16 Oct 2013

Africa has a comparative advantage as a natural capital hub, Ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism deputy permanent secretary,Mr Jimmy Opelo has said.  

Officially opening the fifth Special Session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment,(AMCEN) Mr Opelo said Africa was endowed with minerals and various natural resource, some of which were specific to the continent.

Mr Opelo, who is also the AMCEN deputy president, implored Africans to take full advantage of the international frameworks and the multi-lateral environmental agreements that already existed to leverage resources and use them to advocate its position on sustainability.

He said environmental governance for sustainable development needs attention, hence the need to reflect on strengthening the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). He also encouraged conference attendants to assure the reform of local structures to cause sustainability objectives.

Mr Opelo said sustainability required ministries of environment to begin to effectively engage with other sectors in order to fly flagship programs as expected.

For his part, UNEP Director and Regional Representative Mr Mounkaila Goumandakoye said the environmental technical meeting came at a time when the world was grappling with a lot of challenges such as climate change, rural poverty, food insecurity, malnutrition and environmental degradation.

Mr Goumandakoye highlighted that the threats to people and development would worsen as warming was projected to be greater than the global annual mean, with an average increase of three to four degrees over the next century.

These continental changes, he said will affect the livelihoods of millions and permanently displace many thousands. He said the failure by conferences to make progress on set goals increased the risk of a rise in average global temperatures thus potentially triggering a lot of changes such as extreme heat waves, declining global food stocks and a rising sea level that will affect hundreds of millions of people.

He said AMCEN as the driving force for environmental issues in the region, has a critical role in shaping current and future choices of the continent and ensuring the region’s effective contribution to these processes. Ends