Chapter 2: State and Trends
2.5 Policy analysis Key Messages: Policy analysis
• Environmental challenges are multi-faceted, requiring holistic and cross-sectoral policies and institutional arrangements. Many countries in Africa often lack non-segmented, coherent, efficient and effective regulatory policy and institutional frameworks.
•
Africa requires strong evidence-based policy formulation processes that are premised on adequate and reliable data. The absence of credible data implies that the inter-connectedness of the environment with other sectors, including health and the economy, is often not clear in current policies.
• The role of science and data provision in policy formulation should be fully recognized if Africa is to address the current deficiencies and weaknesses in policy and institutional arrangements.
• Strong international support is needed for research and development on tropical diseases that are common to Africa, and whose emergence and management is strongly connected to the state of the environment.
• While Africa has a plethora of institutions at national and regional levels, such institutions often operate independent of each other, to the extent of competing against each other for budgetary support, recognition and human resources. This creates unnecessary silos and also stretches the already limited financial resources.
• Stakeholder involvement in policy-making and implementation is widely advocated for and provided in policy instruments in use on the continent. This is in recognition that greater information and broader experiences significantly contribute to the development of more realistic and effective policies, as well as improve their implementation. However, financial resources and political will for stakeholder involvement are necessary to achieve this.
• Once policies are enacted and institutions are established, adequate human and financial resources, matched by the will to monitor and evaluate their effectiveness, are essential to address common impediments in implementation. There is also need to provide for the evolution of policies and institutions to suit changing landscapes.
2.5.1 Introduction
Human health is inextricably linked to the environment, with successes and failures in the environmental arena directly or indirectly impacting human health. Thematic analyses of relevant Global Environmental Goals (GEGs) show that Africa has recorded a mixed picture in meeting the targets that its member states signed up to. Many states have made commendable progress in meeting international
Credit: Shutterstock/
Mr.prasong 93
commitments by enacting national policies. In addition, several home-grown policies have been enacted at the regional level to complement international obligations and to clarify and coordinate the region’s unified position. Both developments have borne fruit, leading to a number of successes such as increasing the number and size of protected areas and phasing out leaded gasoline. These have in turn led to falling morbidity and mortality levels relative to a decade ago (Prüss-Üstün et al. 2016). However,
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