 21st century is becoming a biological one," said Steiner.

He noted with concern that the true value and the sheer scale of wealth of Africa's fresh waters and landscapes, minerals and marine resources has been "invisible in economic terms".

The economic value in terms of crops and agriculture alone of the Zambezi River Basin wetlands is close to US$50 million a year, according to the Africa Environment Outlook 2.

When fisheries with an economic value of US$80 million a year are added with livestock production of US$70 million a year, wetland dependant eco-tourism worth US$800 000 annually and natural products and medicines associated with the wetlands of the Zambezi, the economic value of the basin hits over US$2,5 million a year.

In the Great Lakes Region, tourism linked to gorilla watching rakes in US$20 million a year while South Africa's coastal waters and unique wildlife generates US$30 billion a year in economic and tourist-based activities.

Environmental experts say African countries are becoming increasingly aware of the costs of inaction, of the price economies pay for lax environmental management and ecological degradation.

A recent study in Egypt has found that pollution and environmental damage is costing that country alone over 5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP).

The toxic waste tragedy in Cote d'Ivoire which has claimed six lives and affected more than 10 000 others is a sad development, showing the resurgence of toxic waste dumping by rich nations in poor ones.

Cote d'Ivoire is paying a heavy price for lax controls and prohibition of dumping of hazardous waste on its soil. The clean-up operation could cost more than US$13 million if the Basel Convention trust funds are released for that country's benefit.

Africa is daily being inundated with container loads of hazardous electronic waste as old computers, monitors, phones and other cast-off electronic devices from rich countries are dumped on its environment, threatening its river basins, fresh water lakes, forests, coastal lagoons and other ecosystems.

African countries must mobilise themselves around the 1989 Basel Convention, an international waste treaty which was designed to prevent industrialised nations from transferring hazardous waste to the world's poorest countries.

Several scandals involving the dumping of toxic waste in Africa have been reported in the past two decades and environmentalists say there is need for African countries to tighten their laws and monitoring of their environs.

According to UNEP, Lake Songor, a coastal lagoon in Ghana which is home to fish, globally threatened turtles and other bird species, is now under threat from excessive pollution and other unsustainable practices.

In December 1990, the lake appears on the atlas as a "solid blue mass of water" some 74 square kilometres in size but by December 2000, UNEP says the water body had been reduced to a "pale shadow of its former self".

Satellite images also show that the water level of Lake Victoria, once described as Africa's largest freshwater lake, is now is about a metre lower than it was in the early 1990s. The lake supports the lives of more than 30 million people living around it.

Extensive deforestation is threatening Lake Nakuru in Kenya which UNEP says has declined in its lake area from about 43 square kilometres to 40 sq km in 2000.

Niger is reported to have lost more than 80 percent of its freshwater wetlands over the last 20 years.

Water and river flow patterns have also changed drastically in Africa due to higher evaporation levels caused by climate change, according to another new study titled "Hydropolitical Vulnerability and Resilience along International Waters in Afric".

Southern African countries, which include Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe, are increasingly facing water shortages owing to rising demand and changes in the environment.

"They all share international river basins with other states and they all face significant limitations to their future economic prospects as a result of looming water shortages," says another study titled "Transboundary Water Management" done by the Bonn International Centre for Conversion.

"Africa has to strengthen its capacity to use international instruments and treaties to prevent the dumping of toxic waste on its ecosystems by rich nations," says a Harare-based environmental consultant.

"The environment must not be at the backseat of our policies and agendas," he says.

"It must be at the frontline of all our efforts to sensitively and sustainably manage Africa's natural resources."

And despite the costs of acquiring and preparing satellite data for national use, the use of satellite images can help African governments to analyse environmental changes and damages and adopt measures to protect their natural resources.

It is a useful tool that can support effective environmental policies as well as sensitising people about the scale of damage of their own natural resources.

Africa's biological resources are a valuable asset which must, as Steiner says, be "sensitively, creatively and sustainably harvested" to support the livelihood of close to a billion people on this continent.

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