United Nations re-affirms support for Africa's conservation efforts

The United Nations has reiterated it will continue to partner with Kenya and other African countries in their efforts to conserve natural resources and ease pressures on the planet.

This was revealed by Walid Badawi, the resident representative at UNDP Kenya, on Wednesday at the unveiling of the UN's annual Human Development Report 2020 titled 'The next frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene'. The report analyses how humans impact the planet and how that interacts with existing inequalities.

Speaking at the event held in Nairobi, Badawi said the planet's biodiversity is in crisis, with many believing we are at the beginning of a mass extinction event, the sixth in the history of the planet and the first to be caused by an organism, humans.

"Here in East Africa, Africa's largest inland body of water, Lake Victoria, which is shared by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, hit the highest level ever recorded in mid-May 2020, submerging parts of towns and whole villages on its banks. UNDP, under the leadership of Kenya's ministry of environment and forestry, is finalizing a comprehensive report assessing the causes and the impacts of these lake level rises and we will be launching this report very soon," Badawi said.

"Elsewhere in southern Africa, Cyclone Idai cut a deadly swath through Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe in March 2019, and cost the three countries more than $2 billion in infrastructure and livelihood impacts according to the World Bank. In Mozambique alone, more than 600 people died among the 1.5 million others affected," he added.

Badawi added UNDP is privileged to be working with African governments, which share the same outlook to reimagine human progress in a way that is cognizant of planetary pressures.

Chris Kiptoo, principal secretary in Kenya's ministry of environment and forestry, said climate change has the potential to abate development gains made, including hindering progress towards the attainment of Kenya Vision 2030.

"Over the years, Kenya has made progress towards the realization of human development through implementation of successive development plans. However, Kenya remains most vulnerable to climate change, since the key drivers of the economy like agriculture, forestry and fisheries, are climate sensitive," Kiptoo said.

According to the UNDP report, easing planetary pressures in a way that enables all people to flourish in this new age requires dismantling the gross imbalances of power and opportunity that stand in the way of transformation. It also identifies three building blocks to create real, lasting change — namely working with and not against nature, improving incentives and changing social norms.