Tanzania: Environmentalists Craft Strategic Actions to Promote African Mountain Regions

ENVIRONMENTAL experts have identified strategic actions to address key issues of conservation and development challenges of biodiversity, water, energy, food security and climate change in African Mountain regions.

The strategies are an outcome of a recent forum held in Arusha to help raise the profile of the African sustainable mountain development agenda.

The First African Mountains Regional Forum was organised by the Albertine Rift Conservation Society (ARCOS) and the Africa Mountain Partnership Champions Committee, in partnership with the East African Community (EAC), the UN Environment Programme, the Austrian Development Cooperation and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

The gathering, held at Arusha's famed Ngurdoto Mountain Lodge, brought together over 100 participants representing government, academia, research institutions, intergovernmental organisations and civil society. Nearly half of the world's countries have significant mountainous regions.

These regions are home to about 850 million people and provide more than half of the world's population with water for domestic use, agriculture, industry and power generation, among other uses. Additionally, mountains are home to half of the world's biodiversity hotspots and many threatened and endangered species, which attract tourism and create recreation opportunities.

Yet many mountain regions suffer from dire poverty, widespread land degradation, inequitable land rights and are already enduring severe negative impacts from climate change. Mountain regions are among the most sensitive to climate change and receding glaciers are one of the most visible indicators of global change.

If current trends continue, many glaciers are expected to disappear completely by the end of this century, potentially leading to catastrophic changes in water availability for large parts of the world.

The first major international decision to address the issue of mountains and mountainous regions was at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Earth Summit, held from 3-14 June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. One of the principal outputs of UNCED was Agenda 21, a 40-chapter programme of action.

On mountains, Chapter 13 of Agenda 21 recognises the important ecological, economic and social functions of and services provided by, mountainous regions.

It makes a number of recommendations to governments on mountains, including: Promoting erosion control; promoting alternative livelihoods; developing early-warning systems and disaster-response teams for hazardous areas and creating information centres on mountain ecosystems to build expertise on sustainable agriculture and conservation areas. In its capacity as the lead agency on mountains within the UN system, the FAO was made the Task Manager of Chapter 13 in 2003. The African Mountains Regional Forum (AMRF) consisted of five themed plenary sessions with panel discussions. The thematic sessions were on biodiversity and ecosystem services and water, energy and food security challenges in African mountains, African mountains and climate change and mountain communities and international and regional policy.

Addressing the forum, the Swiss Ambassador to Tanzania Olivier Chave described mountain environments as 'marginality by excellence,' explaining that mountain populations are marginalised culturally, socially and politically. He said the Swiss Government aims to bring people together to share knowledge and stimulate understanding to serve policy-making. Another participant, Elisabeth Soetz of the Austria Development Cooperation (ADC) stressed that mountain regions share similarities and the mountain community can profit by exchanging experiences. While acknowledging that regional cooperation is not easy, she said it is worth the effort. An official of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Robert Wabunoha, underscored the importance of African mountains in providing water to a region dominated by arid areas. He pointed out that African small island states have their own challenges and urged their inclusion in the African mountain development agenda.

A representative of the EAC Jesca Eriyo described how the multiple trans-boundary and national mountainous areas in East Africa are home to wildlife 'hotspots' that support the livelihoods of mountain populations. She listed the challenges of mountain resource management including low capacity, inadequate policy, natural disasters and climate change.

Welcoming delegates, Arumeru District Commissioner (DC) Nyerembe Deus Munasa highlighted the need for good data infrastructure to enable management of resources, adding that science and technology provide insights into management. He called for formulation of mountains policy in Tanzania and expressed Tanzania's interest in joining the Mountain Partnership.

A Zimbabwean delegate, Philip Taru Chinhoyi of the University of Technology, said that mountains in Africa are understudied and not prioritised for research, data is fragmented and human and financial resources are limited.

He called on African governments to develop and implement mountain-specific policies and support research on the needs of mountain communities, as well as develop the communication infrastructure for mountain biodiversity data and ecosystem services. During discussions, questions were raised on alien invasive species in mountain ecosystems and whether benefits from mountain resources are being passed onto local communities.

On benefit sharing, Taru said that the issue is complicated due to intellectual property rights, asserted by those who develop products from forest resources. On invasive species, he noted that in the context of the Maluti mountain range in South Africa, the park management had tried to remove the invasive Acacia but this resulted in conflict with the local community.

A Moroccan academic Mohammed Sghir Taleb of Mohammed V-agdal University called for the need of interactions between local populations and natural resources. He noted that Morocco is the second most diverse forest country after Turkey and mountain populations are generally poor and dependent on mountain natural resources.

He highlighted his country's strategy for the preservation of biodiversity including a database comprising more than 120,000 specimens, as well as a network of protected areas and four national reserves. Emphasising the importance of community engagement, Festus Bagoora of the National Environment Management Authority in Uganda urged disaggregating 'mountain area countries' from 'mountain communities' to ensure these communities receive a share of resources being provided to mountain area countries.

He stressed the importance of the Forum agreeing a position on implementing pilots for payment for forest ecosystem services. The participants adopted conclusions establishing the African Region Mountain Forum as the main coordinating body to promote sustainable mountain development in Africa.

They agreed to hold the ARMF every two years and request the African Union, regional economic communities and other partners to adopt the African Regional Mountain Agenda with its governance framework for Sustainable Mountain Development (SMD). They called upon African states to develop and implement mountain-specific polices, laws and programmes, mainstream SMD in their national development agenda.

By Alpha Nuhu