GEO-6 for Youth: Africa


Mohamed Hazem Abd El-Aziz


Key Messages Twenty-five per cent of the world's biodiversity can be found in Africa.


Youth are mostly full of energy, technologically endowed, consistently evolving, geared towards solving problems and dynamic consumers. They are thus uniquely suited to play a major part in restoring landscapes and conserving biodiversity.


The biodiversity of Africa’s rangelands is so rich that the world’s greatest diversity of large mammals can be found in Eastern and Southern Africa’s rangelands. This immense natural wealth is however threatened by conversion of rangeland to cropland.


The extent of Africa’s biodiversity riches makes it critical for African youth to increasingly anchor their livelihoods in the intersection between biodiversity and sustainable development because the continent’s shared wealth, health, and well-being is rooted in this intersection.


In most African countries, only one tree is planted for every thirty trees that are cut down. African youth should therefore play a lead in ensuring restoration and a community-based approach to saving our forests.


Despite global efforts, landscape degradation and biodiversity loss is occurring at an alarming rate. Nothing short of a revolution in attitudes will suffice in solving this problem. Behavioural change, adopting a conservation lifestyle, increased investment in sustainable land-use practices, political momentum, and concerted local action, are needed to conserve biodiversity.


5.1 Introduction


Africa’s vast land, water bodies, and skies are full of mammals, reptiles, forests, birds, and all manner of plant and animal life that constitute the continent’s rich biodiversity. So rich is this biodiversity that 25 per cent of the world's biodiversity can be found in Africa (Tittensor et al. 2014).


Africa’s many plant and animal species live symbiotically with each other. More than half of the terrestrial species of animals, insects, and plants live in forests. In this regard, deforestation and forest degradation undermine their very survival (FAO 2015). The wealth of Africa’s biodiversity extends beyond forests into rangelands that cover 65 per cent of the continent’s total land area. The natural grasslands and savannahs that dot the continent are part of these rangelands that provide habitat for wild plants together with wild animals and domestic livestock (Niamir-Fuller et al. 2012). The biodiversity of Africa’s rangelands is so rich that the world’s greatest diversity of large mammals can be found in Eastern and Southern Africa’s rangelands (Blench and Sommer 1999). Although mostly dry, Northern Africa’s landscapes are also centres of biodiversity. Despite being the largest warm desert in the world, studies suggest that the Sahara has a larger number of species with a high rate of endemism (Brito et al. 2014). This shows how Africa’s biodiversity spreads through every part of the continent. African youth must therefore champion biodiversity conservation across the region.


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Elephants at Serengeti, Tanzania


5.2 Biological wealth under threat


While the immense natural wealth of Africa’s rangelands is threatened by conversion of rangeland to cropland (Gemedo-Dalle et al. 2006), and as a result of widespread industrial logging, a staggering 44 million hectares of forest in the Congo Basin is under concession (Wit and van Dam eds. 2010). Artisanal logging is however also responsible for deforestation in the basin since it produces at least five times more than official industrial


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