Africa has experienced unprecedented growth across a range of development indices for decades. However, this growth is often at the expense of Africa’s biodiversity and ecosystems, jeopardizing the livelihoods of millions of people depending on nature, with broader consequences for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Encouragingly, Africa can still take a more sustainable path.
WWF’s Africa Ecological Futures initiative represents a groundbreaking approach toward the analysis of future development scenarios within the African continent through interdisciplinary research undertaken to identify and assess the implications of cross-sectoral development trends across vital economic sectors in Africa.
This approach is combined with a participatory scenario planning process around different situational narratives for the evolution of Africa’s ecological futures over the next 50 years.
These scenarios provided a lens to review pressures on the natural environment through the drivers, pressures, state, impacts, and responses (DPSIR) framework. These analyses help us seek opportunities to reorient Africa’s development trajectories towards a sustainable path, in response to the call for post-COVID Green Recovery.
WWF is currently launching a new phase of the Africa Ecological Futures process. As we redefine this process, this session at the SRI2022 serves to gain insight into and take stock of the many related scientific efforts across the continent and beyond.
How to engage with WWF at SRI2022:
Session: Africa Ecological Futures: Making Nature Count for People and the Planet
When: Wednesday 22 June 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM EDT