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Andersen identifies three ways for Africa to deliver SDGs-related solutions
Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Inger Andersen identified three ways for Africa to deliver solutions related to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially in the area of protecting and restoring land.
Andersen made the remarks during the 10th Special Session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment.
The first way is uniting action on land under the three Rio Conventions.
The Rio Conventions on climate, biodiversity and land are soon holding Conferences of Parties. Land restoration can deliver action and ambition across these three deals.
African nations can go to these COPs with a strong position on land. Link land restoration, land management and land productivity to climate pledges and to national biodiversity strategies and action plans – with land degradation neutrality commitments being the golden thread that weaves it all together under the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. And Africa, as a united block under the strong leadership of the African Union, can back land restoration targets with clear action plans and long-term funding.
The second way is accounting for the value of nature.
The African Development Bank estimated the continent’s natural capital at $6.2 trillion in 2018. But this is being depleted; through illegal logging, fishing, unsustainable agriculture, pollution of the soil and water and constant climate impacts. So, switching to economic indicators that value nature and reduce these pressures is crucial.
The Africa Natural Capital Atlas, being launched today, can help shape these indicators.
The third way is backing circular approaches to minerals.
Switching to clean energy requires a reliable supply of critical energy transition minerals. Africa holds vast deposits of such minerals and resources. But the colonial legacy of exploitation has left many countries boxed into patterns of extraction and trade that do not give the full value of these minerals to the source country. The so-called “value addition” is done elsewhere.
“Africa can break these patterns and ensure that value addition is done at home. We are approaching a “gold rush” for these valuable materials. The world will be wooing producer countries. This is a clear opportunity for African nations with these minerals to use the increased revenues for poverty reduction, sustainable development and long-term investments,” Andersen said.
In addition, since ramping up mining would further damage nature and lead to these minerals running out, Africa can approach extraction with a clear policy on circularity and lead the exodus from a linear economy of take-make-waste to a circular use-reuse pattern.
African nations can develop infrastructure for reuse and recovery near mining sites – benefiting host economies and local communities and reducing the need for primary mining and thus also benefiting nature, land and biodiversity.
Of course, more needs to be done. Public and private finance needs to ramp up. Food systems need to reform. And pollution needs to be addressed. In this last regard, African nations can help deliver a strong instrument to end plastic pollution at the final round of talks in Busan at the end of this year.
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