To silence guns, we must strive to restore nature
Hailemariam Desalegn
In the span of a human life, Mozambique’s majestic Gorongosa National Park has flipped: from wildlife haven to killing ground to sacred ground of peacemaking and recovery.
This past week, as African Heads of State gathered in Addis Ababa to evaluate progress toward “silencing the guns” and creating an environment conducive to development, Gorongosa stands as both a warning sign and a symbol of hope.
Battles waged in Gorongosa during Mozambique’s 1977-1992 civil war left millions either dead or wounded.
It also ruined the ecosystem and killed 90 per cent of elephants, buffalo, zebra, and wildebeest. At the war’s end, just 15 buffalo and 100 hippo survived. Few lions remained.
But with peace came opportunities to rebuild communities for 100,000 local people and to restore the environment.
By 2018, grasslands, shrublands and forests were recovering. Some 1,000 buffaloes roamed the area and the hippo population had increased five-fold.
When Cyclone Idai struck last year, healthy ecosystems absorbed tens of millions of gallons of water, saving nearby villages from floods.
Meanwhile, through programmes of the Gorongosa Restoration Project, families have improved their agriculture and health, and the education of their children.
Today, ecotourism adds local jobs, as the area reclaims an essential balance between nature and human development.
Like in Gorongosa, the protection of nature everywhere is central to sustainable development, to the mitigation of climate change, and to secure and peaceful societies. Yet nature is being lost at a frightening rate.
Habitat conversion, the unsustainable use of natural resources, urbanisation, and climate change all undermine the foundations of the natural world.
The earth has lost 60 per cent of terrestrial wildlife and 90 per cent of the big ocean fish.
One million plant and animal species are threatened with extinction. We are clear cutting rainforests at a rate of four football fields per minute.
The impact of land and ecosystem degradation on biodiversity, land productivity, and human well-being in Africa has affected more than 485 million people and costs an estimated $9.3 billion(Sh930 billion) annually.
That which has been destroyed in centuries, we must act to restore in the next decade in order to avert even greater natural, climate and human catastrophes.
There is a roadmap to action. The Campaign for Nature offers a science-driven, ambitious new deal for nature that calls on world leaders to protect at least 30 per cent of the planet—its land and water—by 2030.
This rallying cry of “30x30” fuels the Campaign, which is a partnership of the Wyss Campaign for Nature, National Geographic Society, and a growing coalition of more than 100 conservation and indigenous peoples’ organisations around the world.
The campaign has also launched a High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People composed of government leaders to drive high-level action on 30x30.
The campaign calls on world leaders help mobilise resources to manage protected areas, and to fully integrate and respect indigenous leadership and rights in the work of conservation.
We know from experience that local communities have to own the protected areas as their own and benefit from their protection.
Only in this way will conservation succeed and promote inclusive economic and social development.
Africa can and should take the lead in driving action toward 30x30. A crucial opportunity to do so will be at the meeting of the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming, China, later this year. —The writer is a former Prime Minister of Ethiopia
