A conservation agenda for Africa's Wildlife and Wild Lands

As Africa is developing rapidly, the continent’s wildlife and wild lands unequaled anywhere on earth, are being impacted significantly resulting in loss of ecosystem services and goods they provide. Africa’s wildlife is in... [ view full abstract ]

As Africa is developing rapidly, the continent’s wildlife and wild lands unequaled anywhere on earth, are being impacted significantly resulting in loss of ecosystem services and goods they provide. Africa’s wildlife is in a growing habitat crisis augmented by elevated poaching, among other threats. A bold agenda is crucial now to ensure the place of wildlife and wildlands on Africa’s sustainable development vision. Current species losses can be reversed, populations stabilized and wild lands protected so that they are large size, representative and interconnected, fulfilling their ecological and socio-economic roles. The overriding goal for wildlife species is to conserve representative, viable, ecologically functional populations in their natural habitats. The agenda emphasizes securing political commitment at highest levels, making stewardship of wildlife and wild lands a meaningful criterion in the assessment of Africa’s internal governance and leadership, as well as in the behaviour of Africa’s development and investment partners. While calling for zero-tolerance against poaching and trafficking of Africa’s wildlife, it asks Africa to set Africa-wide continental goals for maintaining and restoring key endangered species. The agenda stresses integrating wildlife and wild lands into national and regional spatial planning principally infrastructure, vision documents, budgeting, enhancing protected areas’ coverage and effectiveness, prohibiting incompatible investment in protected areas, promoting transfrontier conservation areas, enhancing local economies, monitoring and evaluating achievements. Implementation would be through African Union, Regional Economic Communities, and States improving upon current efforts towards sustainable conservation and development.