2005 in Africa - Environment

Environment

• Biodiversity : While French president Jacques Chirac organized a summit on biodiversity, bringing together scientists and politicians, the nongovernmental organizations Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth organized in Paris a counter-summit from 24 to 27 January 2005 on the topic "how finally pass from discours to acts to protect biodiversity?" It was mainly focussed on saving the rain forests and more particularly on the Congo Basin forest.
• Congo: An international summit on sustainable forestry in central Africa took place on 1 February in Brazzaville, in the presence of the presidents of Cameroun (Paul Biya), Gabon (Omar Bongo Ondimba), Chad (Idriss Déby), the Central African Republic (François Bozizé) and Equatorial Guinea (Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo), as well as French president Jacques Chirac.
  • The NGOs of central Africa denounced the refusal of the organizers to invite them to this conference and to hear their claims. Belmond Tchoumba of the Centre Camerounais pour l'Environnement et le Développement (Cameroun Environment and Development Centre) deplored that "all these people hold us in unacceptable contempt". Euloge N'Zobo, of the Observatoire Congolais des Droits de l'Homme (Congolese Observatory for Human Rights) noted that "the acts of conservation do not pay attention to those primarily concerned".
  • Isidore Mvouba, Congolese Prime Minister proposed the creation of a Panafrican system of certification of forest products for export, which would support commercialisation and make it possible to fight against illegal cuts.
• Great Apes: Joseph Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, announced on 5 February in Brazzaville the organisation in Kinshasa in September 2005 of the first intergovernmental world conference on Great Apes. In Central Africa, four species of Great Apes are threatened with extinction, because of deforestation and the various wars that have been held there these last years.
• Democratic Republic of the Congo: a report by the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (Institute for Nature Conservation) denounces the massacre of hundreds of elephants by poachers and soldiers in the Epulu reserve in the North-East of the country. An ivory traffic developed in 2004 in spite of the fact that the elephant is protected by the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES), which prohibits ivory trade.
• Desertification: a regional workshop on the implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) was held in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) on 11 February and brought together the "focal points" of the CCD, the non-governmental organizations and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Being organized by the CILSS (Permanent Interstate Committee for drought control in the Sahel), it gave the participants the opportunity to exchange their experiences on the fight against desertification.
• The second African congress on oil joined in Algiers on 16 and 17 February 2005 the ministers for energy of twelve oil-producing countries of the African continent, and examined the means necessary to fight the pollution of the Mediterranean and African coasts by hydrocarbons.
• Somalia: The United Nations Environment Programme made public on 23 February 2005 a report which reveals that the tsunami of 26 December 2004 surfaced radioactive waste immersed illegally by Western countries on the coasts of Somalia in the 1980s and 1990s.
• Uganda: Dr. Aryamanya Mugisha, executive of the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) announced in February that the production and importation of plastic bags would be prohibited in Uganda before the end of the year.
• The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated on 26 May 2005 that "the climatic change threatens to increase the number of famished in the world by reducing the surface of farm lands in the developing countries" and particularly in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa because of "their low capacity to adapt to the climatic change or to compensate for the fall of production with the import of food".
• Benin: On 1 June, the "National Day of the Tree", instituted in 1985, Fatiou Akplogan, minister for agriculture, invited each Beninese to plant a tree to limit the effects of desertification.
• Environmental education: opening in Ouagadougou of the Planet'ERE forum devoted to environmental education. The third edition of this French-speaking forum was inaugurated by Blaise Compaoré, president of Burkina Faso in the presence of Amadou Toumani Touré, president of Mali and Hama Amadou, prime minister of Niger.