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| AFRICA |
In Africa, IUCN has brought together various stakeholders across disciplines, across park boundaries, across ecosystems and across international borders to conserve biodiversity in ways that also ensure economic development and political reconciliation. We have joined these forces on riverbanks in West Africa, for tropical moist forests of central Africa, along the coast and in cities.
Everyone knows that Africa has had its share of troubles, and that climate change may stress people and nature even further. What’s exciting is how, through collaborative conservation, the continent is expressing its own voice and finding pathways to improved security.
GREENING SOWETO
Restoration can also take place in cities, where nature can revive and beautify. We responded to a request by the city of Soweto.
Outside Johannesburg, IUCN began working with the Mapetla communities to grow 2010 trees to 3.5 meters high in a ‘Greening Soweto’ initiative. The community will be proud of its beautiful urban forest in a neglected township. We planted 6,000 indigenous tree seedlings in line with the Convention on Biological Diversity, which calls for the rehabilitation and restoration of degraded ecosystems. Next year’s ‘greening’ activities will restore wetlands and river corridors, replenish water and purify the air. By developing new parks like Mapetla Park Amphitheatre, the initiative will also increase the potential tourism value of Soweto.
FIGHTING INVASIVE SPECIES
Invasive species remain a major curse that receives too little attention. We support the fight at national and local levels.
Subsistence and commercial farmers in Africa have always been vigilant against weeds. But the spread of invasive plant species has escalated beyond local and even national abilities to cope. Last year IUCN helped four countries – Ethiopia, Ghana, Uganda and Zambia – establish national invasive species units, then integrated their policies and capacities to control invasions within and across their borders. In the Kafue River floodplain, Zambia has engaged local stakeholders to combat the prickly shrub Mimosa pigra , which threatens lechwe, wattled crane, fish, amphibians and reptiles inside the Park, and cattle grazing and freshwater fisheries beyond it.
CODE OF CONDUCT IN THE VOLTA BASIN
The nations sharing the Volta Basin agreed to a Code of Conduct, the first step towards collaborative management.
To share the water resources of the Volta River Basin, IUCN helped the governments of Burkina Faso and Ghana to adopt a Code of Conduct. The Code promotes an integrated, sustainable, equitable and participatory management approach. Against rising tensions, participants say the Code has brought a constructive and confident atmosphere to ongoing negotiations; they see it as ‘a real pledge for peace’ between the two countries. The Volta Basin Authority, created by the Ministers of the six riparian states, will support the code, giving another dimension to enlarge its operational work.
GREEN STORIES GO ‘ON THE AIR’
Public awareness can provide an impetus to development and conservation.
IUCN broadcasts one of Central Africa’s most successful radio programmes. Radio Environnement produces magazines and microprogrammes, in French and English. These raise the awareness on complex environmental issues, and help improve the governance and sustainable management of the tropical moist forests of Central Africa. Radio Environnement shares lessons from field project implementation, broadening the reach and transparency of IUCN activities and concerns. The mix of music, lively debate, useful news and personalities explains why this station may spread across Cameroon to Kinshasa.
A LIVING OCEAN FROM COAST TO COAST
The Coastal and Marine Programme for West Africa (or PRCM in French) is a coalition of some fifty partners in seven countries, who unite forces to conserve critical habitats and guide coastal development.
One example of this work is the ‘loi littorale’ adopted by the Government of Mauritania, which supports most of the options for sustainable development included in the National Master Plan for Coastal Management. This is unique at the regional level and the result of more than six years of work on mapping coastal resources, establishing and managing protected areas, advising on oil exploitation, and awareness and communications. This law and the strategic plan provide the National Coastal Management Unit with the necessary mandates and tools for planning and monitoring development.
REPLENISHING A SHRINKING LAKE
Drought, high demand and desertification have combined to reduce Africa’s second largest wetland to a fraction of its former size.
To help restore Lake Chad to its 1 million square kilometre former glory, IUCN has produced a diagnostic analysis of the continued degradation of the land and water resources in the basin. After generating the latest scientific data, we integrated key information into the work of the Lake Chad Basin Commission. IUCN also undertook several pilot projects and produced a plan for the restoration of the Chad basin. We helped bring waters flowing back into the Logone floodplain, and defined several village management plans. Last, we designed donor grant structures to support villages in Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria and Niger.
CROSS-POLLINATING FOREST GOVERNANCE IN CENTRAL AFRICA
National parliamentarians can multiply their influence over forest governance by collaborating with each other across borders.
For over a decade, IUCN helped national members of parliament take part in conferences and seminars that improve the governance of the tropical moist forests of central Africa. To tap the potential of these forests, we coorganized the founding meeting of the central African network of senators and MPs interested in sustainable forest management. We convened 100 senators and MPs and interested stakeholders in one conference, hosted by the Parliament of Cameroon. The conference adopted the Yaoundé Declaration and Action Plan, which set national and regional targets for the networks: to improve monitoring of development impacts on forests and combat transboundary forest crimes.
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