World Environment (WED) is on June 5th every year. This day is supposed to an environmental awareness day set aside by United Nations with the aim of raising awareness on environmental issues. The theme of this year’s celebration is on Ecosystem restoration. All parts of an ecosystem— animals, plants, microbes, and humans—are interconnected. In order for our planet thrive, we need to not only find ways to meet increasing demands for better lives, but to do so in a way that also protects healthy ecosystems and the many organisms that inhabit them. We are living in times when biodiversity is severely threatened, we have seen many cases of organisms going to extinction while the population of others is declining sharply.
Some of the ecosystems in Africa that are in serious danger resulting from human action includes forests. Africa’s rapid deforestation is threatening the flow of key environmental goods and services at the local, national and global levels. Forests cover 675 million hectares accounting for 23% of Africa’s land area. Humid forests are particularly important in Central Africa, the Congo Basin being the second largest forest in the world. At the same time, dry forests are important in the Sahel, southeast and north Africa and represent 42% of the tropical forest area in the continent. Forests provide crucial environmental goods such as wood, bush meat and wild fruits, and services such as carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, soil conservation and watershed protection. More than half of the continent’s population rely directly or indirectly on forests for their livelihoods, however, over recent decades, Africa has been the continent experiencing the highest rate of deforestation, 0.49% per year. This represents some 3.4 million hectares lost annually (FAO, 2010).
The African wetlands are also under serious threat, Africa rivers are rich in biodiversity and are a big source of livelihood to many communities. Rivers run through Africa from the Congo
River (the deepest) to the Nile (widely regarded as the longest river in the world), Luangwa and Zambezi among other big and small rivers.Each and every one of Africa’s river systems teem with wildlife and a diversity of fish plus hippo and crocodile. Rivers are the lifeblood of the continent and are at threat from pollution, over fishing and poor management. Most of the swamps that are important catchment areas are also under pressure from human settlement and pollution.
Recently, there has been worrying trend of human beings interfering with savannah ecosystems which are animal habitats which culminates into human wildlife conflicts. Conflict between people and wildlife today undoubtedly ranks amongst the main threats to conservation in Africa – alongside habitat destruction and we now have many human-wildlife conflict hotspots in the Country. Such conflicts are mainly attributed to increased human population and loss of animal habitat due to uncontrolled human activities, especially crop farming, charcoal burning and human settlements. In some areas, there is even competition between human beings and animals for the few existing water points. However, there has been a new wave of threat to animal habitats orchestrated by infrastructural developments that are being implemented in total disregard of sensitivity of these fragile and yet critical ecosystems.
PACJA has been on the forefront in advocating for policies that are responsive to the global needs for protection of our fragile ecosystems. A failure to conserve habitats and halt species’ extinction would have knock-on effects on objectives of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), since significant greenhouse gas emissions result from the destruction and degradation of forests, peatlands, wetlands and other high carbon ecosystems.
Covid-19 crisis has exacerbated the already delicate situation in the African continent, already engulfed by a myriad of other challenges including, but not limited to, climate-induced droughts, floods, landslides, locust invasion and water scarcity, deepening poverty, inequality among others. Africa faces a high potential for increased emissions, as African forests are under continuous threat from deforestation and degradation. This is because Africa is home to the largest proportion of forest- dependent subsistence households in the world. Consequently, the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in Africa are mainly subsistence livelihood-related national and local scale drivers. This situation is likely to be worsened by the Covid 19- pandemic which has exerted a lot of pressure to the economies world over and more so in Africa. Many people have lost their jobs and their livelihoods and the rural poor communities in Africa are barely struggling to survive. There is a likelihood that the fragile African ecosystems will experience increased pressure from communities seeking survival in the midst of Covid -19 thereby watering down the gains made so far in conservation.
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