Biodiversity-Rich Ecoregions in Africa Need Protection

http://www.conserveafrica.org.uk/donate.php

Biological diversity, the variety and variability among living organisms and the environment in which they occur, is important to maintain life-sustaining systems of the biosphere, yet is threatened by many human activities. Recently the Global Biodiversity Assessment of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) concluded that the adverse effects of human impacts on biodiversity are increasing dramatically and threatening the very foundation of sustainable development. The total number of species that inhabit the planet is unknown and it is believed that many extinctions will occur even before they have been named and described.

It is estimated that 85-90 percent of all species can be protected by setting aside areas of high biodiversity before they are further degraded, without having to inventory species individually. It is generally assumed that most terrestrial species are found in the tropics. Realistically, only a relatively small portion of the total land area is likely to be devoted to biodiversity conservation; hence, it is critical to geographically identify areas rich in species diversity, unprotected species diversity and endemism (species native or confined to a particular area) as a first step toward the protection of remaining natural habitats before they are destroyed.

AFRICA, AFRICANISTS, AND WILDLIFE CONSERVATION

The African studies community has generally been unsure how to think about the project of wildlife conservation in sub-Saharan Africa. It is almostas though we Africanists, with our social science and humanities focuses, are embarrassed by the importance of this part of the historical and contemporaryAfrican experience and the degree to which Africa is popularly and internationally associated with wildlife and wildlife habitat.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/african_studies_review/v048/48.1rogers.pdf
Mainstreaming Climate Change into Agricultural
Mainstreaming Climate Change into Agricultural......New from World Agroforestry CentreMainstreaming Climate Change into Agricultural Education: Challenges and PerspectivesClimate change is adversely affecting practically all economic sectors. Africa is projected to have a future associated with scarce water, declining agricultural yields, encroaching desert and damaged coastal infrastructure. With graduating students from tertiary agriculture and natural resource management institutions expected to provide solutions to development challenges, it is unfortunate that climate change has not been integrated into the curricula to any meaningful extent.

Consequently graduating students are ill-equipped to advise meaningfully on the challenges posed by climate change.This working paper is an outcome of a symposium organized to share information on climate change challenges for agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa; explore methods of mainstreaming climate change knowledge into agricultural education; and identify recommendations on effective policies, institutions and capacity.

The brief lays down the key issues in climate change: who is affected and what direction we are taking if the negative effects presented by climate change are not checked. It presents a compelling argument on the role of tertiary education in making meaningful contributions and goes further to present an action plan to ensure that climate change is integrated into the curricula of tertiary agriculture and natural resource management institutions including the key components of such a curricula.Chakeredza, S.; Temu, A.B.; Yaye, A.; Mukingwa, S.; Saka, J..D.K. World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Lilongwe (Malawi). SADC-ICRAF Agroforestry Project. 2009. Mainstreaming climate change into agricultural education: challenges and perspectives. -- Nairobi, Kenya: World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) ICRAF Working Paper no. 82, 30p.
http://intranet/downloads/publications/PDFs/WP15993.PDFhttp://www.worldagroforestry.org/downloads/publications/PDFs/WP15993.PDF

Sustainable Agriculture in Africa

Sustainable Agriculture in Africa: Towards A New Paradigm – TheEmbeddedness Approach.IntroductionThis paper argues that the conventional paradigm of sustainable agriculture1{SA} in Africa has disenfranchised smallholder farmers as researchers and principal actors in the pursuit of answers to this question. Many scientists, agricultural research institutions and policymakers in Africa have conceptualised and treated SA as a technical or scientific issue – the pursuit of agricultural productivity and environmental conservation through ‘modern’ agricultural practices and techniques - new or improved crop varieties, cropping patterns/methods, use of modern equipment, chemicals, pesticides, et cetera {Barrett, et al, 2000 and Pretty, 1995, fora good review of the literature on this view}.

Underlying this conception are two worn out but popular assumptions: a} traditional African agriculture is inefficient, unproductive and backward, and b} the government, the donor and the scientist know what is best for theAfrican farmer. Nobel Laureate Theodore Schultz {1964} had long demolished the first view by demonstrating that peasant farmers may be poor but are not necessarily inefficient.Participatory development literature equally ought to have laid the second view to rest, however, for reasons underscored elsewhere in this paper, both views persist.

One result of this technologically biased conceptualisation has been a misguided top-down policy approach oriented towards the creation of ‘modern agriculture’, which has, among other things, engendered exploitative and irrelevant institutional structures, undermined and marginalized local knowledge and preferences, and proven expensive and unsustainable,{Brokensha, et al, 1980, Forsyth et al, 1998, Kuyek, 2002,}. The other has been a proliferation of technologically biased studies which not only replicate erroneous assumptions about both the nature of, and how SA in Africa might be achieved, but also ignore or obscure broader historical, social, economic, political and institutional factors that impact on the prospects of SA {Astone, 1998, Barrett et al, 2000}.

http://www.codesria.org/Links/conferences/ifs/Obote.pdf

http://www.conserveafrica.org.uk/donate.php