Introduction T
his assessment is founded on the understanding that Africa has the potential to significantly contribute to the world economy and to ensure healthy living
conditions for its citizens. It also recognises the abundant natural assets that the region possesses, and the various threats they face. The purpose of this assessment is to evaluate and analyse Africa’s state of the environment, and use the scientific evidence so generated to support environmental policy and decision making.
The decision to undertake regional assessments was made at the Global Intergovernmental and Multi-Stakeholder Consultation held
in Berlin in October 2014, where
participants suggested that the sixth edition of the Global Environment Outlook (GEO-6) should be built on regional assessments conducted in a similar format as the global assessment. The Consultation derived its mandate from the first United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-1) held in Nairobi in June 2014.
The UNEA-1 requested: “the Executive Director, within the programme of work and budget, to undertake the preparation of the sixth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-6), supported by UNEP Live, with the scope, objectives and procedures of GEO- 6 to be defined by a transparent global intergovernmental and multi-stakeholder consultation informed by document UNEP/ EA.1/INF/14, resulting in a scientifically credible, peer-reviewed GEO-6 and its accompanying summary for policy makers, to be endorsed by the United Nations Environment Assembly no later than 2018”.
Member States also requested: “the Executive Director to consult with all United Nations Environment Programme regions regarding their priorities to be taken up in the global assessment.”
Following this request, regional priorities for water, land, marine resources, biodiversity, air, climate change and waste management were established through the Regional Environmental Information Network (REIN) conference for Africa held on 20-22 April 2015 in Johannesburg, and these priorities have been used to anchor the analysis in this assessment.
The Africa regional assessment is guided by the Drivers- Pressure-State-Impact-Response analytical framework to provide a better understanding of the current state of the region’s environment, and explore a number of scenarios that provide an insight of what the future may portend under each of them.
The assessment is structured in three main chapters as follows:
• Chapter 1 sets out the regional context. • Chapter 2 establishes the state of the environment in the region clustered under four key themes (air, land, water and biodiversity), and analyses key state and trends for various environmental issues affecting Africa, while also describing the policy response. The chapter also discusses policy effectiveness, with a particular focus on the conditions that enable the success of some policy actions.
• Chapter 3 covers the outlook, with a focus on a set of four possible future scenarios for Africa, and suggests possible policy options necessary to achieve a more sustainable future.
The data underpinning the assessment can be found in UNEP Live (
uneplive.unep.org). The full assessment is also available through UNEP Live as a PDF and as an eBook.
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