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- Green Congo Initiative: a Youth Engagement for the Climate in the Heart of Africa, happyeconews.com (Apr 28, 2023)
This page is the beginnings of a portal for Africa community action in response to Ecological emergency. The majority of our information about this is collated via our place pages...Near you. Please see Ecological restoration for a topic overview.
Community action projects[edit | edit source]
Ecosystem restoration[edit | edit source]
- “If we design well, we design for shared aliveness”. Speaking from China, John Thackara lays out an economy defined by care, The Daily Alternative (Jul 28, 2023)
- Standing up and saying NO to erasing our environmental heritage. Stopping land encroachment., medium.com (May 09, 2023)
- Indigenous Peoples defend a precious natural resource- empowering them protects us all, ashden.org (Feb 14, 2023)
Ecosystem restoration is the process of halting and overturning degradation, resulting in cleaner air and water, extreme weather mitigation, better human health, and recovered biodiversity, including improved pollination of plants. Restoration encompasses a wide continuum of practices, from reforestation to re-wetting peatlands and coral rehabilitation.[1]
Citizen Science[edit | edit source]
Citizen Science refers to the involvement, participation and engagement of citizens in local or online (global) scientific work relevant to the citizens' interests, usually as a hobby, often as a passion.
Biodiversity[edit | edit source]
- Serengeti Watch, link checked 15:17, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
Peace Parks Foundation[edit | edit source]
The Peace Park Foundation, founded in 1997 by Dr Anton Rupert, President Nelson Mandela and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, is an organization that aims to re-establish, renew and conserve large ecosystems in Africa, transcending man-made boundaries by creating regionally integrated and sustainably managed networks of Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs). Peace Parks Foundation has been involved in the establishment and development of ten of the 18 TFCAs found throughout southern Africa, all of which are in various stages of development. The establishment of each TFCA, or peace park, is complex and far-reaching, and involves several phases of activity, which can take many years to achieve.
Open spaces[edit | edit source]
- African Parks, non-profit conservation organisation that takes on the complete responsibility for the rehabilitation and long-term management of national parks in partnership with governments and local communities. African Parks manages 19 national parks and protected areas in eleven countries covering over 14.7 million hectares in Angola, Benin, Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.[2] W
Africa has over 3,000 protected areas, with 198 marine protected areas, 50 biosphere reserves, and 80 wetlands reserves. Significant habitat destruction, increases in human population and poaching are reducing Africa's biological diversity and arable land. Human encroachment, civil unrest and the introduction of non-native species threaten biodiversity in Africa. This has been exacerbated by administrative problems, inadequate personnel and funding problems.
Trees, woodland and forest[edit | edit source]
Great Green Wall[edit | edit source]
The Great Green Wall or Great Green Wall of the Sahara and the Sahel (French: Grande Muraille Verte pour le Sahara et le Sahel) is a project led by the African Union, initially conceived as a way to combat desertification in the Sahel region and hold back expansion of the Sahara, by planting a wall of trees stretching across the entire Sahel. The modern green wall has since evolved into a program promoting water harvesting techniques, greenery protection and improving indigenous land use techniques, aimed at creating a mosaic of green and productive landscapes across North Africa.
The project is a response to the combined effect of natural resources degradation and drought in rural areas. It seeks to help communities mitigate and adapt to climate change as well as improve food security. The population of the Sahel is expected to double by 2039, emphasizing the importance of maintaining food production and environmental protection in the area. W
FAO page on the Great Green Wall
News and comment
- The "Great Green Wall" of the Sahel, promising to halt the Sahara's advance, inspires both science and arts, The Alternative UK (Feb 20, 2022)
Other intitiatives[edit | edit source]
Greenpop, social enterprise that runs urban greening and reforestation projects in sub-Saharan Africa.
Deforestation in Africa[edit | edit source]
Africa is suffering deforestation at twice the world rate, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Some sources claim that deforestation has already wiped out roughly 90% of West Africa's original forests. Deforestation is accelerating in Central Africa. According to the FAO, Africa lost the highest percentage of tropical forests of any continent during the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. According to the figures from the FAO (1997), only 22.8% of West Africa's moist forests remain, much of this degraded. Nigeria has lost 81% of its old-growth forests in just 15 years (1990–2005). Massive deforestation threatens food security in some African countries. One factor contributing to the continent's high rates of deforestation is the dependence of 90% of its population on wood as fuel for heating and cooking.
Research carried out by WWF International in 2006 shows that in Africa, rates of illegal logging vary from 50% in Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea to 70% in Gabon and 80% in Liberia – where timber revenues played a major role in financing the Sierra Leone Civil War and other regional armed conflicts until the UN Security Council imposed a ban on all Liberian timber in 2003. W
Urban and rural connections[edit | edit source]
section needed
News and comment[edit | edit source]
2022
- Elephants on the Move: 250 Elephants to be Relocated in Malawi, African Parks (Jun 21, 2022)
2021
How elephants help pump planet-warming carbon underground, Nov 18..[3].Climate change solutions news
Ecological emergency[edit | edit source]
There is consensus in the scientific community that the current environmental degradation and destruction of many of Earth's biota are taking place on a "catastrophically short timescale". Scientists estimate that the current species extinction rate, or the rate of the Holocene extinction, is 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the normal, background rate. Habitat loss is the leading cause of both species extinctions and ecosystem service decline. Two methods have been identified to slow the rate of species extinction and ecosystem service decline, they are the conservation of currently viable habitat and the restoration of degraded habitat. The commercial applications of ecological restoration have increased exponentially in recent years. In 2019, the United Nations General Assembly declared 2021–2030 the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. W
UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration[edit | edit source]
- Green Deal: pioneering proposals to restore Europe's nature by 2050 and halve pesticide use by 2030, ec.europa.eu (Jun 22, 2022)
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030 is a rallying call for the protection and revival of ecosystems all around the world, for the benefit of people and nature. It aims to halt the degradation of ecosystems and restore them to achieve global goals. The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed the UN Decade and it is led by the United Nations Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The UN Decade is building a strong, broad-based global movement to ramp up restoration and put the world on track for a sustainable future. That will include building political momentum for restoration as well as thousands of initiatives on the ground.[4]
The decade was conceived as a means of highlighting the need for greatly increased global cooperation to restore degraded and destroyed ecosystems, contributing to efforts to combat climate change and safeguard biodiversity, food security, and water supply. W
See also[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Press release, unep.org
- ↑ africanparks.org, press release
- ↑ theconversation.com
- ↑ Press release, unep.org