Almami Dampha is the Senior Policy Officer of the African Union Commission. He represented the commission at the just concluded Regional Steering Committee meeting of the Great Green Wall (GGW) for Sahara and Sahel Initiative in Abuja. In this interview, he speaks on the challenges of the programme and more. Excerpt:
With millions of Africans affected by drought and desertification, is GGW the best containment option?
The issue of deforestation and land degradation has been a problem with Africa for several decades. From the early 70s, the drought in West Africa is the reason the African continent was very instrumental in putting in place one of the three Rio conventions, which is the convention by United Nations (UN) to combat desertification.
The convention was simply because of the magnitude of land degradation in Africa. It is pervasive, you can hardly go to any country in Africa that you can’t find challenges of desertification, except in the area of Congo base of the forest. Even at that, there is land degradation and as Africa we’re looking for solution. One of the approaches is the Great Green Wall initiative.
Forest degradation is common because of agricultural practices and traction by local communities which is fuelling the rate of land degradation. Therefore our approaches would have to be integrated. The approach we have now, the Great Green Wall initiative for the Sahara and the Sahel, is a land scale approach to holistically address the challenges plus the driving factors; poverty in the rural areas, and lack of employment. We need to create jobs, create alternative sources of energy in order to relieve the pressure on the forest resources. These are some of the motivations that lead to the establishment of the GGW.
Looking at the African setting, what have been the challenges of the GGW initiative so far?
It is true that some places are not doing well. The GGW is about 10 years, we have conquered the first programme, but now in terms of concrete action on ground, there is really not much to show. We are facing serious problem, this is in the area of finances and capacity to finance huge ambitious programmes costing millions of dollars because of our economic situations.
We have many priorities in Africa, it is not just only about land degradation – we have education, defence and security. We have all these instability actions on the continent and these drain our efforts and resources. Financing remains a major constraint especially at the national level. They know what to do, what is lacking is the means to implement. Yet, we still want countries to own it and make some political commitment, however small but make it, start it because charity begins at home. As Africans we need to own our programmes and do what we can on our own then, others will come to complement our efforts.
Most African countries are signatory to international protocols but have the problem of implementing and domesticating them. How do we achieve that?
If you look at the three Rio conventions on desertification and biodiversity, almost all the 55 African countries have ratified them, but domestication at the national level is still a major challenge. The Senate has gone through it and adopted it but it does not get to the communities who at the end of the day are to implement the programmes because they are the ones working on the land. So community involvement is very important.
Our ratification becomes the implementation; the next thing is resources. Let’s not just depend on partners, partners are only complementary; you cannot put your development into somebody’s hand, you have to take it by your own hand by allocating at least the minimum financial resources needed.
We have good institutional framework on ground. In Nigeria here we have the NAGGW. It is fantastic, in Senegal, in Chad, Burkina Faso they have the same structure so what is lacking is mobilizing of resources. I am happy that in countries like Nigeria and Niger they have funding mechanism. In Nigeria you have the Environmental Fund and in Chad they have very innovative mechanism, and they can mobilize resources on their own.
The government structures sometimes become very cumbersome but can be of help where they on their own can mobilize resources; mobilize the private sector. We have to talk about the private sector in addressing these issues, this is because it makes business for the private sector to invest in the environment and also a social responsibility. Many of the African private sector extract natural resources and in the process they harm the environment. Therefore it will be an obligation on them to at least support the rehabilitation of their mining areas, timbers concessions and so forth.
Talking about the issue of development partners, some say African countries are not serious in financing issue of environment but depend more on grants, what is you take on that?
They are showing high level of seriousness, for example if you go to Ethiopia and Chad, there is what we call Africa 100. Its part of what we call the bold challenge. This programme aims to rehabilitate about 100 million hectares of land. This is massive and currently about 26 African countries have made commitment and the total area of about 87 million hectares have been committed. But these are political commitments, we need to motivate and really make sure that these commitments are put into action and not just left on paper.
If you go to Ethiopia, millions of hectares of degraded land are rehabilitated, and Niger Republic too, through what we call Farmers Manage Regeneration. They have rehabilitated millions of hectares it is impressive.
What are we expecting at the end of this conference?
First this conference is just a monitoring mechanism held annually or after every two years to monitor the progress of the programme and through that we have presentation from countries. So they will tell us the milestone covered, indicate their achievements and challenges so far and that way we offer ways of overcoming those challenges and take advantage of our affinities. In the area of degradation we have lots of opportunities both at local and global levels.
Also, the GGW is a big partnership; the meeting is like stock taking and reassessing ourselves, how much are we contributing as partners and our value addition because we know the challenges. In Africa we have problem of coordination and issue of accountability and transparency. So we really want to address all these issues in the conference.
We have situations where the funds lay fallow because countries refused to pay counterpart funding. How do we address this?
Many projects’ grants are attached to counterpart funding like the World Bank and many others. I think it is important. It is ownership because there is nothing free, but beside that, the counterpart funding can be in forms, it can be in cash or kind, when these projects come, they work with our communities and national institutions, so sometimes we are scared of the counterpart funding but first we have to define what it entails but I think countries also made that commitment.
The impact of climate change is said to be stronger on African women and children, what is AU doing about that?
You know most time the men will run to the urban areas while the women will be at the brunt of whatever comes as the consequence of drought or conflict with competition over dwindling natural resources in the forefront. In the AU there has been a lot of emphasis on women empowerment. At the continental level there is a lot of commitment on gender.
In the area of environment, we annually celebrate what we call the African Environment Day/Wangari Maathai Day and for the past three years we have introduced what we called Women Environment Forum, where we discuss women access to land and natural resources and we invite women all over Africa to discuss, so we are doing our best as we cannot leave women behind because that will be a serious miscalculation – they should be at the forefront.
What can you say on the issue of environmental policies in Africa?
Policies and strategies in Africa are not lacking, we have lots of policies, very sound policies, and it is just about implementation. But our role at the African Union is to have harmonized policies and in that effort we work with regional communities like ECOWAS to encourage countries. For example in forest resources we need to have regional conditions for it because forest sometimes boarder on illegal extraction of wildlife or forest products, like if you stop the cutting of trees in Nigeria but in Benin Republic it is not controlled you will find out that your policy will not be effective. So we need to have regional collaboration especially in the area of water resource, fisheries, forest management.
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