Defining Pathways towards African Ecological Futures

Peter Scheren,Jeffrey S Worden,Tendai Chinho,Jessica P R Thorn,Yemi Katerere,Peadar Brehony,Peter Tyrrell,Vanessa Ushie,James R Allan

doi:10.3390/su13168894

Abstract

Africa has experienced unprecedented growth across a range of development indices for decades. However, this growth is often at the expense of Africa’s biodiversity and ecosystems, jeopardizing the livelihoods of millions of people depending on the goods and services provided by nature, with broader consequences for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Encouragingly, Africa can still take a more sustainable path. Here, we synthesize the key learnings from the African Ecological Futures project. We report results from a participatory scenario planning process around four collectively-owned scenarios and narratives for the evolution of Africa’s ecological resource base over the next 50 years. These scenarios provided a lens to review pressures on the natural environment, through the drivers, pressures, state, impacts, and responses (DPSIR) framework. Based on the outcomes from each of these steps, we discuss opportunities to reorient Africa’s development trajectories towards a sustainable path. These opportunities fall under the broad categories of “effective natural resource governance”, “strategic planning capabilities”, “investment safeguards and frameworks”, and “new partnership models”. Underpinning all these opportunities are “data, management information, and decision support frameworks”. This work can help inform collaborative action by a broad set of actors with an interest in ensuring a sustainable ecological future for Africa.

Highlights

IntroductionAfrica’s natural capital is immense-from the forests and minerals of the Congo, the diamonds of western and southern Africa, the water towers in Guinea, to the wildlifepacked savannahs and coral reefs of East Africa [1]
“Going global” where resource- rich regions take a planned, export-driven path to developing extractive and agricultural commodities, based on centralised decision making and connected economic infrastructure; “Helping hands” where resource rich areas are the focus of extractive economic activities driven by local actors developing local resources for export through decentralised decision making and supported by local infrastructure; “All in together” where densely populated areas with renewable resources develop local agricultural industries through participatory decision making and local cooperative schemes driven by local actors; and
“Good neighbours” where the future is characterised by a strong drive for Africanbased development to increase intra-regional trade, where countries begin to take a coherent domestic view with regards to their production and consumption, and large regional infrastructure investments are needed

Summary

Introduction

Africa’s natural capital is immense-from the forests and minerals of the Congo, the diamonds of western and southern Africa, the water towers in Guinea, to the wildlifepacked savannahs and coral reefs of East Africa [1]. Perhaps the most unique aspect of Africa’s natural capital is its biodiversity. The continent contains the world’s most diverse and abundant megafaunal populations, which have been largely exterminated elsewhere in the world [2,3]. African people rely heavily on the services that natural ecosystems provide such as clean water, firewood, protein from fisheries and wildlife, building materials, and revenue from wildlife-based tourism.

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