The Swiss-based conservation group WWF reported Monday that growing populations in many African nations are quickly dwindling the continent’s natural resources.
The warning was part of the group’s flagship report on Africa’s ecological footprint, which provides an estimate of a region’s land and sea surface required each year to meet the consumption demands of its population.
“A growing number of African countries are depleting their natural resources — or will shortly be doing so — faster than they can be replaced,” said Chief Emeka Anyaoku, WWF’s President, as he presented the findings to a conference in Johannesburg.
According to the report, Libya, Egypt and Algeria were at the top of a list of African nations living far beyond their ecological means. Nine others, including Morocco, Uganda, Senegal, Nigeria, South Africa, Tunisia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Zimbabwe, were also lessening their bio-capacity.
But despite the over-consumption of natural resources in these countries, Africa’s overall ecological footprint at 1.1 hectares is still behind the continent’s total biocapacity of 1.3 hectares per head of population. And the numbers are still well below the global average footprint of 2.2 hectares per person, a rate the WWF says would require two planets by 2050 to meet the needs of humanity.
However, for Africa, the biggest threat is the predicted doubling of its current population of 680 million. According to forecasts, Africans will account for nearly one in four of the world’s population by 2050.
But ongoing development is critical for African nations, which according to the U.N. rank among the bottom of the human welfare index. However, these nations must “work with, rather than against, ecological budget constraints,” Global Footprint Network director Mathis Wackernagel told Reuters.
“Development that ignores the limits of our natural resources ultimately ends up imposing disproportionate costs on the most vulnerable and the most dependent on the health of natural systems, such as the rural poor,” he said.
The full WWF report, “Africa-Ecological Footprint and Human Well-being” was developed in partnership with the U.S.-based research body Global Footprint Network. It can be viewed at http://assets.panda.org/downloads/aef_2007_final_4_lr.pdf.
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