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USAID Environment Activities in Africa

USAID Africa Environment Resources

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Sub-Saharan Africa has abundant natural resources that can be a major contributor to sustained economic growth.

Several countries in the region, notably Namibia and Madagascar, have implemented highly innovative community-based approaches to improve the management of their natural resource base and to extend the economic benefits to lower income households. Major challenges remain, however. The region contains 45 percent of global biodiversity, yet has the highest rate of deforestation in the world. Rapid urbanization and industrialization also create new environmental challenges. The top-down approach to natural resource management in many countries has resulted in inefficient exploitation and contributed to degradation, while inequitable access to natural resources is often a root cause of social instability.

Through the Congo Basin Forest Partnership, the United States and its partners will help the people of the world’s second largest rainforest manage their natural resources sustainably. USAID will contribute approximately $48 million to the partnership through its successful Central African Regional Program for the Environment for projects supporting a network of effectively managed protected areas, improving forest governance, and developing sustainable means of livelihood for the 60 million people who live in the Basin.

USAID environment programs across Africa are demonstrating the sector’s ability to be a robust vehicle for rural economic growth, stronger local governance, and conflict mitigation as well as reduced degradation. In Guinea, for example, five national forests representing 100,000 hectares are now under co-management plans that empower local communities to share management responsibility and benefits with the government. As part of the devolution process, a USAID natural resource management program provided a dozen forestry service agents with professional forest management training that allowed them to transform themselves from policemen to development partners. At the village level, the men and women in democratically run management committees are empowered with the authority to make and enforce management laws. Some committees have exercised these rights by successfully challenging traditionally powerful logging and mining interests who transgressed the laws.

In Namibia, democratically run community-based conservancies manage wildlife enterprises. USAID’s Living in a Finite Environment program helped form 15 conservancies, involving nearly 40,000 community members. An additional 33 conservancies are at various stages of development. Four of the conservancies have achieved financial sustainability. The conservancies manage 4.1 million hectares and members’ incomes have grown to nearly $700,000, doubling over the last four years. During the same period, wildlife numbers have increased, reversing a disturbing trend.

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