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Preface Annex 1
STRATEGIES FOR ENHANCING OPPORTUNITIES FROM BIODIVERSITY
While significant challenges for researching and managing biodiversity in Africa remain, there is enough information available to give broad but concrete direction to the development of national, sub-regional and regional biodiversity policy.
Many multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) exist to promote biodiversity protection. Most African countries have ratified the Ramsar Convention (protecting wetlands of international importance), the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (the World Heritage Convention), the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the CBD. These global MEAs are complemented by sub-regional and regional agreements, such as the African Convention on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (ACCNNR) and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Environmental Initiative. The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) saw convergence on a shared vision of sustainable development as a way of alleviating poverty, raising human well-being, and simultaneously meeting biodiversity protection objectives. Recognition of the administrative burden that the multiplicity of environmental agreements places on resourceconstrained governments has prompted a desire to rationalize their implementation. Among the conclusions of the WSSD was that the link between the conservation of natural resources and economic development in Africa is particularly close.
The CBD is particularly focussed on biodiversity. It has three objectives:
Realizing any one of these objectives is dependent upon the other. This requires adequate political and legal instruments to appropriately allocate access, benefits and costs and to make linkages between different environmental sectors as well as with development sectors. Such an approach is discussed in Chapter 8: Interlinkages: The Environment and Policy Web. Partnerships with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community-based organizations, and the technical and scientific community play an important role in conservation planning and policy. Such partnerships are also critical to the success of implementation efforts.
A cost-efficient and robust strategy for biodiversity conservation may have two pillars. The first pillar is the classical approach of identifying those parts of the land, waters and sea where the conservation value exceeds any other use value, and requires strict protection. The second pillar recognizes that, even with such a safety net in place, most wild organisms live in places that are used primarily for purposes other than biodiversity conservation. Adjustments to the way in which these ecosystems are used can lead to a high degree of biodiversity preservation, without unacceptable decreases in the output of other services.
The key issues for establishing an effective protected area network are prioritization of levels of protection and use. Identifying protected areas should not be arbitrary. Sufficient knowledge exists to apply more refined techniques to identify locations that are critical for many species, robust to climate change, and have a good chance of being economically viable. In general, consolidated reserves are more viable than the equivalent area of isolated patches. In some instances transboundary parks are important for habitat protection.
There are known priority areas for conservation in every country, but overall, the greatest current urgency relates to multitaxon centres of endemism, such as the Eastern Arc mountains and Mt Cameroon. As shown in Box 5, adopting collaborative approaches at multiple levels can be important for achieving biodiversity conservation objectives.
About US$245 million is currently spent annually by the international community for protected area management in SSA (James and others 2001). The efficacy of these investments depends partly on the availability and reliability of information on the spatial distribution and condition of biodiversity (Balmford and Gaston 1999). The currently available information on biodiversity is inadequate in several respects:
Other important areas of research that would support effective biodiversity policy include: quantification of the current and potential economic benefits provided by ecosystem services, and the consequences and costs of ecosystem destruction; understanding the link between ecosystem diversity and ecosystem integrity; methodologies for the integration of climate change adaptation strategies into conservation planning; and the development of a conceptual basis and methodology to incorporate biodiversity sustaining and generating processes and functional biodiversity into conservation strategies.