Global Witness has drawn up a global report on crimes committed against environmental activists. In Africa, the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is worrying. The Central African country ranks 8th in the world for the number of murders of environmental activists. Between 2012 and 2022, at least 72 environmental activists were killed in the DRC.
Toute l'actu sur la protection de l'environnement
Global Witness has drawn up a global report on crimes committed against environmental activists. In Africa, the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is worrying. The Central African country ranks 8th in the world for the number of murders of environmental activists. Between 2012 and 2022, at least 72 environmental activists were killed in the DRC.
Between 28 and 31 May 2023, three Congolese eco-guards died from gunshot wounds. Their convoy had been violently attacked a few days earlier by Mayi-Mayi, armed groups active in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The attack on 18 May 2023 took place in Nyamusengera, near the village of Rwindi in Rutshuru territory. This attack is the latest in a long series.
Last year, the Virunga National Park Authority reported that more than 200 rangers had been killed since 1996. And in a recent report published on the night of 12-13 September 2023, Global Witness reports that between 2012 and 2022, at least 72 rangers were killed in the DRC, most of them in connection with land disputes or poaching, and often in nature reserves.
According to the study by these human rights non-governmental organisation (NGO), the DRC is the 8th country in the world with the most murders of environmental defenders. The Central African country is ranked alongside other African countries, namely Madagascar, Malawi and South Africa.
In Africa, the figures given in the report are likely to be underestimated. « In Latin America, we have a strong civil society that provides information. We also have media that document things in a way that Africa doesn’t, » Laura Furones, the report’s main author, told AFP, before adding that it is « entirely possible that there are more cases that we never hear about ».
The report calls on governments and companies to provide better protection for people who are committed to environmental conservation. In the rest of the world, the situation is hardly glowing. At least 177 environmentalists were killed worldwide in 2022. Latin America remains the most affected region in the world, led by Colombia where, according to the report, an environmental activist is killed every two days.
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Global warming is being blamed as the main cause of storm Daniel, which devastated eastern Libya on 10 September 2023. Coming from Greece via Turkey and Bulgaria, the extreme weather phenomenon caused massive flooding, killing thousands of people. In its 6th report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted disastrous scenarios for Africa. Floods will displace 2.7 million people by 2050.
Libya has never before been so plunged into mourning by floods. Several towns and villages in the east of this North African country were affected on Sunday 10 September 2023, including Benghazi, Al Bayda and Battah. The city of Derna, where the phenomenon was most disastrous, must also be mentioned. The rains were so intense that a first dam and then a second broke, causing a wall of water to surge over the city of some 100,000 inhabitants.
The provisional death toll presented by the local authorities on the afternoon of Tuesday 12 September 2023 was 2,300. The humanitarian organisation Red Crescent added that almost 10,000 people were missing.
Before arriving in Libya, storm Daniel, the cause of the deadly floods, formed on 4 September 2023 in Greece, where villages were ravaged by water and 14 people were killed, according to official figures. The storm passed through Turkey, killing eight people, and Bulgaria, where it caused four deaths.
The theory of a climatic catastrophe
The explanations given so far put forward the hypothesis of global warming. While floods have not appeared as a result of climate change, each additional degree increases the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere, increasing the risk of heavy rainfall. Libya’s National Meteorological Centre said that the level of torrential rain was between 150 and 240 millimetres (mm), compared with the usual level of 4 mm.
According to Christophe Cassou, climatologist and director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France, Daniel formed at the end of an « Omega » blockage, which consists of an anticyclone with very high temperatures in the centre, and rain with cool temperatures at both ends. The effects of this type of situation are being « boosted » by climate change. « With the same atmospheric circulation, this omega would not have had the same impact in the 1950s or 1960s, » explains the researcher.
To be sure that storm Daniel was caused by climate change, we will have to wait for the results of an attribution study. Researchers will be working to establish the precise extent to which climate disruption has made such a climatic phenomenon more likely.
In the first part of its 6th report, published on 9 August 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that global warming is accelerating faster than predicted. In Africa, United Nations scientists are predicting massive forced displacement of many households as a result of global warming. Flooding, for example, will displace almost 2.7 million Africans. Fishing in tropical Africa will be affected, with potential catches falling by 40-70%.
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LIBYA: climate is said to be the cause of the floods that ravaged East of the country
Global warming is being blamed as the main cause of storm Daniel, which devastated eastern Libya on 10 September 2023. Coming from Greece via Turkey and Bulgaria, the extreme weather phenomenon caused massive flooding, killing thousands of people. In its 6th report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted disastrous scenarios for Africa. Floods will displace 2.7 million people by 2050.
The 2023 survey report on elephants in the Kavango-Zambèze Transfrontier Area (KAZA) shows that elephant populations there are stable. In this region of southern Africa, which includes Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the elephant population is estimated at 227,900 individuals.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw) has just published the first-ever synchronised and comprehensive survey of elephants, carried out in the Kavango-Zambèze Transfrontier Area (KAZA). This region of southern Africa includes Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
According to the survey, elephant populations there are stable, and are estimated at 227,900 individuals. In detail, the study counts 5,983 pachyderms in Angola, 131,909 in Botswana, 21,090 in Namibia, 3,840 in Zambia and 65,028 in Zimbabwe. Only the elephant population in Zambia has declined.
« These results are very satisfying, and we congratulate the KAZA Transfrontier Conservation Area Secretariat, the States and their partners for their joint efforts to maintain stable elephant populations despite the threats posed by climate change, habitat loss and poaching, » says Philip Kuvawoga, Ifaw’s programme manager for habitat conservation.
« This rigorous survey provides an important basis for assessing the effectiveness of our joint efforts to secure a future for the region’s elephants and the human populations that live alongside them. While this is positive news, we must continue to address the growing challenges of habitat connectivity and human-elephant coexistence, and ensure that conservation actions support those who live in contact with the wildlife of this region, » adds Philip Kuvawoga.
With a surface area of 520,000 km2, around five times the size of Switzerland, the KAZA transboundary conservation area is the largest network of protected areas in Africa. The region is a veritable mosaic of landscapes, made up of grasslands, forests and wetlands. They are home to a wealth of wildlife. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), almost half of Africa’s savannah elephants, a quarter of Africa’s hyenas, 15% of Africa’s lions and countless other species, including buffalo, giraffe and hippopotamus, live in these reserves.
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SOUTH AFRICA: Kavango-Zambèze, an area of stability for elephants
The 2023 survey report on elephants in the Kavango-Zambèze Transfrontier Area (KAZA) shows that elephant populations there are stable. In this region of southern Africa, which includes Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the elephant population is estimated at 227,900 individuals.
With Africa in need of more than $300 billion a year for climate adaptation, policymakers and government officials gathered at a high-level event on the sidelines of the African Climate Summit in Nairobi called for innovative mechanisms to unlock climate finance. The event, co-organised by AfriCatalyst and Open Society Foundations (OSF), explored how the continent can successfully leverage debt-for-nature swaps to finance climate action.
This year, AfriCatalyst has played a leading role in shaping the climate change debate on the African continent. The pan-African development consultancy, based in Dakar, Senegal, publishes weekly analyses of climate-related policies that offer guidance to investors, policy-makers and media professionals. At a high-level event co-organised with the Open Society Foundations on the sidelines of the African Climate Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, AfriCatalyst launched its flagship policy paper entitled « Scaling up debt swaps for climate and nature in Africa ».
The paper explains how the continent can restructure its debt to align with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and climate resilience, presenting a win-win situation for both foreign creditors and African nations. The Executive Vice President of Finance and Banking at the African Export-Import Bank (Afrexim Bank), however, emphasised the key role played by multilateral development institutions in providing guarantees, attracting foreign investors and financing the early stages of implementing debt-for-nature mechanisms. Denys Denya emphasised the bank’s commitment to working with relevant stakeholders to address the climate issue.
« The African Export-Import Bank has set aside $500 million to help with climate projects. The private sector considers certain climate projects to be risky. The public sector cannot finance these projects on its own. By providing concessional finance, grant finance and guarantees to investors to look at projects differently », he said.
The debt-for-nature mechanism was cited as one of the climate financing models on which agreements would be reached at the first African Climate Summit. The organisers announced agreements worth several hundred million dollars.
The debt-for-nature swap is often presented as a technique for relieving the debt of developing countries. It involves extending payment terms, reducing interest rates, granting new loans at lower rates than conventional and even cancelling debts. This technique, invented by the American biologist Thomas Lovejoy, considered to be the godfather of biodiversity, ultimately consists of exchanging part of the foreign debt for local investments aimed at protecting the environment.
The debt-for-nature swap is one of the innovative mechanisms that experts are recommending to unblock climate financing in Africa. « It can’t be business as usual – we have to innovate. We need to create a Triple A of climate finance: Adaptability, Affordability and Accessibility of climate finance. I believe that adaptation and mitigation can go hand in hand », said Ibrahima Cheick Diong, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Director General of the African Risk Capacity Group (ARCG).
According to AfriCatalyst, Africa needs more than 300 billion dollars a year for climate adaptation.
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AFRICA: debt-for-climate swaps once again recommended
With Africa in need of more than $300 billion a year for climate adaptation, policymakers and government officials gathered at a high-level event on the sidelines of the African Climate Summit in Nairobi called for innovative mechanisms to unlock climate finance. The event, co-organised by AfriCatalyst and Open Society Foundations (OSF), explored how the continent can successfully leverage debt-for-nature swaps to finance climate action.
The project entitled « A Pan-African and Transdisciplinary Lens on the Margins: Coping with the Risks of Extreme Events » (PALM-TREEs) has been launched. Funded by the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the initiative aims to obtain data on the psycho-sociological impact of climate change on vulnerable communities in Africa.
The UK Minister for Development and Africa took advantage of the first African Climate Summit to announce the official launch of the project entitled « A Pan-African and Transdisciplinary Lens on the Margins: Coping with the Risks of Extreme Events » (PALM-TREEs). This project, which has been running since 5 September 2023, is part of the Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CLARE) initiative, a UK-Canada research framework programme on adaptation and resilience to climate change, funded to the tune of 120 million Canadian dollars, mainly by the UK government’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).
Through a transdisciplinary and pan-African approach, the project aims to empower marginalised communities to better respond to extreme climate events in Africa, such as droughts, floods and heat waves, and their interconnected and cascading socio-economic impacts.
Planned to last three and a half years, the research will focus on flooding in Kitui and Turkana counties in Kenya, flood dynamics and gender-based violence in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, the impact of floods and drought on women’s agricultural productivity in Cameroon and Mbanza-Ngungu in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the impact of heat stress on the health and livelihoods of communities in informal settlements in Lagos, Nigeria, and the impact of droughts, floods and water management on various communities in the Volta Basins and Accra, Ghana.
The mental health of climate-displaced people
PALM-TREEs will be implemented over a period of three and a half years by a consortium of universities and institutions led by the University of Cape Town, the University of Yaoundé 1 and the University of Oxford. The project is managed by a consortium director and principal investigators responsible for coordinating research in Southern, Central, East and West Africa.
According to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), more than 20 million people are displaced each year and many more are affected by floods, droughts and heat waves. These extreme events are followed by negative effects on mental health and well-being, and overlap with internal conflicts, security risks and multiple forms of vulnerability. Limited access to resources, aid and services during and after climate shocks in sub-Saharan Africa pushes communities to the margins of society and limits their capacity to adapt.
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AFRICA: launch of the PALM-TREEs project on the psycho-sociological impact of climate
The project entitled « A Pan-African and Transdisciplinary Lens on the Margins: Coping with the Risks of Extreme Events » (PALM-TREEs) has been launched. Funded by the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the initiative aims to obtain data on the psycho-sociological impact of climate change on vulnerable communities in Africa.