18 Nov 2022

Produced by Mr Reinhard Bonke Nyandire

Rural poverty, food insecurity, climate change and biodiversity loss continue to bite the African continent as some of the major environmental, social, and economic challenges. The situation has been compounded by the lack of appropriate incentives through conventional markets leading to further deterioration of biodiversity conservation on community owned lands.

In response, global leaders, and conservationists are currently convening in different parts of the world through the UNFCCC, CITES, and CBD conventions from all of which key decisions shaping the global conservation and development agenda for the next decade or so, will be made. These policies and dialogues could potentially provide many ways through which the incentives to the local communities and landowners could encourage improved conservation of Africa’s key areas of biological importance.

The biggest challenge, however, remains to be the conventional sectorial and siloed approaches to the implementation of these policies towards addressing the often inter-connected social, environmental, economic and political challenges. With all these happening in the post-pandemic period, will there be a paradigm shift from the ongoing negotiations or is this another business-as-usual scenario?

Reinhard Bonke Nyandire, AWEI Fellow