Environment, Population and Urbanization

Actions Taken

The objectives of the cluster are to address the challenges posed by population growth and movement; rapid and uncontrolled growth of human settlements; environmental degradation and pollution; and the lack of demographic statistics. These are consistent with the NEPAD goals. The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) is the convenor.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has collaborated with ECA in producing a technical paper on the linkages between population, environment and poverty reduction. The paper was presented to the Conference of Africa Finance Ministers.

More broadly, UNFPA has taken a series of measures to support technical and institutional building at the African Union Commission, the regional economic communities and the NEPAD secretariat. For example, it has designated regional technical teams to support NEPAD-related activities in the social sector; designated country-level focal persons that would promote NEPAD awareness-raising and follow-up for related activities; promoted dialogue with the African Union Commission, the regional economic communities and the NEPAD secretariat, in order to identify priority areas of UNFPA programme and technical support and established a UNFPA liaison office accredited to the African Union Commission and the regional institutions based in Addis Ababa, to specifically promote the implementation of the NEPAD programme. The Fund has committed itself to providing short-term technical support to the African Union Commission’s institutional and technical capacity-building and has allocated, as an interim measure, more than $500,000 for that purpose.

Action plans were prepared and seven cities selected to start the NEPAD Cities Programme led by UN-Habitat. The Programme aims at achieving poverty reduction in urban centres and integration of regional growth centres. The seven cities are: Bamako, Douala, Durban, Lagos, Lusaka, Nairobi and Rabat. The Programme is being led by UN-Habitat with the collaboration of the regional economic communities (the Economic Community of West African States, the Economic Community of Central African States, the East African Economic Community, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa and the Community of Sahelian and Saharan States), the national Governments of Cameroon, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia; and the NEPAD secretariat. At the municipal level, civil society organizations are also actively involved in shaping the programmes of action and in identifying priorities. There is collaboration and consultation with other United Nations agencies who are operating in the same cities. Activities include multigroup consultations, awareness and information dissemination, priority identification and consensus-building. A consultative forum with the first seven NEPAD cities will be held in Lagos from 10 to 12 May 2004.

The first phase of the NEPAD Cities Programme, which involves profiling of the cities and identification of development priorities, was executed with $125,000 provided from the UN-Habitat Foundation. While efforts continue for mobilization of more support funds, Member States are called upon to support the programme through their national budget allocations and grants. A coordination mechanism has been proposed, through which, it is hoped, members of the cluster can work together and mobilize resources.

Under the leadership of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment and the secretariat of NEPAD, with the support of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the action plan of the environment initiative of NEPAD was prepared and finalized, adopted at the second special session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment held in Maputo, on 9 and 10 June 2003 and endorsed by the Assembly of Heads of State of the African Union held in Maputo the following month. The Action Plan was finalized with the participation of more than 800 African experts who attended nine thematic workshops. A total of 200 concept proposals, including 68 priority projects, were identified, including a programme on capacity-building for the implementation of the Action Plan.

The World Bank is providing significant support to the NEPAD secretariat in the preparation and implementation of the NEPAD environmental action plan, providing financing in support of three main activities. The Bank will join the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in co-sponsoring and facilitating civil society participation in the development and implementation of the environmental action plan. The activity will provide civil society with access to support funds and information necessary for engaging in the NEPAD process, promote increased participation of civil society in the NEPAD process and raise awareness of the key decision makers of the policy issues related to environment and poverty.

To strengthen the capacity of the NEPAD secretariat to develop and implement the action plan, the World Bank is providing support for national and international experts on specific technical issues. These will be determined by NEPAD as the need arises, but likely areas include forestry, marine ecosystems and fisheries, climate change, toxic chemicals, and the other subsector themes that need to be strengthened in the action plan.

At the request of UNEP and the NEPAD secretariat, the World Bank financed a workshop on poverty and environment issues in Mali in January 2003 that drew heavily on recent analytical work completed by the Bank, including the Africa Region Environment Strategy; The Environment and the Millennium Development Goals; and Linking Poverty Reduction and Environmental Management. It focused on the following: (a) considering different approaches to address complex linkages of the poverty-environment nexus; (b) agreeing on the most suitable approach to be adopted in the NEPAD framework; (c) developing ideas for priority regional and subregional interventions, including investment projects, technical assistance, capacity-building, policy reform and research; (d) identifying synergies with interventions proposed under other sub-themes of the action plan; and (e) finalizing an action plan to link poverty reduction and environmental management in Africa. In addition, the Bank is working closely with NEPAD on two of their priority investment areas: the Africa Stockpiles Programme, designed to clean up obsolete agro-chemicals throughout the region; and integrated tourism development in Southern Africa.

The Intergovernmental Oceanic Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is taking a lead role in the development of two projects under the NEPAD environment action plan aimed at building capacities for sustainable development of coastal and marine environment in Africa. The first project, entitled “Regional Ocean Observing and Forecasting System for Integrated Management of Ocean and Coastal Environment and Natural Disaster in Africa”, is aimed at implementing the Global Ocean Observing Systems in the African Context. The second project, “Shoreline Protection through Integrated Coastal Area Management”, is aimed at providing science-based strategies and policies for protecting coastal habitats from the impacts of coastal erosion climate change in North Western Africa. The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission is providing technical and financial resources for the development of this project, which has been endorsed by the following participating countries (Cape Verde, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Senegal).

At the same time, UNESCO has implemented three other main actions as part of the implementation of the action plan of the environmental initiative, particularly in respect of programme 6, Cross-border conservation or management of natural resources. First, in cooperation with UNEP, UNESCO organized in Paris, from 26 to 28 November 2003, the first intergovernmental meeting of the Great Apes Survival Project which adopted the “Global Great Apes Conservation Strategy”. Second, the $6 million UNESCO/UNEP/GEF subregional project on “Building Scientific and Technical Capacity for Effective Management and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity in Dryland Biosphere Reserves in West Africa” was launched in January 2004. Third, in response to the cross-cutting issue on the assessment of early warning for natural disaster, UNESCO is undertaking a review of existing Earth Observation Data Centres for better sharing among African countries.

In December 2003, the International Civil Aviation Organization participated in the donor’s conference on the action plan of the environment initiative of NEPAD organized by the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment. Expertise in the field of aviation environmental protection may be called upon in the execution of a number of projects relating to bird strike protection, noise around airports and aircraft engine emissions. In September 2003, the ICAO Western and Central African Office in Dakar had a meeting with a NEPAD project consultant of the African Development Bank, to discuss proposed medium and long-term plans and strategies for NEPAD implementation in the field of aviation.

The secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification has facilitated the development of several priority projects, which aim to improve the livelihood of the poorest populations in Africa rural dry-land areas. It participated in the preparation and organization of the Partnership Conference on the NEPAD environment action plan in Algiers. As a follow-up to that conference, it formulated projects worth several millions of dollars, for which efforts are under way to mobilize resources.