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DIRECTIONS IN DEVELOPMENT
Building a Sustainable Future
The Africa Region Environment
Strategy
THE WORLD BANK
Washington, D.C.



i) 2002 The Intemational Bank for Reconstruction
and Development/THE WORLD BANK
1818 H Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20433
All rights reserved. Published June 2002
Manufactured in the United States of America
123405040302
The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed here are those of the
author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Board of Executive Directors
of the World Bank or the governments they represent.
The World Bank cannot guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work.
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this work do not imply on the part of the World Bank any judgment of the legal status
of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries.
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addressed to the Office of the Publisher, World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington,
DC 20433, USA, fax 202-522-2422, e-mail pubrights@worldbank.org.
ISBN 0-8213-5146-X
Cover photo credits:
Foreground-Agi Kiss, World Bank.
Background-Robert Clement-Jones, World Bank.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Building a sustainable future: the Africa region environment strategy,
p. cm. - (directions in development)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-8213-5146-X
1. Sustainable development-Africa. 2. Environmental policy-Economic
aspects-Africa. 3. Natural resources-Africa-Management. 4. World Bank-
Africa. 1. Series.
HC800.Z9 E513 2002
338.96'07-dc2l
2002069155



Contents
Foreword ..........................................                                vi
Preface ..........................................                                vii
Abbreviations and Acronyms ..........................................            viii
Executive Summary ...........................................1
The Strategic and Regional Context ...........................................]
Urgent Issues at the Poverty-Environment Interface .............................2
Development Trends and Challenges ........................................  .....5
Lessons from World Bank Experience .....5
Priorities for Action .....7
Implementation of the Strategy .......................................         10
1. Introduction ..........................................                        13
Poverty and Environment in Africa ..........................................     13
The Strategic and Regional Context ...              .......................................... 14
2. Urgent Issues and Trends:
Environment through a Poverty Lens ..........................................    19
Africa's Fragile Progress ..........................................           19
Urgent Issues at the Poverty-Environment Interface ........................... 23
Development Trends and Challenges .3...............................            36
3. Lessons from     World Bank Experience ...............................         48
Environmental Assessment ............................................ 49
The Global Environment Facility ............................5.... .1
National Environmental Action Plans ................................... 53
Environmental Support Programs ........................................ 54
Regional Environmental Networks .............                .................... 55
iii



Foreword
Better environmental management is a matter of survival. In Africa and
around the world, this simple truth has never been better appreciated
than it is today. One of the eight global Millennium Development Goals
for improving the lives of the world's poor calls for reversing current
trends in the loss of environmental resources. The Environmental
Initiative of the New Partnership for African Development, Africa's
revival plan, identifies urgent actions needed for better management of
land, water, and biological resources as well as for the strengthening of
environmental governance and financing. The message also resonates in
the World Bank's mission statement: "To fight poverty with passion and
professionalism for lasting results; to help people help themselves and
their environment."
African governments and people are committed to reducing poverty
in the region through economic growth and development that are both
inclusive and sustainable. Among the greatest challenges they face in
achieving this goal is sustaining and developing the human and natural
capital that provides the foundation for growth. This environment strat-
egy for the Africa Region articulates the World Bank's commitment to
help African countries make the transition to sustainable economic
development through improved management of natural resources and
the environment. It calls for a supportive government (through wise poli-
cies and regulations), informed and empowered communities, and a
dynamic and well-guided private sector to work together, and for the
Bank and others to help provide the necessary knowledge base, capacity
development, and financial resources.
In the year that the Republic of South Africa is hosting the World
Summit on Sustainable Development, we appreciate that the African
people can and must be active and equal partners in the quest to define
and build a more sustainable future for themselves and for us all.
vi



Preface
This environment strategy outlines the current thinking in the World
Bank Group Africa Region about priorities and actions for the institution
in the environmental arena. It benefited from extensive consultations
with the Bank's clients and partners, who contributed valuable insights
and recommendations. However, the final contents and presentation are
the responsibility of the World Bank's Africa Region staff and manage-
ment. The successful implementation of the strategy will depend on
demand by borrowing countries, cooperation by development partners
including civil society, and the availability of financial resources.
Throughout this volume, "Africa" refers to Sub-Saharan Africa. In the
World Bank's institutional structure, North African countries fall within
the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
vii



Abbreviations and Acronyms
AFTES        Africa Region Environment and Social Development
Unit
ALWMI        African Land and Water Management Initiative
AMCEN        African Ministerial Conference on Environment
APL          Adaptable Program Loan
ARES         Africa Region Environment Strategy
ASAL         Arid and semi-arid lands
ASP          Africa Stockpile Program
CAP          Community Action Plan or Program
CAS          Country Assistance Strategy
CBNRM        Community-Based Natural Resource Management
CDD          Community-Driven Development
CDF          Comprehensive Development Framework
CEPF         Critical Ecosystems Partnership Fund
CILSS        Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in
the Sahel
CITES        Convention on the International Trade in Endangered
Species
DRC          Democratic Republic of Congo
DRE          Decentralized rural electrification
EA           Environmental Assessment
EACC         East African Cooperation Community
ECOWAS       Economic Community of West African States
EIA           Environmental Impact Assessment
EMP          Environmental Management Plan
ESP          Environmental Support Program
ESW          Economic and sector work
GDP          Gross domestic product
GEF          Global Environment Facility
GIS          Geographic Information System
GNP          Gross national product
ICZM         Integrated Coastal Zone Management
viii



ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS                                ix
IDA           International Development Association
IEM           Integrated Ecosystem Management
IGADD         Intergovernmental Authority on Drought and
Development
ILWMAP       Integrated Land-Water Management Action Program in
Africa
IPM           Integrated Pest Management
JOS          Joint Operational Strategy for Biodiversity
Conservation and Improved Forest Management
MDG          Millennium Development Goals
MELISSA      Managing Environment Locally in Sub-Saharan Africa
NBCSPs       National Biodiversity Conservation Strategies and Plans
NDF          Nordic Development Fund
NEAP         National Environmental Action Plan
NEPAD         New Partnership for African Development
NESDA        Network for Environment and Sustainable
Development in Africa
NGO          Nongovernmental organization
PAGE         Pilot Assessment of Global Ecosystems
PERC         Public Expenditure Review Credit
PRA           Participatory Rural Appraisal
PRSC          Poverty Reduction Strategy Credit
PRSP         Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper
RD           Rural development
REIMP        Central African Regional Environmental Information
Management Program
RESA         Renewable (Nontraditional) Energy Strategy for Africa
SADC         Southern Africa Development Community
SAIEA        South African Institute of Environmental Assessment
SAL           Structural Adjustment Loan
SEA          Strategic or "Sectoral" Environmental Assessment
SP           Safeguard Policy
TM            Traditional medicine
UNDP         United Nations Development Programme
UNEP          United Nations Environment Programme
VPU          Vice Presidential Unit (World Bank)
WAEN          West African Enterprise Network
WBES          World Bank Environment Strategy
WRI          World Resources Institute






Executive Summary
In Africa, specifically Sub-Saharan Africa, the World Bank's mission to
fight poverty with lasting results is inescapably linked with environmen-
tal protection and improved management of renewable natural resources.
In both rural and urban Africa, the poor are affected the most by the loss
of natural resources and environmental services. They are also at the
greatest risk from natural disasters, particularly droughts and floods,
whose impacts are aggravated by environmental degradation. The
national economies of African countries also rely heavily on agriculture
and on extraction of renewable natural resources for the income needed
to provide the basic services and development essential for the poor.
Yet this natural resource base on which so much depends is steadily dete-
riorating, and the capacity of natural systems to produce goods and services
is being lost. Africa has some of the world's highest rates of soil erosion and
deforestation, as well as declining rangelands, wetlands, and fish and
wildlife populations. Climate variation, already a serious threat to liveli-
hoods and economic development in much of the region, is likely to be fur-
ther aggravated by climate change within the next few decades. In Africa,
better environmental management is not just about preserving nature or
even about sustainable economic development: it is a matter of survival.
The Strategic and Regional Context
The Africa Region Environment Strategy (ARES) outlines the World
Bank's commitment to help its clients achieve sustainable poverty reduc-
tion through better environmental management. It identifies the most
urgent issues at the interface of environment and poverty and discusses
targeted actions for addressing them: It reviews the lessons from experi-
ence to date and proposes new approaches. The strategic context in
which the ARES has evolved and will be implemented is defined by the
Bank's mission statement and operational policies, the World Bank Envi-
ronment Strategy (WBES), and by the Bank's broader objectives, priori-
ties, and strategies in the Africa Region.
1



2   BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
Like the WBES, the ARES approaches environment through a "poverty
lens" and targets four main objectives: (a) ensuring sustainable liveli-
hoods, (b) improving environmental health, (c) reducing vulnerability to
natural disasters, and (d) maintaining local, regional, and global ecosys-
tems and values. Reflecting both the WBES's and the Bank's overall strate-
gic objectives in Africa, key elements of the ARES include integrating
environment into development and poverty reduction strategies; building
an enabling environment and the institutional and human capacity for
sustainable environmental management; promoting environmentally sus-
tainable and equitable private sector-led economic development; improv-
ing governance in the public sector; encouraging decentralization and
Community-Driven Development; and linking local and global environ-
mental objectives. The ARES also takes into account the "real world" con-
text of the opportunities and challenges of Africa today, such as the
ecological, social, and political diversity of the region; the many urgent
development priorities facing African countries; weak institutional capac-
ity; and limited technical and managerial resources. It also recognizes the
need for tradeoffs and compromises between short-term and longer-term
objectives and among the interests of different stakeholders.
A healthy environment is essential to human welfare. At the same time,
the constraints and avenues to improved environmental management
mainly arise from human needs and actions. There is thus a strong linkage
between environmental and social agendas, and tools such as stakeholder
analysis, participatory processes, and community mobilization and capac-
ity building are essential elements in improving environmental manage-
ment. In the World Bank this linkage is reflected institutionally in the
Africa Region Environment and Social Development Unit (AFTES).
Despite a widespread perception that the region is stagnating, many
African countries have made significant progress in economic, social, and
political development over the past few decades. But this progress is fragile
and at risk owing to four urgent factors that threaten the region's prospects
for growth and development: (a) rapid population growth, (b) political con-
flicts, (c) the WIV/AIDS (human inmmunodeficiency virus/acquired immun-
odeficiency syndrome) crisis, and (d) environmental degradation. The ARES
aims to help African countries and people reverse environmental degrada-
tion in order to sustain and strengthen economic development, while recog-
nizing that it cannot be achieved unless the other threats are also addressed.1
Urgent Issues at the Poverty-Environment Interface
Certain aspects of environmental degradation stand out as particularly
urgent issues in Africa, by virtue of their prevalence, magnitude, and
impacts on the poor. They are as follows:



EXECUTIVE SUMMARY                                             3
SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOODS. The majority of Africans live in rural areas and
are poor. Given that they are dependent on renewable natural resources,
the continuing decline of this resource base is the highest-priority envi-
ronmental issue in Africa. The significance of land degradation and
desertification, the deterioration and growing scarcity of surface water
and groundwater, and the decline of such key natural resources as wood-
fuels and fish are well recognized. Less appreciated is the impact of the
loss of productive natural ecosystems, whose intact value is often far
greater than the sum of their component natural resource parts. Forests,
wetlands, and rangelands are all being converted or degraded at a rapid
rate across much of Africa, with catastrophic consequences for the poor,
who are losing their livelihood base. Some of these losses are due to mis-
management, others to purposeful changes in land use. But the poor are
rarely the main beneficiaries of these changes and are often left without
alternatives or compensation. Thus, although it is conventional to speak
of tradeoffs between conservation and economic development or pover-
ty alleviation, in many cases the actual tradeoff may be between large-
scale economic development and local impoverishment because natural
ecosystems have not been conserved. At a national level, direct and
immediate impacts of ecosystem destruction include flooding, siltation of
dams, and loss of indigenous natural products such as medicinal plants,
foods (including famine reserves), woodfuel, and building materials.
ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH. Environmental health impacts are of great con-
cem to African stakeholders. Poor health reduces peoples' survival rates
and quality of life and affects their capacity to carry out economically and
socially productive activity. Africans suffer a higher total burden of dis-
ease than do their counterparts in other regions. Environment, health,
and poverty overlap extensively in Africa because many of the most
widespread and debilitating diseases, particularly those that affect the
poor disproportionately, stem from environmental conditions. This
means that they may also be mitigated through improved environmental
management (such as sanitation). This is usually more cost-effective than
technical or clinical approaches aimed at repairing damage already done.
Although it is not always recognized as an important issue in Africa,
water and air pollution from domestic and industrial sources affects hun-
dreds of millions of people in the region, particularly those living along
marine and freshwater coastlines and in mining or industrial areas.
African industrial establishments tend to be smaller than those in other
parts of the world, but they are often poorly regulated and can have sig-
nificant additive and cumulative impacts. Biomedical waste is also a
growing hazard, given the lack of suitable incineration facilities at most
hospitals and clinics. Ironically, efforts to stem the HIV/AIDS crisis are



4   BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
contributing to the problem through the upsurge in contaminated dis-
posable syringes, needles, and condoms. The loss of natural ecosystems
discussed above is also resulting in the loss of traditional medicines. In
many African countries, up to 90 percent of the population uses tradi-
tional medicines, either by choice or because of lack of access to modern
alternatives. Both the medicinal species and the associated indigenous
knowledge are threatened by development that does not value them suf-
ficiently.
SECURITY: VULNERABILITY TO NATURAL EVENTS AND DISASTERS. As a region,
Africa is characterized by a high degree of climate variability, particular-
ly in rainfall. This has chronic and severe impacts on livelihoods and eco-
nomic development. Long (multiyear) dry periods and heavy rains that
cause flooding are a recurring reality that must be systematically factored
into development planning and assistance at all levels. As with health,
prior protective ecological and risk management is likely to be more cost-
effective than relief and reconstruction. The severity of natural disasters
such as droughts and floods, which represent the extremes of climate
variability, may be aggravated by environmental degradation. For exam-
ple, both flooding and long dry spells become much more dangerous if
the natural vegetation that helps hold moisture in the soil has been lost.
The toll of such events on the livelihoods and security of the poor is
immense. Poor people typically reside on marginal lands susceptible to
floods and droughts, live in substandard housing, have less access to
early warning systems and shelters, are more dependent on annual pro-
duction from rainfed agriculture, and have limited economic resources to
cope with catastrophic events.
THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT. In addition to being an essential resource for
African peoples and economies, the region's vast and unique biodiversi-
ty endowment is an invaluable world heritage. This includes its remain-
ing extensive natural habitats (including the Congo Basin forest, the sec-
ond largest contiguous tropical rain forest area in the world), as well as
wild relatives and "landraces" of important food and commercial crops
and livestock. The direct cause of most biodiversity loss in Africa is con-
version of natural habitats and water bodies to agriculture and other
uses. Overexploitation for charcoal, commercial logging, and hunting for
both local and international markets is also a significant threat in many
cases. Landowners and resource users have little direct incentive to con-
serve biodiversity because the benefits of conservation are generally long
term and diffuse, whereas the activities that destroy biodiversity often
yield immediate individual benefits. Africa is not a large-scale user of fos-
sil fuels compared with other regions.2 The region's main contributions to



EXECUTIVE SUMMARY                                          5
global carbon emissions are from natural gas flaring from oilfields in a
few countries, and from large-scale and ubiquitous burning of grasslands
and forests. Africa may be the region most vulnerable to climate change,
which is expected to cause even greater variability in rainfall and increas-
es in average temperatures, particularly in the Sudan-Sahelian and south-
ern subregions. Large, heavily populated areas that are now marginal
could become uninhabitable or uncultivable through increased droughts,
floods, or rising sea levels. This will further increase the already substan-
tial number of "environmental refugees" and aggravate political con-
flicts. Again, it is the poor, dependent on rainfed agriculture and with ten-
uous land security, who will be most affected. Existing hydropower
shortages are also likely to worsen, with negative impacts on production
and growth, and there is evidence that vector-borne diseases such as
malaria are spreading into new areas as a result of climate shifts.
Development Trends and Challenges
It is difficult to generalize across a region that is so ecologically, socially,
economically, and politically diverse. However, a number of common
development trends present challenges and opportunities for environ-
mental management across the region. These include rapid and
unplanned urbanization, the growing role of the private sector, decen-
tralization and democratization, subregional integration, and globaliza-
tion. Depending on how they are managed, these development trends
could prove good or bad for Africa's environment and its future. Institu-
tional and human resource capacities are key to influencing how all these
development trends will affect environment and poverty. On the whole,
Africa's institutions and populations are poorly equipped to deal with
them and must be strengthened and empowered with these important
challenges in mind.
Lessons from World Bank Experience
The Bank's environmental program over the past few decades has
included direct investment in environmental improvements and indirect
interventions aimed at creating capacity and an enabling environment for
better environmental management. The experience gained from these
efforts has been mixed, providing some promising models and pilot ini-
tiatives and important lessons for a forward-looking strategy.
The Environmental Assessment (EA) process represents a potentially
powerful instrument for ensuring that environmental issues are identi-
fied and addressed, at least from a "do-no-harm" perspective. Substantial
environmental investments can also originate from the Environment



8   BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT SrRATEGY
tory and incentive frameworks to encourage environmentally sustainable
private sector investment. Under "quality of the global commons," the
priorities identified are promoting subregional and regional cooperation
in management of shared environmental resources (particularly water
and wildlife); strengthening African countries' capacity to predict and
adapt to the impacts of climate change; and assisting African countries to
participate in international efforts to achieve global environmental objec-
tives and capture a substantial share of the emerging markets for global
environmental services.
Second, the ARES recognizes that Africa's great ecological and social
diversity means that priorities for action are different in different parts of
the region. The section on subregional priorities divides the continent
into six subregions characterized by similar environmental conditions
and socioecological challenges, and consequently similar priorities for
environmental action to alleviate poverty: the Sudano-Sahelian Belt,
humid West Africa, the Congo Basin, East Africa, southern Africa, and the
Indian Ocean Islands. The high-priority environmental management
objectives for each subregion emphasize issues that affect the livelihoods,
health, and security of the poor; opportunities for economic development
based on environmental resources; and unique global assets under threat.
Some issues, such as land degradation, are equally significant across the
continent, whereas others, such as coastal zone management and water
scarcity, are more localized.
While environment is intrinsically cross-sectoral, most governments,
donor organizations, and development programs are organized along
sectoral lines. Therefore, to a large extent environmental objectives will be
achieved through actions within sectoral programs, that is, by making
environmental soundness and sustainability integral objectives and rec-
ognized elements of their success. The ARES outlines sectoral priorities
for Africa, that is, priority environmental issues and outcomes for a num-
ber of key sectors (in summary in table 4.1 and in greater detail in appen-
dix A). Sectors targeted for their strong significance to environmental
management include agriculture and rural development, natural
resource management, energy, urban development, water resource man-
agement, transport, health, and private sector development.
The ARES also identifies three urgent cross-cutting priorities that pro-
vide the essential basis for all the above actions to succeed: (a) adopting
"people-focused ecosystem management"as a core principle for sustain-
able development, (b) building an enabling environment for environ-
mental management, and (c) mobilizing resources for environmental
management.
Integrated Ecosystem Management (IEM) has become widely recog-
nized as the cornerstone of the environmental agenda (World Resources



EXECUTIVE SUMMARY                                           9
Institute 2000). Simply put, it means preserving natural ecological sys-
tems such as water, energy and nutrient cycles, species complexes, and
food webs. This in turn maintains the capacity of ecosystems to function
and produce the food, fiber, energy, and other environmental goods and
services that are essential to life. Beyond IEM as an environmental
agenda, the ARES identifies a "people-focused" ecosystem management
approach to development as the key to meeting human needs and
enhancing economic production on a sustainable basis. Adopting an IEM
approach has important strategic and operational implications. For
example, land and resource use must be planned and coordinated over
large landscapes (often across political borders) and among many differ-
ent stakeholders; compromises and tradeoffs must be made among dif-
ferent environmental and development objectives; and both up-to-date
information on the status and trends of ecosystems and a clear under-
standing of the processes that sustain them are needed.
Environmental management is not something that can be done once
and then ignored, nor can it be solely the responsibility of a few people
or institutions. For a real and lasting impact, maintaining a healthy and
productive environment must be everyone's goal and everyone's busi-
ness. Therefore, the ARES's highest priority is to help its clients put in
place a political, social, economic, and institutional environment that
motivates and enables a wide range of people and institutions to manage
and protect the environment based on their own recognized interests.
The essential elements of such an enabling environment are a broad and
informed consensus on environmental and sustainable development
objectives; policy, regulatory/legal, and institutional frameworks to sup-
port these objectives; and participatory mechanisms to track results and
feed them back into decisionmaking processes. Efforts to develop these
elements in the region have had limited success to date. To achieve
greater success in the future, we must focus on reversing the incentives
that currently drive people, individually and collectively (institutions), to
destroy and degrade the environment. At the same time we must provide
the essential technical and institutional tools for better environmental
stewardship. Technical tools include environmental information, knowl-
edge management, economic analysis, and appropriate technology. Insti-
tutional tools go beyond the common concept of public and private sector
organizations to encompass all aspects of the "rules of the game" that
provide the means for translating intention and policy into collective
action. To achieve better results than, in the past, our support for institu-
tional development must explicitly acknowledge and address significant
"real world" constraints and obstacles such as vested interests and "turf"
issues, the slow pace of change in institutional cultures, financial limita-
tions, and political considerations.



10  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
These endeavors will inevitably require a substantial commitment of
human and financial resources over a long period of time. Therefore, a
key objective over the next 5 to 10 years will be to generate sustainable
funding for environmental management. A large part of this funding
must be achieved through "internalizing environmental externalities"
in the form of user fees, taxes, and other economic and market-based
instruments. There is also an urgent need to reduce aid dependency and
increase the role of internal resources and private sector investment for
environmental management and protection, as international aid is vari-
able and finite and will never be adequate to meet the full scope of the
needs. This includes developing and capturing a substantial share of
emerging markets for local and global environmental services such as
water supply and purification, biodiversity conservation, and carbon
sequestration. African countries can also benefit from a worldwide
trend toward increased corporate commitment to environmental stew-
ardship and social equity, but they must be vigilant so that they do not
become a "dumping ground" for corporations seeking to escape this
trend.
There is a close correlation between the priorities for action identified
in the ARES and those identified by African leaders in the Environment
Initiative of the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD). For
example, soil and water management (combating desertification), wet-
land conservation, coastal management, cross-border conservation, and
adaptation to climate change are all highlighted in both the ARES and
NEPAD. Similarly, the ARES's cross-cutting priority of creating an
enabling environment for environmental management covers the same
policy, institutional, and capacity issues as the NEPAD's proposed Envi-
ronmental Governance Initiative.
Implementation of the Strategy
The ARES, together with several associated strategies (for example, the
Joint Operational Strategy for Biodiversity Conservation and Forest Man-
agement, the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Strategy, and the GEF
Strategy), will serve as a guiding framework for the World Bank's Africa
Region, over the next five years, to achieve three objectives:
* Further enhance the environmental quality of the Bank's lending oper-
ations, including both project-based and nonproject lending
* Build an enabling environment and strengthen environmental man-
agement capacity within the region at all levels
* Mainstream environment in economic development at policy and
operational levels.



EXECUTIVE SUMMARY                                        11
Specific activities within this framework include the following:
• Improving the application of EA and other environmental and social
Safeguard Policies both in project preparation and implementation
and by influencing policies and planning through Strategic Environ-
mental Assessment (SEA)
* Reorienting Environmental Support Programs (ESPs), from an empha-
sis on dedicated environmental institutions and initiatives to building
a broad base of multisectoral environmental management capacity,
and to strengthen both regulatory and incentive-based instruments
* Moving toward longer-term programmatic operations that combine
concrete, substantive goals for improving environmental quality with
a flexible, "adaptive management" approach to implementation
* Developing and supporting the information base and analysis needed
for mainstreaming environment and making rational tradeoffs
between competing objectives and interests
* Developing meaningful and practical indicators for assessing environ-
mental conditions and trends, environmentally related poverty
impacts, and the degree of integration of environment in development
planning and operations
* Introducing an ecosystem and landscape-based approach to natural
resource management and area development initiatives, including
those that transcend national borders.
Given the broad scope of the environmental agenda and the large
number of countries in the region, the Bank must be selective about the
types of interventions it undertakes and the countries where it concen-
trates its efforts and resources. Building on the Bank's comparative
advantage, the emphasis will be on establishing an enabling environment
at the policy level, both through technical assistance and dialogue and
through linkage with large-scale budget support and sectoral investment
programs. Individual investment operations will increasingly be in the
context of multisectoral and multidonor umbrellas such as the PRSC's
Comprehensive Development Framework. For mainstreaming at the
macroeconomic and policy levels, priority will be given to countries with
clear environmental-poverty linkages and a willingness on the part of
both the government and the Bank country team to support environ-
mental analysis and consultation processes and incorporate their out-
puts. Other considerations include a strong ongoing dialogue and a
substantial and diverse Bank lending program, providing leverage and
opportunities for engagement and action across a range of sectors and
programs. For mainstreaming at an operational level, priority criteria will
include opportunities to contribute to the development of sectoral strate-



12  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
gies with strong environmental-poverty linkages, situations in which the
policy framework empowers local stakeholders, and situations in which
ongoing or prospective development presents an urgent threat to locally
or globally significant environmental assets.
Financial and technical resources for implementing the ARES are
expected to come from (a) country programs for country-specific eco-
nomic and sector work (ESW) and operations; (b) an "off the top" alloca-
tion and a regional "tax" on task budgets for strengthening the
application of environmental and social Safeguard Policies; (c) regional
budget allocations for implementation of the ARES and associated envi-
ronmental strategies that enhance the understanding and application of
environmental and social Safeguard Policies, as well as for studies and
other activities with wider application such as development and piloting
of methodologies and tools; (d) Bank-wide instruments such as the Main-
streaming Fund for Environment, Institutional Development Facility,
Research Grants, and national and multinational Trust Funds; and (e)
financial and in-kind support in the context of strategic partnerships.
Strategic partnerships will be vital to the implementation of the ARES,
as its challenges transcend the Bank's own capacity. In addition to tradi-
tional partners such as bilateral donors and international and local non-
governmental organizations (NGOs), the Bank will continue to explore
collaborations with the private sector in areas such as technology devel-
opment and transfer, specialized training and information exchange, and
environmental cleanup. Key criteria for developing and implementing
these partnerships include ensuring that they address the countries' and
the Bank's strategic priorities and are in the best interests of the client,
that administrative costs are minimized but fully supported, and that
they are totally in accordance with the Bank's Safeguard and fiduciary
policies and obligations.
The ARES Implementation Matrix (appendix A) summarizes priorities
and targets at a regional level for the next five years. Specific initiatives
and resource requirements to meet these targets will be developed dur-
ing the first year through consultation with senior management, country
teams, and clients.



1
Introduction
Poverty and Environment in Africa
In Africa, perhaps more than in any other region, the World Bank's mis-
sion to fight poverty with lasting results is inescapably linked with envi-
ronmental protection and improved management of renewable natural
resources. In both rural and urban settings, the poor are affected the most
by the loss of natural resources and the deterioration of environmental
services. Their livelihoods depend heavily on rainfed agriculture and on
natural systems to supply water, maintain soil fertility, and provide
woodfuels and other essential products, and they have few alternatives
or options to compensate when these are lost. Women are often affected
more than men, as in many areas they are primarily responsible for culti-
vating food crops and obtaining water and fuel to support the household.
As these resources decline, their task becomes increasingly difficult and
time-consuming. The national economies of African countries also rely
mainly on agriculture and on extraction of mineral and biological
resources to generate the income needed to provide basic services and for
development essential for the poor.
The natural resource base on which so much depends is steadily dete-
riorating. Soil degradation has affected 65 percent of Africa's cropland
(the highest percentage in the world), and more than 20 million hectares
of forest have been lost since 1980. Current annual rates of forest loss
across the region average 0.7 percent (compared with 0.3 percent world-
wide) and exceed 1 percent in at least 12 countries. One important impact
of deforestation is the loss of indigenous medicinal plants, which repre-
sent the primary health care system for many millions of African peo-
ple-it is estimated that 90 percent of people in West Africa use
traditional medicines. Many coastal, marine, and freshwater fisheries that
provide the main source of protein for much of the population are also
threatened by overfishing and by reduced surface water flows and pol-
lution. Overall, in Africa, as elsewhere in the world, the capacity of nat-
ural systems to produce the goods and services on which livelihoods
13



14 BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
depend is declining, and it is the poor who suffer the most as a result.
Worldwide too, the poor are affected the most by environmental health
risks, and Africa leads the world in the proportion of disease burden aris-
ing from unclean water and poor sanitation, malaria, and (together with
India) indoor air pollution.
At the same time, the poor of Africa are the people at the greatest risk
worldwide from natural disasters, particularly droughts and floods.3
Between 1965 and 1999, 770 natural disaster events of various scales have
occurred in Africa, with an average frequency of 15 per country per year,
killing more than 1.5 million people and affecting some 330 million oth-
ers. The number of occurrences and their impacts are also increasing: the
frequency has more than doubled in the last 15 years and the numbers of
people killed and affected have doubled and tripled. Environmental
degradation plays a significant role in aggravating the impacts of these
events, particularly on the poor, who are the least able to avoid, escape,
or cope with their effects.
These factors have momentous implications for the livelihoods, wel-
fare, and economic development prospects of the people of the region
today, and even more so for future generations if current trends are not
halted and reversed. Improving the management of the environment is
not just about preserving nature or even about sustainable economic
development: ultimately, it is a matter of survival.
The Strategic and Regional Context
The Africa Region Environment Strategy (ARES) supports the World
Bank's commitment t6help its clients achieve sustainable poverty reduc-
tion through better environmental management. It identifies the most
urgent issues at the interface of environment and poverty and outlines
new approaches and targeted actions for addressing them based on cur-
rent experience. The strategic context in which the ARES has evolved and
will be implemented is defined by the Bank's mission statement and
operational policies; the World Bank Environment Strategy (WBES); and
the objectives, priorities, and strategies of the Bank's Africa Region Vice
Presidential Unit (VPU). It is also defined by the priorities of African gov-
ernments and other stakeholders, as articulated through regional organi-
zations and initiatives (see box 1.1).
On an international level, the Millennium Development Goals (MDG)
serve as a common, overarching target for sustainable development to
which the Bank and many others are committed.4 The Environment Goal
calls for national strategies for sustainable development to be imple-
mented in every country by 2005: "so as to ensure that current trends in
the loss of environmental resources are effectively reversed at both



INTRODUCTION                                                       15
Box 1.1. Environmental Priorities of African Regional
Organizations
Although most subregional and regional organizations in Africa were
established to enhance economic development or political security, many
have come to recognize the importance of environmental and natural
resource management issues and have incorporated these objectives into
their own objectives and programs.
Permanent Interstate Committeefor Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS). The
committee was established in 1973 to support member states' efforts to com-
bat drought and desertification. Initially focused on organizing and coordi-
nating emergency food aid (1973-76), CILSS then shifted to promoting
socioeconomic development, with an emphasis on farming, livestock, village
water supply, and forestry. In 1985, it initiated a regional desertification con-
trol strategy, which led member states to draw up National Desertification
Control Plans. The approach emphasizes integration of desertification con-
trol with land use planning. Subregional-level activities include gathering
and sharing meteorological and hydrological data (Aghrymet Center); con-
ducting research on drought resistance and on the interactions between
resources, population, and environment (at the Sahel Institute); incorporat-
ing the environment into school curricula throughout the Sahel; and reform-
ing natural resource-related policies and legislation in many countries.
Intergovernmental Authority on Drought and Development (IGADD). The
authority was formed in 1986 with a relatively narrow mandate concern-
ing issues of drought and desertification. During the 1990s IGADD
became a vehicle for promoting regional security and political dialogue in
the Horn of Africa. Its three priority areas for subregional cooperation are
Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution and Humanitarian
Affairs; Infrastructure Development (transport and communications); and
Food Security and Environmental Protection. Specific priorities include
management of shared water resources (six transboundary lakes and
rivers as well as contiguous coastal waters), deforestation, and land
degradation and desertification.
Southern Africa Development Community (SADC). This organization was
established in 1980 as the Southern African Development Coordination
Conference and was reformulated as SADC in 1992. Article 5 of the SADC
Treaty calls for sustainable utilization of natural resources and efficient
protection of the environment.
The Environment and Land Management Sector was established in
1985, charged with helping member countries develop sustainable land
management systems. SADC also has sector programs in Inland Fisheries,
(Box continues on thefollowing page.)



16   BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMISNT STRATEGY
Box 1.1. (continued)
Forestry, Wildlife, Marine Fisheries, and Tourism, among others. Water
resource management is one of its major focal areas, including a legally
binding Protocol on Shared Watercourse Systems (signed in 1995), which
has established multinational River Basin Commissions and River
Authorities or Boards as well as a monitoring unit.
African Ministerial Conference on Environment (AMCEN). The conference
was established in 1985 and is the highest-level regional organization dedi-
cated to environmental issues. AMCEN's structure includes four ecosystem-
based committees (Deserts and Arid Lands, Lakes and Lake Basins, Forests
and Woodlands, Seas and Island Ecosystems) and eight networks with
regional coordinating units (Environmental Monitoring, Climatology, Soils
and Fertilizer, Water Resources and Water Research, Energy and Renewable
Energy Research, Environmental Education and Training, Biological Diversity
and Plant Genetic Center, and Science and Technology). AMCEN coordinates
environmental issues within the region at a political/diplomatic level, such as
preparation of an African Common Position on the 2002 Earth Summit.
Among its activities on the ground is a program of pilot projects (currently
covering some 150 villages and 30 pastoral areas) aimed at helping people
achieve self-sufficiency in food and energy through use of traditional skills.
New Partnershipfor African Development (NEPAD). The partnership is an
initiative of African leaders, articulating their common vision and shared
conviction that they have a duty to eradicate poverty, to place their coun-
tries on a path of sustainable growth and development, and to participate
in the world economy and body politic on new terms. Its operational pri-
orities are set out in the form of seven main initiatives, including the
Environment Initiative. The specific environmental areas identified for
focus under NEPAD are the following:
* Combating desertification (rehabilitating degraded land and address-
ing the factors leading to degradation)
* Wetland conservation (emphasizing achievement of social and ecologi-
cal benefits from private sector development)
* Control of invasive alien species (emphasizing labor-intensive initiatives)
* Coastal management (protecting and utilizing coastal resources)
* Global warming (emphasizing monitoring and regulation of impacts of
climate change, again emphasizing labor-intensive actions)
* Cross-border conservation areas (seeking to boost conservation and
tourism and thus create jobs)
* Environmental governance (securing the institutional legal, planning, train-
ing, and capacity-building requirements that underpin all of the above)
* Financing (seeking a "carefully structured and fair system for financing").



INTRODUCTION                                              17
global and national levels by 2015... [and for] the proportion of the pop-
ulation without access to an improved water source to be reduced by at
least one half between 1990 and 2015." The discussion behind the Envi-
ronment Goal recognizes that human development depends on the envi-
ronment's providing a range of goods and services, and the clear if
complex (two-way) linkages between environmental conditions and
poverty It also draws attention to the fact that the poorest people are the
most vulnerable to shocks from environmental change and natural cata-
strophes, as well as to the effects of waterborne diseases and polluted air.
Finally, it notes that the livelihoods of around 1 billion rural people are
at risk because of desertification and land degradation and up to two-
thirds of the world's population are likely to be affected by water
scarcity. These goals and the understanding behind them are strongly
echoed in the ARES.
The Bank's mission statement is "to fight poverty with passion and
professionalism, to help people help themselves and their environment,
with lasting results." The World Bank Environment Strategy looks at
environment through a "poverty lens" and targets three pillars for focus-
ing environmental management on alleviating poverty with lasting
results: improving environmental health, ensuring sustainable liveli-
hoods, and reducing vulnerability to natural disasters. Maintaining
global ecosystems and life support systems (pillar four) is recognized as
fundamental to each of these objectives. Key elements of the strategy
include integrating environment into development and poverty reduc-
tion strategies and programs; putting in place the policy, institutional,
and social conditions to promote environmentally sustainable and equi-
table private sector-led development; and linking local and global envi-
ronmental objectives. Because a healthy environment is essential for
human welfare, and because the constraints and avenues to improved
environmental management mainly arise from human needs and actions,
there is a strong linkage between environmental and social agendas. In
the World Bank, they are brought together in the Africa Region Environ-
ment and Social Development Unit (AFTES).
The Bank's development priorities for Africa echo these core objec-
tives. The Bank recognizes the vital importance of continuing and accel-
erating economic development as the route to alleviating poverty, but
also that this economic development must be more equitable, and give
more attention to environmental and social sustainability, than has often
been the case in the past. In addition to promoting sound private sector
growth, regional priorities include improving governance in the public
sector, promoting decentralization and community empowerment, and
helping African countries to stem and manage the impacts of the crip-
pling HIV/AIDS crisis. Sectoral strategies with which the ARES inter-



18 BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
faces (for example, rural development, energy, agricultural development,
forest management, and private sector development) also focus on these
aims and priorities.
Reflecting these strategic objectives and priorities, the Bank's ARES
aims to assist its clients to do the following:
* Make the transition to sustainable economic development through
improving environmental and natural resource management
* Empower communities and individuals to make a sustainable living
based on the natural resource endowments of the region and to take
responsibility for managing them
* Reduce the burden of diseases and poor health by improving the qual-
ity of the environment in which people live
* Reduce the vulnerability of people and economies of the region to nat-
ural disasters and severe climatic events
* Manage and conserve the unique biological diversity of the region for
themselves, their future generations, and the world
* Establish an enabling environment and build the capacity to achieve
these objectives and maintain them over the long term.
In doing so, the ARES takes into account certain essential realities:
* Africa is too diverse-ecologically, socially, and politically-for any
one strategy or solution to be universally applicable (one size does not
fit all).
. The environmental agenda must compete with many urgent priorities
both within the Bank and among its clients (and is generally at a dis-
advantage because of the relatively long-term nature of its benefits).
* While environmental challenges and solutions are fundamentally
cross-sectoral, both the Bank and its clients are structured and operate
mainly along sectoral lines.
* Sometimes it is necessary to address the proximate causes of urgent
problems while working toward longer-term solutions for underlying
causes.
* Environmental resources, processes, and issues do not respect political
boundaries.
* Development sometimes involves tradeoffs, resulting in relative win-
ners and losers.



2
Urgent Issues and Trends:
Environment through a Poverty
Lens
Africa's Fragile Progress
Africa is sometimes perceived as stagnant or even regressing economi-
cally. In fact, however, after 20 years of decline, Africa's economies are
growing again. Most countries have embarked on reform programs
intended to regain macroeconomic balance, and there are signs that these
programs have started to pay off in some countries, as the reforms have
contributed to the resurgence of growth in the second half of the 1990s.
This is shown in increased investment, rising incomes, and in some cases
decreases in extreme poverty. In the typical African country, output
growth rose to about 4.3 percent in 1994-98. Thirty-one countries saw
growth rates over 3 percent, and 13 countries grew by more than 5 per-
cent in 1998. Agricultural output grew at a rate of 3.7 percent per year in
the median country, well above previous levels, and private investment
has increased by almost 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in
recent years in politically and economnically stable countries of the region.
Contrary to common perception, Africa has many well-managed
economies, particularly in macroeconomic terms. The top third of African
countries rate similarly to their counterparts in other regions in the
annual "Country Policy and Institutional Assessment" ratings. These
include some of the richest African countries, but also many poor ones.
At the same time, the: private sector is growing under the influence of
more favorable policies, new leaders are emerging at all levels of society,
and democratization trends in many countries are changing political
power structures. The private sector, NGOs, community groups,
women's associations, and farmers' organizations are all increasingly
active. The press is also an important and positive force in public debate.
For further information, see World Bank (2000a).
Nonetheless, Africa's progress is fragile and at risk because of four
urgent threats to the region's prospects for growth and development:
rapid population growth, the HIV/AIDS crisis, political conflicts, and
environmental degradation.
19



20  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
Population Growth
While there has been some decline in population growth in recent years,
and further modest declines are projected in some countries, Africa's
average population growth rate of 2.8 percent remains the highest in the
world. In some countries the rate is considerably higher (see table 2.1).
Although fertility rates have begun to decline in a few African countries,
overall Africa is the only region where the 6- to 11-year age group is still
growing. In addition, unlike other regions where the ratio of dependents
to working-age population has fallen to one-half, the age-dependency
ratio in Africa has remained close to 1 (World Bank 2000a). The impact of
these demographic trends on poverty and economic development is well
known: for example, it has been estimated that the continent's GDP must
increase at about 5 percent per year simply to prevent an increase in the
number of absolute poor. Rapid rates of population growth reduce the
relative availability of services such as education and health, undermin-
ing the ability of people to raise themselves out of poverty.
High population densities and growth rates are not necessarily a con-
straint to development, as can be seen from countries such as Singapore
and the Netherlands. But in many African countries, rapid population
growth is increasingly overwhelming their physical, economic, and social
service capacity to provide for the needs of their people. The results are
high unemployment; malnutrition; overcrowded and underserviced
squatter settlements, classrooms, and clinics; and smallholder farms sub-
divided to the point that they are too small to support a household. Fac-
tors such as highly skewed land distribution and land tenure policies, as
well as historically low investment in human resources, aggravate the
problem and limit peoples' opportunities and options.
Population growth is an important crosscutting issue that affects all
aspects of environmental management, from pressure on the natural
resource base to waste management and health. It also increases vulner-
ability to climate variability, as people are increasingly forced to occupy
risky areas such as floodplains and steep slopes. At current rates of pop-
ulation growth and natural resource degradation, it is estimated that the
region will be able to grow only enough food to meet the needs of 40 to
50 percent of its population by 2025.
HIV/AIDS
Nearly 34 million people in the world are currently living with
HIV/AIDS, one-third of whom are young people between the ages of 10
and 24. Nowhere has the impact of HIV/AIDS been more severe than in
Sub-Saharan Africa, which now contains two-thirds of the world's



URGENT ISSUES AND TRENDS: ENVIRONMENT THROUGH A POVERTY LENS        21
Table 2.1. Population Growth Rates of Some African Countries
Total       Total         Average annual
population  population        growth rate
(thousands)  (millions)        (percent)
Country                  1998        2015       1980-98     1998-2015
Fastest growing
Angola                   12.0                     3.0          2.8
Benin                     5.9                     3.0          2.5
Botswana                  1.6                     3.0          0.9
Congo, Dem. Rep. of      48.2                     3.2          2.9
Gabon                     1.2                     3.0          2.2
The Gambia                1.2                     3.6          2.2
Ghana                    18.5                     3.0          2.2
Kenya                    29.3                     3.1          1.7
Malawi                   10.5                     3.0          2.2
Niger                    10.1                     3.3          3.0
Tanzania                 32.1                     3.0          2.0
Togo                      4.5                     3.0          2.0
Slowest growing
Burundi                   6.5                     2.6          2.0
Guinea                    7.1                     2.6          2.0
Guinea-Bissau             1.2                     2.1          1.8
Lesotho                   2.1                     2.4          1.6
Mauritius                 1.2                     1.0          0.9
Mozambique               16.9                     1.9          2.0
Rwanda                    8.1                     2.5          2.2
Sierra Leone              4.9                     2.3          1.9
South Africa             41.4                     2.3          1.0
Sudan                    28.3                     2.3          2.1
Sub-Saharan Africa      627.1                     2.8          2.2
Source: World Bank (2000g).
HIV/AIDS-affected population. More than 11 million Africans have
already died, and another 22 million are living with HIV/AIDS. At the
national level, the 21 countries with the highest prevalence of AIDS are in
Africa. In Botswana and Zimbabwe, one in four adults is infected. At the
individual level, the risk is almost incomprehensible. A child born in
Zambia or Zimbabwe is more likely than not to die of AIDS. In many
other African countries, the lifetime risk of dying of AIDS is greater than
one in three. Given the scale of the epidemic in Africa, it is no longer just
a public health problem, it is a development crisis.



22  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
Because it kills people in the prime of their lives, AIDS has had a dev-
astating impact on development: it decimates the work force, destroys
and impoverishes families, makes orphans of millions of children, and
tears apart communities. The World Bank report Intensifying Action
Against HIV/AIDS in Africa (World Bank 2000e) points out that the costs
AIDS imposes force countries to make heartbreaking choices between
today's and future lives, and between health and dozens of other vital
investments for development, including the environment.
Political Conflicts
The high number of political conflicts in Africa is seriously compromis-
ing development progress, perpetuating poverty, and increasing suffer-
ing. Of the 27 major armed conflicts in the world in the last year, 11 were
fought in Africa, and currently about 20 percent of Africans live in coun-
tries formally at war or severely disrupted by conflict. There are about 4
million transborder refugees and 16 million internally displaced persons.
Large concentrations of these refugees are often forced to eke out a living
for months or years in forest areas and marginal rangelands where the
resource base is the poorest and most fragile. Even when they are able to
cultivate food or it is provided by relief organizations, the need for wood-
fuel and other products and income drives people to decimate the only
resources available to them.
Political conflicts have obvious environmental impacts, such as large-
scale deforestation and erosion. They can also have more subtle impacts,
as in recent years when the presence of large numbers of refugees in the
mid-altitude forests in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC) drove the endangered endemic mountain gorillas to unaccus-
tomed higher elevations, where they suffered from respiratory diseases.
Armed forces on all sides of the conflicts also deplete the areas' natural
resources for sustenance or money to buy weapons and supplies. At the
same time, resource scarcity and environmental stress are increasingly
implicated in triggering or prolonging conflicts. In addition to identifying
and alleviating potential environmental flash points through conflict
management, postconflict environmental rehabilitation is essential for
restoring livelihoods and can also help reduce the likelihood of a recur-
rence of hostilities. The Bank and other donors need to develop strategies
to assist countries in both aspects.
Environmental Degradation
Environmental degradation is the fourth grave threat to Africa's
prospects for economic growth and development. It undermines the fab-



URGENT ISSUES AND TRENDS: ENVIRONMENT THROUGH A POVERTY LENS  23
ric of national economies and individual livelihoods, from the loss of
electrical generating power caused by siltation of dams, to desertification
of formerly productive agricultural lands, to the displacement of tens of
thousands of farmers and pastoralists when rivers dry up because of the
destruction of their watersheds, to the collapse of vital fisheries. At a
more subtle level, it reduces peoples' productivity both through illness
and through loss of time spent gathering water and fuel.
The ARES aims to help countries and people in Africa reduce and
reverse environmental degradation in order to sustain economic growth
and development. It does not offer strategies for addressing the other
three urgent threats to Africa's growth prospects, as they are the subject
of other regional strategies, but we recognize that its objectives cannot be
achieved unless these other factors are also addressed. Therefore, it is in
the context of the added pressures caused by explosive population
growth, the devastating AIDS epidemic, and the political conflict
throughout the African continent that we must view and understand the
environmental issues that confront Africa today.
Urgent Issues at the Poverty-Environment Interface
Within the framework of the four "pillars" of the poverty-environment
interface, a number of aspects of environmental degradation stand out as
urgent issues by virtue of their prevalence, magnitude, and impacts on
the poor. The emerging issue of climate change is also expected to aggra-
vate, amplify, and intensify the impacts of all these issues over the next
several decades.
Threats to Sustainable Livelihoods
Given the predominance of the rural poor and the increasingly precarious
nature of rural livelihoods in much, of the region, degradation of the
underlying natural resource base-land, water, and biological resources-
is widely recognized as the highest-priority aspect of environmental
degradation in Africa. Less recognized but equally significant is the loss
of productive natural ecosystems, whose intact value is often far greater
than the sum of their component natural resource parts.
LAND DEGRADATION AND DESERTIFICATION. Africa is a large continent, but
only about 20 percent of its total land area is arable. Most of the remain-
der is either too steep for cultivation or too dry for rainfed agriculture
and too far from water sources for economically viable irrigation (or it is
already damaged through salinization from past irrigation). The average
amount of land per capita is among the lowest in the world, ranging from



24  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
about 0.1 to 0.6 hectare per capita. With more than 70 percent of the pop-
ulation made up of (mostly small-scale) agriculturalists, arable land is the
single most vital natural resource of the region. Although there are some
very fertile areas, much of Africa's soil is of relatively poor quality
because of the continent's geological history and climate. Some soils are
deficient in key nutrients (for example, phosphorus), have poor water
retention, and are easily eroded and degraded. A global assessment of
soil degradation (Oldeman 1990) as well as a World Bank strategy for
development (World Bank 1996) indicated that across Africa, 65 percent
of arable cropland and more than 30 percent of all permanent pasture are
significantly degraded. Much of the erosion is due to cultivation on steep
slopes and in marginally arable lands, using inappropriate farming prac-
tices. Traditional methods for restoring fertility are undermined by the
growing land scarcity. In the Sudano-Sahelian Belt, rotation cycles of at
least 5 to 6 years are needed to restore soil fertility through natural
processes, but in practice about half of the arable land is under cultiva-
tion each year. High-yielding crop varieties, which have boosted produc-
tion in other regions, are poorly suited for the low-input, rainfed
agriculture that characterizes most of African food production that pro-
vides the livelihoods of the majority of the region's poor.
ScARcITY AND DETERIORATION OF SURFACE WATER AND GROUNDWATER. Fresh
water, which is essential to life and livelihoods, is one of Africa's scarcest
commodities. Much of Africa is regarded as "drought prone" because of
the regular occurrence of successive dry years, leading to crop failures
and famine. Protecting surface water and groundwater resources should
be among the highest priorities of governments and individuals, but in
most of the region water policies and use practices fail to reflect this.5
Freshwater supplies are being rapidly depleted through inefficient use
and polluted by industrial and domestic effluents. While domestic,
industrial, energy generation, agricultural, and ecological uses of fresh
water are all important, in many cases tradeoffs and choices have to be
made among them. At present, water use decisions are often made with-
out adequate information or process, with an influential minority often
receiving a disproportionate share of the benefits.
Loss OF PRODUCTIVE NATURAL ECOSYSTEMS. While most governments and
people are familiar with the issues of land and water degradation, far
fewer appreciate the significance of the loss of productive natural
ecosystems. Forests, wetlands, and rangelands are all being lost or
degraded at a rapid rate across much of Africa, with major conse-
quences for the poor. The highest rates of forest loss are in areas with
dense or rapidly growing populations, such as the East African High-



URGENT ISSUES AND TRENDS: ENVIRONMENT THROUGH A POVERTY LENS     25
lands and the Sahel. The primary cause of forest loss continent-wide is
conversion of the land for agriculture, with exploitation for fuel wood
and timber also a major factor in some areas. Woodfuels account for 70
percent of total energy use and 90 percent of household energy use in
Africa, since they are the predominant fuel in urban as well as rural set-
tings. One negative economic and livelihood impact of loss of forest
ecosystems is deterioration of watersheds, resulting in droughts and
flooding: of the region's 11 major multinational watersheds, 7 have lost
more than 90 percent of their original forest cover and 4 have lost more
than 99 percent (see table 2.2). Another serious impact is the deepening
fuel wood shortage. If current trends continue, all countries in the
Sudano-Sahelian Belt are expected to experience a severe woodfuel cri-
sis by 2025.
Wetlands are the ecosystem type most rapidly being lost and degraded
worldwide. Causes include excessive abstraction of water upstream,
deliberate draining of swamps and marshes for cultivation, disruption of
natural flooding cycles through damming and flood control works, and
pollution from agricultural runoff and industrial and domestic effluents.
Coastal wetlands, which are essential for sustaining stocks of fish and
shellfish, are particularly threatened by pollution because of the rapid,
unplanned, and inadequately serviced growth of coastal cities and large-
scale tourism development. The negative impacts include loss of income
and poor nutrition for the large numbers of fishing communities across
Table 2.2. Major African Watersheds
Original
Estimated     Countries     Population         forest
area         involved      density           lost
Watershed     (km2)        (number)      (per km2)        (percent)
Chari           549            5           11.0             99.9
Congo          3,807          9            14.5             45.9
Juba-Shibeli    834            3           18.7             76.5
Limpopo         421           4            35.1             99.0
Niger          2,262          10           31.2             95.9
Nile           3,255         11            42.7             92.1
Okavango        721           4             2.6             0.2
Orange          941           4            12.3             99.9
Senegal         420           4            11.8             99.9
Volta           407           6            42.2             96.6
Zambezi        1,332          8            17.7             43.1
Source: World Resources Institute (1999).



26  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
the region, an increase in waterbome diseases, the loss of large areas of
critical dry season grazing land for livestock and wildlife, and a decline
in many resident and migratory bird species.
Rangelands across Africa are also declining because of overgrazing
and agricultural expansion. The traditional pastoralist strategy for using
fragile, semi-arid rangelands is to move herds regularly to allow grazed
areas to recover. Certain areas are traditionally set aside as drought
reserves. But agricultural expansion and other factors are interrupting
these movements and undermining this strategy because pastoralists
typically lack formal ownership or exclusionary rights over the land they
use. This trend continues despite the fact that the agriculture that dis-
places rangelands is often inefficient or unsustainable, requiring high lev-
els of public or private subsidy to survive. Government policies and
economic trends generally promote settlement over nomadic or transhu-
mant lifestyles, whereas climatic and political events often block tradi-
tional trek routes or cause people to concentrate around aid stations.
Expansion of agriculture and the "squeezing" of pastoralists also
heighten human/wildlife conflict, as people continue to move into the
remaining wildlife areas, with the resultant competition for grazing land
and water, crop and livestock raiding, and sometimes injury and loss of
human life. In some cases, particularly in the eastern and southern
African rangelands, agricultural expansion and other activities threaten a
lucrative wildlife-based tourism industry.
It is conventional to speak of tradeoffs between conservation and
economic development and poverty alleviation. In many cases, how-
ever, the actual tradeoff may be between large-scale economic develop-
ment and local impoverishment because of a failure to conserve natural
ecosystems. The rural poor are the most adversely affected by the loss
of these natural ecosystems because they are the most directly depen-
dent on them for both day-to-day livelihood and income. Perhaps the
best-known example is the disastrous impact on local fishing commu-
nities of the establishment of a lucrative commercial exotic fishery in
Lake Victoria (see box 2.1). There are also numerous examples of con-
versions of large areas of natural forest to commercial crops (for exam-
ple, for cocoa production in Ghana and C6te d'Ivoire), displacing and
impoverishing rural communities while increasing GNP at the national
level.
The loss of biodiversity resources that usually accompanies the
decline of natural ecosystems robs rural communities of many impor-
tant assets, including medicinal plants, wild foods (including famine
reserves), building and craft materials, and the like. For example, recent
surveys conducted in a typical rural county in Zimbabwe found that on
average each family derived more than 35 percent of its income from



URGENT ISSUES AND TRENDS: ENVIRONMENT THROUGH A POVERTY LENS     27
Box 2.1. Lake Victoria Fisheries: A Cautionary Tale
Africa's Lake Victoria provides an example of how profound and unpre-
dictable tradeoffs can be when management decisions are made without
regard to how the ecosystem will react. Lake Victoria, bounded by
Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya, is the world's largest tropical lake. Its fish
are an important source of food and employment for the subregion's
30 million people. Before 1970, Lake Victoria was home to more than 350
species of fish from the cichlid family, 90 percent of which were endenmuc.
Today, more than half of those species are either extinct or found only in
very small populations.
What caused such a profound collapse? In the 1950s overfishing had
depleted the native species, and land use changes in the watershed
dumped pollution and silt into the lake, increasing the nutrient load and
causing lethal algal blooms. At that time two exotic fish species, the Nile
perch and Nile tilapia, were introduced to the lake. The result was dra-
matic: by 1983, Nile perch made up almost 70 percent of the catch, with
Nile tilapia and a native sardine making up most of the balance. While the
introduced fish devastated the lake's biodiversity, they were a boon for
the commercial fishery: today the Nile perch produces some 300,000 met-
ric tons of fish, earning $280 million to $400 million in the export market.
(All dollar amounts are U.S. dollars.) Ironically, the fishery does not bene-
fit the local communities because they cannot afford the expensive equip-
ment, such as heavy-duty nets and processing facilities, needed for the
fishery. Even as Lake Victoria perch and tilapia grace the plates of diners
as far away as Israel and Europe, the availability of fish has declined
locally and protein malnutrition is now evident among the people of the
lake basin. Even the long-term sustainability of the profitable Nile fish
fishery is in doubt. Whereas the original lake species, the cichlids, could
be air dried, the Nile species need firewood, putting additional pressure
on the area's limited forests.
What in the 1950s appeared to be a logical approach to increasing the
commercial potential of the ecosystem has in the 1990s turned into an
environmental nightmare-long-term environmental sustainability was
traded for a short-term profit. In the process, both the people of the lake
and the rich ecosystem of Lake Victoria lost out.
forest products. Wild foods and other resources also serve as a safety
net, permitting people to survive when crops fail or livestock perish.
There may also be a significant opportunity cost, as some of the biodi-
versity that is lost could have great economic potential, either as
tourism attractions or as medicinal or other products (see box 2.2 on
Prunus africanus).



28   BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
Box 2.2. Harvesting of Prunus africanus
The bark of an endemic African tree, Prunus africanus, is the source of
pygeum, a widely used treatment for prostate disorders. The current
annual international market for pygeum products is about US$220 mil-
lion. One large tree can yield up to a metric ton of bark, worth about
US$200. Most of the current supply comes from Cameroon (2,000 tons per
year) and Madagascar (600 tons per year), although the species is found
and exploited in a number of other countries as well.
P. africanus grows in Afro-montane habitats between 900 and 3,400
meters, takes 15 to 20 years to produce seeds, and requires 12 to 15 years
to produce bark, which contains the prostate remedy's active ingredient.
The species is listed under Appendix II of the Convention on the
International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), where international
trade is allowed with a CITES permit.
Sustainable harvesting of the bark is possible by removing only strips
from opposite sides of the trunk and allowing eight for regeneration
before harvesting the adjacent panels. But much of the current harvest is
destructive because it involves either stripping the entire tree or cutting it
down. The species is also threatened by habitat destruction. A number of
research institutes (for example, International Centre for Research in
Agroforestry, the Kenya Forest Research Institute and the Cameroon
Institut de Recherche Agronomique et Developpement) are collecting
seeds from the remaining stands of wild trees and developing methods
for artificial cultivation.
Source: Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (2000).
Threats to Health
Health impacts are generally the highest priority environmental concern
among African stakeholders. Poor health both reduces peoples' survival
rates and quality of life and affects their capacity to carry out economi-
cally and socially productive activity. Africans suffer a higher total bur-
den of disease than their counterparts in other regions. For example,
illness is estimated to cause a loss of 6.5 percent of earnings per working
adult in some African countries. Environment, health, and poverty over-
lap extensively in Africa because many of the most widespread and debil-
itating diseases, particularly those that affect the poor disproportionately,
stem from environmental conditions. Therefore, they may also be miti-
gated through improved environmental management.
The issue of environmental health has several dimensions. These
range from environmentally related deseases to pollution and hazardous
waste to the loss of traditional medicine.



URGENT ISSUES AND TRENDS: ENVIRONMENT THROUGH A POVERTY LENS        29
ENVIRONMENTALLY RELATED DISEASE. As shown in table 2.3, three of the top
five sources of morbidity and mortality in Africa (malaria, respiratory
infections, and diarrheal diseases) are conditions that can be substantially
ameliorated through environmental interventions such as the protection
and purification of water supplies, sanitation and waste collection, and
better indoor ventilation. For example, indoor air pollution from wood
fires is the greatest cause of respiratory disease in Africa.
The 1993 World Development Report: Investing in Health (World Bank
1993) estimated that worldwide the public health care system could
relieve about 33 percent of the burden of disease. By comparison, it has
been estimated that in Sub-Saharan Africa, investment in health-related
infrastructure could target up to 44 percent of the disease burden. Ongo-
ing research indicates that measures inside and outside the health care
system (for example, clinical interventions vs. sanitation infrastructure,
cleaner cooking fuels, and the like) can each achieve about a 25 percent
reduction in the overall disease burden. With public health services in
Sub-Saharan Africa increasingly consumed by the growing HIV/AIDS
crisis, alternative (cross-sectoral) measures for reducing other conditions
are particularly important. Environmentally related interventions are
also often more cost-effective than clinical approaches, because the same
action, such as improving sanitation infrastructure or drainage in urban
areas, can alleviate a number of health problems. They can also have
other benefits, such as enhancing tourism revenues by reducing ambient
health risks that may dissuade tourists from visiting.
Table 2.3. Rank and Share of the Burden of Disease in
Sub-Saharan Africa, 1990 and 1.998
1990               1998
Disease                             (percent)           (percent)
HIV/AIDS and other
sexually transmitted diseases         2.8               16.6
Malaria                                9.2               10.6
Diarrheal diseases                    10.9                7.5
Acute lower
respiratory infections               10.2                7.0
Perinatal conditionsa                  6.5                6.2
Top five subtotal                     39.6               47.9
a. "Childhood cluster" consisting of whooping cough, poliomyelitis, diphtheria, measles,
and tetanus.
Sources: For 1990 figures, see Murray and Lopez (1996); for 1998 figures, see World Health
Organization (1999).



30  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
POLLUTION. Pollution is not generally recognized as an important issue in
Africa because a large proportion of the population is rural and there is a
relatively low level of industrialization. Nevertheless, it is a problem that
affects hundreds of millions of people, particularly those living along
marine and freshwater coastlines and in mining areas. Many of Africa's
coastal waters are heavily polluted by domestic and industrial wastes
(particularly agroindustrial, fish processing, leather tanning, fabric
dying, and the like), by the runoff of agrochemicals used for intensive
commercial crops and livestock dipping, and by oil spills and chronic oil
leakage. Although African industrial establishments tend to be smaller
than in other parts of the world, they are often poorly regulated and can
have significant additive and cumulative impacts. In addition to direct
health impacts and destruction of fish and shellfish, coastal pollution can
threaten tourism, which is often a major source of income and employ-
ment in the area. Serious air pollution is still limited to a few major cities
(such as Lagos and Johannesburg), but it is increasing as the cities-and
the number of motor vehicles in them-steadily grow.
HAZARDOUS WASTE. As with pollution in general, hazardous waste is a
localized problem in Africa and is aggravated by a lack of capacity to
handle and regulate it. There are infamous examples of companies from
industrial nations "dumping" toxic wastes in Africa (either secretly or in
collusion with mendacious leaders). One growing problem is biomedical
waste because most hospitals and clinics lack suitable incineration facili-
ties. Ironically, efforts to stem the HIV/AIDS crisis are contributing sig-
nificantly to the problem, as the health infrastructure is not prepared to
deal with the substantial increase in contaminated disposable syringes,
needles, and condoms.
Loss OF TRADITIONAL MEDICINES. Traditional healing is a major element in
the health care of the majority of rural Africans, either because of cul-
tural preference or because of their limited access to modern treatment
facilities or drugs. In many countries it is estimated that up to 90 percent
of the population uses traditional medicines. A wide variety of indige-
nous plant (and other) species are used in traditional medicine, many
clearly demonstrated to contain effective active ingredients. Some, such
as the Rosy Periwinkle of Madagascar, have been extracted and devel-
oped as important modem medicines. While the medicinal use of
indigenous species is important in conferring value on biodiversity and
natural ecosystems, there is a risk of overexploitation for local use or
commercial trade (see box 2.2). Although this represents an important
threat to some species, overall the greater threat is rapid rates of defor-
estation across the region.



URGENT ISSUES AND TRENDS: ENVIRONMENT THROUGH A POVERTY LENS  31
Threats to Security: Vulnerability to Natural Events
and Disasters
CLIMATE VARIABILI. Africa experiences a high degree of climate variabil-
ity, which has severe and chronic impacts on livelihoods and economic
development. Long (multiyear) dry periods and heavy rains that cause
rivers to overflow their banks are frequently occurring phenomena in
Africa. They are a reflection of the extreme natural variability of rainfall
in the region's extensive arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL), and the result
of the complexities of its river basin system (see figure 2.1, which shows
the variation in annual rainfall in Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1993). As such,
they are a reality that must be systematically factored into development
planning and assistance at all levels, with an emphasis on ecological and
risk management rather than relief and reconstruction. Most important,
we must recognize that although the reality of climate variability cannot
be changed, its impact on the poor can be mitigated through environ-
mental risk management. In many cases the traditional methods of envi-
ronmental management, such as pastoralists' moving herds over large
distances in search of grass and water, are no longer viable because of
such factors as population growth and the spread of agriculture and set-
tlements. We must help them to find and implement new methods that
function in the context of current realities.
NATURAL DISASTERS AND EXTREME ENVIRONMENTAL EVENTS. Africa experi-
ences a number of natural disasters and extreme environmental events,
which are defined as droughts, floods, insect infestations, earthquakes,
wildfires, wind-related phenomena, landslides, and erupting volcanoes.
Some natural disasters, such as droughts and floods, represent the
extremes of climate variability. Others, such as landslides and wildfires,
can be triggered or aggravated by environmental degradation. In either
case, their toll on the livelihoods and security of the poor is immense.
According to the World Disasters Report (International Federation of Red
Cross and Red Crescent Societies 1993), the citizens of low-income coun-
tries are on average at[ three to four times greater risk of dying in a dis-
aster than those in high-income countries. Poor people typically reside
on marginal lands susceptible to floods, droughts, and the like; live in
substandard housing; have less access to early warning systems and
shelters; are more dependent on annual production of rainfed agricul-
ture; and have limited economic resources to cope with catastrophic
events.
The poor of Sub-Saharan Africa are particularly vulnerable to
droughts and floods. There were an estimated 330 droughts in the region
between 1965 and 1999 (a rate of 17 per year), with the largest number



32   BUILDING A SUSrAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
Figure 2.1. Annual Mean Rainfall in Zimbabwe, 1980-1995
Millimeters
900
Century mean
800-
700 -
600
500
300- 
1980-81 1982-83 1984-85 1986-87 1988-89 1990-91 1992-93
Source: Data are from the Climate Prediction Center of the U.S. National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Agency and were obtained from the International Research Institute for
Climate Prediction (Palisades, N.Y.). See also Janowiak and Xie (1999).
(11) in Sudan. The peak drought years were 1982, 1983, 1984, and 1992.
The number of deaths attributed to drought during that period, 880,787,
is 84 times higher than those related to floods, which represent the sec-
ond-most-deadly natural disaster. During the peak flood years of 1989,
1990, 1998, 1999, and 2000, major floods occurred in Burkina Faso, Chad,
Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. Nat-
ural disasters represent extremes of climate variation (droughts, floods),
often with scale and impacts aggravated by environmental degradation.
For example, typically long dry spells become much more dangerous if
natural vegetation has been lost, leaving nothing to protect the topsoil
from wind erosion.
Ethiopia is by far the Sub-Saharan African country most vulnerable to
natural disasters, particularly droughts and insect infestations, both of
which have a strong impact on famine and therefore on the poor. Other
countries experiencing high occurrences and impacts of natural disasters
are Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa, Sudan, and Tanzania, fol-
lowed by Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania,
Niger, Senegal, and Uganda (World Bank 20000.



URGENT ISSUES AND TRENDS: ENVIRONMENT THROUGH A POVERTY LENS  33
Threats to the Global Environment
Africa is very significant from a global environmental perspective. In
addition to being an essential resource for African peoples and
economies, the region's vast and unique biodiversity endowment is an
invaluable world heritage. This includes not only the biodiversity in its
remaining natural habitats (including the Congo Basin forest, the second
largest continuous tropical rainforest area in the world), but also wild rel-
atives and "landraces" of important food and commercial crops and live-
stock. These species and varieties, which often have valuable traits such
as disease resistance or adaptation to extreme climates, represent an irre-
placeable source of genetic material for breeding programs worldwide.
Africa's forests and rangelands also represent an enormous reservoir of
carbon in their biomass and soil that, if released through burning or other
destructive practices, can contribute substantially to the concentration of
atmospheric carbon (greenhouse gases). An estimated 20 percent of
worldwide annual anthropogenic carbon emissions arise from tropical
deforestation. The international community provides considerable sup-
port to address these global concerns. The challenge, however, is to assist
African countries to capture a greater share of these resources and to use
in capturing them in ways that provide both local and global benefits.
BIODIVERSrIY Loss. The single greatest source of biodiversity loss in Africa
and worldwide is conversion of natural habitats to agriculture and other
uses. Enormous expanses of forest arid savanna lands have been cleared
for commercial cultivation, much of' it low yielding and unsustainable
and sometimes abandoned after only a few years. In arid and semi-arid
areas, great expanses of rangeland can become unusable for wildlife (and
for pastoralists) when the scarce surface water sources are appropriated
for irrigation. Commercial logging is a serious threat not only because
forest habitats are directly destroyed but also because logging roads pro-
vide access to agriculturalists. In some areas, such as the lowland forests
of West Africa and the Congo Basin, hunting is a major threat because of
the enormous and virtually insatiable market for "bushmeat" in both
rural and urban areas and the lax enforcement of wildlife protection laws.
These are the proximate causes of biodiversity loss. It is conventional to
say that the ultimate cause is poverty (sometimes coupled with human
population growth). However, the same factors are not driving domestic
species of animals and plants into extinction. The important difference
lies in the fact that domestic crops and livestock generally belong to indi-
viduals, whereas most wild biodiversity is usually regarded and treated
as a common property (effectively an open access) resource. The benefits
that local communities and individuals derive from indigenous biologi-



34  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUrURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
cal resources (while often considerable) are less than those they derive
from land uses that displace and destroy biodiversity. Therefore, individ-
uals, corporations, and governments all generally have greater incentives
to exploit biological resources for short-term gain than to preserve them
for the long term. Stemming and reversing the trends of biodiversity loss
require addressing these ultimate causes, rather than only trying to
change the proximate behavior.
CLIMATE CHANGE. With many urgent, immediate environmental issues
vying with economic and social issues for attention and resources, long-
term threats such as climate change tend to be overlooked or deferred.
But that would be a serious mistake for Africa. The region, which already
labors under a heavy burden of natural disasters because of climate vari-
ability, will be particularly vulnerable to the impacts predicted by some
models of climate change. Its effect will be to aggravate and increase all
the environmental issues discussed above.
For example, certain parts of Africa are predicted to be among the most
severely affected areas of the world in terms of physical effects, such as
increased variability of rainfall and the incidence and severity of climatic
events such as cyclones, droughts, and floods. Overall, the Horn of Africa
region is expected to be affected the most by reduced precipitation, but
drier conditions are also expected in parts of the Sahel and southern
Africa. Average precipitation is expected to increase only in the already
moist areas of western Africa.
Aside from the obvious agricultural and health impacts, reduced and
unpredictable rainfall has a major economic impact through power short-
ages in the many African countries that rely heavily on hydropower for
industrial and domestic energy. Power rationing and load shedding
resulting from depleted reservoirs have already adversely affected the
economies of a number of African countries in recent years. Climate
change is also expected to lead to sea level rise, which would affect the
large populations living in coastal and low-lying delta areas, along with
substantial infrastructure investments. North Africa and the Sahel are
expected to experience the greatest increases in average temperature,
which will shift and in some cases reduce growing seasons and arable
regions. Higher temperatures will also lead to increased evaporation
(estimates up to 10 percent in northern Africa) and therefore reduced
availability of surface water. There is also evidence that increased tem-
peratures are associated with the spread of some vector-borne diseases,
such as malaria, which is already being reported at elevations where it
was previously unknown.
African countries and the rural poor are especially vulnerable to such
changes both because they depend on agriculture and because they gen-



URGENT ISSUES AND TRENDS: ENVIRONMENT THROUGH A POVERTY LENS  35
erally lack the financial, technical, and institutional resources to adapt to
and cope with the impacts. The widespread reliance on rainfed agricul-
ture, together with the growing scarcity of arable land and the trend
toward cultivation in increasingly marginal areas, means that even rela-
tively small changes in average temperature, precipitation, and water
balance are likely to have very serious implications. These impacts will
disproportionately affect the poor, who generally occupy the most mar-
ginal agricultural lands and lack the resources to invest in ameliorative
measures such as irrigating the land, digging deeper wells, and shifting
to alternative varieties or crops. At the national level, the greatest impact
on GDP may be expected in western Africa because of the economic
importance of export-oriented commercial agriculture.
In addition to the direct impacts on livelihoods and health, increased
environmental stress resulting from climate change may be expected to
increase the already substantial problem of "environmental refugees,"
aggravating political conflicts and further straining weak government
budgets.
On the other side of the equation, many African countries and land-
holders would do well to position themselves to participate in the emerg-
ing international market in "carbon offset credits," which is already a
reality in the private sector and recently received a substantial boost
under the Kyoto Protocol of the Climate Change Convention. Through
the "Clean Development Mechanism" under the Convention, industrial
nations can meet some of their obligation to reduce greenhouse gas emis-
sions by "buying" the rights to tons of carbon that are either removed
from the atmosphere or actively prevented from entering the atmosphere
through actions taken in developing countries. The most common appli-
cation of this concept has been investments to reduce carbon emissions
from industrial processes and energy generation. With the exception of
Nigeria and South Africa, African countries have little comparative
advantage in this respect. However, the "Bonn Agreement," which
emerged from the most recent round of negotiations of the Kyoto Proto-
col, now permits industrial nations to gain a limited number of carbon
offsets by sponsoring reforestation and afforestation projects in develop-
ing countries. A recent study estimated that theoretically feasible refor-
estation of about 682,000 hectares per year in Africa could absorb about
41.7 metric tons of carbon over the next 10 years (representing 13 percent
of the worldwide potential). At a realistic estimate of $10 per metric ton
of carbon, this could generate $288.3 million over that period. The Kyoto
Protocol does not yet allow offsets based on preventing deforestation of
existing forests, or through changing agricultural practices to sequester
more carbon in the soil, but this may become a reality in the future. If so,
the same study estimates that halting ongoing deforestation of about



36  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
312,000 hectares per year in Africa could result in preventing the release
of about 167.8 metric tons of carbon between 2003 and 2012 (representing
about 11 percent of the total potential for Asia, Africa, and Latin America)
and generate $1.28 billion, while improving agricultural practices in
about 16 million hectares per year in Africa could sequester an additional
69.7 million metric tons of carbon (18 percent of the total potential) and
generate $482 million (Niles forthcoming).
Development Trends and Challenges
Sub-Saharan Africa is a region of diversity and contrasts. Although 65
percent of the continent is arid or semi-arid, it also contains the world's
second largest continuous rain forest. Some countries have long stretches
of coast, whereas others are land-locked. There are areas of high agricul-
tural potential, such as the eastern African highlands; areas of great min-
eral wealth, such as the Zambian copper belt and the "diamond coast" of
southern Africa; rich marine and freshwater fisheries; and the greatest
wildlife tourism attractions in the world. Across the region the popula-
tion is 70 percent rural, yet the urbanization rate is the highest in the
world. This physical, ecological, and social heterogeneity presents chal-
lenges and opportunities for achieving sustainable economic develop-
ment through improved environmental and natural resource
management. At the same time, Africa is a region in transition. There are
important trends toward decentralization and democratization, as well as
a growing demand for transparency and accountability in the manage-
ment of public assets. The roles of the public sector, the private sector, and
civil society at all levels are being redefined; an emphasis on increasing
private sector investment and a trend toward subregional integration
have the potential for positive impacts on both the people and their envi-
ronment.
Despite the diversity, a number of common key development trends
present challenges and opportunities for environmental management
across the region. Depending on how they are managed, these develop-
ment trends could prove good or bad for Africa's future.
Rapid and Unplanned Urbanization
Urbanization has dramatically transformed Sub-Saharan Africa in recent
decades. This demographic shift is already having a major impact on the
nature of environmental management challenges in the region, and this
impact will grow over the next few decades. While the region's total pop-
ulation has multiplied by 2.5 over the past 30 years, the urban population
has increased by a factor of five. Since 1980, it has nearly doubled, from



URGENT ISSUES AND TRENDS: ENVIRONMENT THROUGH A POVERTY LENS  37
90 million to 150 million people, with the largest concentrations in South
Africa, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In West Africa,
more than 40 percent of the population is now urban. In 1970 only one
African city had a population over 1 million; by 1990 there were 18. The
majority of the urban population lives in certain coastal areas, which are
already densely populated and are continuing to grow rapidly (World
Bank 2000b, p. 1). Examples in Africa include the "megalopolis" of more
than 50 million people living along 500 kilometers of coastline from Accra
to the Niger Delta, sites in South Africa and Mozambique, and port cities
of the Horn of Africa. The strain that these megacities will place on exist-
ing infrastructure and coastal and marine ecosystems could have serious
impacts on local and national economies in terms of lost opportunities,
the poor health and productivity of urban populations, and increased
vulnerability to natural disasters.
Rapid, uncontrolled urbanization in coastal areas also threatens the
tourism industry in many countries, as much of the present and prospec-
tive tourism development is in coastal areas. In some areas such as Mom-
basa, tourism development itself is causing environmental degradation
because of inadequate planning and regulation of aspects such as waste
disposal and water consumption.
Urbanization can be a positive force for the environment when it
reduces pressure on overcrowded or ecologically fragile rural areas or
frees up arable land by concentrating dwellings in smaller areas. In many
parts of Africa, individual land holdings are already too small to be sub-
divided further for inheritance, leaving a growing problem of rural land-
less poor. Urbanization can also reduce demands on local natural
resources if the urban settlements import products from a wide area or
adopt less resource-demanding technologies, such as cooking with
hydropower-generated electricity instead of woodfuels.
However, this does not apply to many African towns and cities, which
have been likened to "'overgrown vilages." A large proportion of urban
residents in the most! crowded African cities lack the services usually
associated with urban centers, such as piped water supply, sanitation,
and electricity (see table 2.4). These urban dwellers also remain directly
and heavily dependent upon the natural resources of surrounding rural
areas, including coastal and near-shore fisheries, forests for woodfuel and
building materials, river beds (for building sand), domestic livestock and
bushmeat, and so forth. These dense concentrations of consumers can
place an enormous strain on the resources of these nearby rural areas,
many of which are increasingly unable to support sustainable livelihoods
of even the local rural populations.
The "sink" capacity of the environment for wastes is also usually over-
whelmed, with few cities having effective sanitation systems. Untreated



Table 2.4. Urban Environrment and Services in Selected Cities
Average    Urban               Urban
annual   residential         households  Per    Households  House- Households
Urban            growth    density           connected   capita  connected holds con-  with
population          rate,   (persons!   Poor       to      water      to      nected to  garbage
(millions)         1990     hectare), households  water  use (liters  sewerage  electricity collection
City                  1995        2015      -95       1993     (percent) (percent)  /day)   (percent)  (percent) (percent)
Ouagadougou            824        2,546      6.5        71        11        32        26         0       35       40
Abidjan               2,793       5,259      4.9       424        37        62       111        45       64       70
Accra                 1,673       3,469      3.5        65        25        46         4        23       17       60
Nairobi               1,810       4,228      5.1        93        27        78       116        35       40       47
Antananarivo           876        2,218      4.9        -         32        31        40        17       60       -
Lagos                10,287      24,640      5.7       194        66        65        70         2      100        8
w      Dakar                1,708        3,489      4.0        -         13       41        69        25        64       75
Addis                 2,431       6,578      4.8       314        -         58        27         0       96        2
Kampala                954        2,548      4.7        -         77        30        25         9       42       20
Maputo                2,212       5,306       7.6      191        -         28       80         23       46       37
- Not available.
Note: Cities were selected on the basis of most rapid urbanization rates; data exclude the Republic of South Africa.
Source: World Resources Institute (1998-99).



URGENT ISSUES AND TRENDS: ENVIRONMENT THROUGH A POVERTY LENS  39
sewage is returned to water bodies that serve as a source of drinking
water and as habitat for vital fish resources. Solid waste accumulates
around dwellings, leading to disease and high vermin populations.
Drainage systems are also often inadequate or poorly maintained, creat-
ing ideal conditions for water-related diseases such as malaria and
cholera. Inadequate sanitation is a major cause of the degradation of the
quality of the groundwater and surface water. Economic growth leads to
larger discharges of wastewater and solid waste per capita. Inadequate
investments in waste collection and disposal mean that large quantities of
waste enter the groundwater and surface water. Groundwater contami-
nation is less visible but often more serious both because it can take
decades for polluted aquifers to cleanse themselves and because large
numbers of people drink untreated groundwater.
Outdoor air pollution is a limited and highly localized problem in
Africa, compared with other regions. However, the issue is significant in
some of the large urban centers with high densities of vehicles (mostly
still using diesel and leaded fuel) and low-income settlements located in
and around industrial areas.
The interdependence of rural and -urban economies is particularly evi-
dent in Africa, where town and village households maintain multiple ties
through seasonal migration and remittances, creating an informal safety
net. Poorly managed urbanization often leads to increased poverty and
inequality, which belies the promise of urban development. According to
the Cities in Transition report (World Bank 2000b), urban poverty is grow-
ing in scale and extent in both urban and peri-urban areas. In reality,
urban poverty is much broader than economic deprivation; it includes
squalid living conditions, risks to life and health from poor sanitation, air
pollution, crime and violence, traffic accidents and natural disasters,
powerlessness, and the breakdown of traditional family and community
safety nets. The poor, and especially poor children, are particularly hurt
by a deteriorating urban environment. The urban transition offers signif-
icant opportunities for countries to improve the quality of life for all their
citizens, and for the Bank to realize its core mission of reducing poverty.
But whether this potential is realized depends on the quality of urban
management and on the national and local policies affecting it.
Growing Role of the Private Sector
After a long period of mainly state ownership and control of productive
enterprises and very poor business environments, most African countries
have begun to seek and encourage private sector investment. This can
have positive impacts on poverty through economic growth and employ-
ment generation. It can also have negative implications, particularly if



40  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
business enterprises develop by capturing (or degrading) public natural
resources for private gain, or if traditionally public services are privatized
and move beyond the reach of the poor.
In some cases governments have sought to attract investors by reduc-
ing perceived "disincentives," such as environmental or occupational
health regulations or standards. This led to serious problems in Mauri-
tius, for example, where inappropriate disposal of dye wastes from the
vibrant textile industry threatened coastal waters and, with them, a very
lucrative tourism industry.6 In the current international marketplace,
however, there is a growing concern about public image, particularly in
relation to environmental and health issues. Serious international
investors are increasingly seeking not a fully permissive regulatory envi-
ronment but a predictable and rational one, in which following good
business practices does not put a company at a great disadvantage rela-
tive to its less conscientious competitors. The impact of this trend in
Africa is less than in some other regions because of the limited amount of
international investment overall. However, in some major sectors, such as
petroleum and tourism, it does have an impact. Many African countries
are also in the process of divesting their publicly owned mines, industrial
plants, and the like, on a large scale. The private sector is understandably
reluctant to assume the responsibility for potentially large environmental
liabilities, for example, from mine-tailings, toxic waste disposal, equip-
ment and processes that do not meet current health and environmental
standards, and so forth (see box 2.3). Therefore, the value of maintaining
good environmental practice from the beginning is becoming increas-
ingly clear.
Private sector investment in agricultural technology raises issues of
particular significance to Africa. Probably the most familiar is the spread
of "improved" hybrid crop and livestock varieties. These varieties offer
advantages such as higher yields and resistance to certain pests and dis-
eases, but they may not adapt well to the harsh or uncertain climatic con-
ditions and low-input environments that characterize much of
smallholder African agriculture. As such, they may prove a risky invest-
ment and can reduce livelihood security by displacing better-adapted
local varieties. When planted in monoculture over large areas, they are
vulnerable to disease epidemics. Commercial crops are usually associ-
ated with the heavy use of pesticides, often with negative health and
environmental impacts. Recently there has been vigorous debate over
genetic engineering of crops, including the introduction of patents for
engineered strains and of "terminator genes." Both of these innovations
prevent farmers from saving seeds for planting, thus making them
entirely dependent on the seed suppliers. Another highly controversial
facet of genetic engineering is the incorporation of herbicide resistance or



URGENT ISSUES AND TRENDS: ENVIRONMENT THROUGH A POVERTY LENS    41
Box 2.3. Addressing Environmental Liabilities in Privatizing
State-Owned Entities: Who Picks Up the Tab?
The Ghana Mining Sector Rehabilitation Project supported the rehabilita-
tion and eventual privatization of three state-owned gold mines at Prestea,
Dunkwa, and Tarkwa, in the western region of Ghana. Most of the funds
were used for operational and safety aspects at the mines, as well as in
supporting the enabling policy and institutional framework to assist the
government in undertaking the privatization activities. The negotiation
process, however, was prolonged, and the prospective joint venture part-
ners were almost losing faith in the divestiture process. One of the issues
about which they confronted the government was the environmental liabil-
ities at all three mines. They contended that the government was solely
liable for addressing these issues resulting from past mining activities. The
International Development Association (IDA) stepped in to facilitate the
process and funded environmental audits at all three mines. The audits
identified the range of environmental problems at the mines, including the
need for tailings dams, reclamation and rehabilitation of mined-out areas,
and the provision of water to affected communities.
IDA assisted the government and joint venture partners in negotiating
a settlement where the government would use funds from IDA to address
the most serious environmental problems. The agreement was that the
government had the sole responsibility for environmental issues directly
resulting from past mining activities. However, where (a) the private sec-
tor partner would benefit from specific improvements and (b) such
improvements would add value to the operation of the mine, the private
partner should provide matching funding. IDA provided US$1 million for
environmental remediation at each of the mines. This funding provided a
catalyst for finalizing the agreements for divestiture and eventual privati-
zation. All the privatized mines are operational, and at Tarkwa the private
sector has been able to expand the mine's operation. At Prestea, environ-
mental remediation continues with funding from the Nordic Develop-
ment Fund (NDF), which is a cofinancier with IDA, supporting the fol-
low-on project: the Ghana Mining Sector Development and Environment
Project.
insecticidal proteins into the genomes of crop plants. Many critics have
challenged these technologies as environmentally too risky. At the same
time, genetic engineering achievements such as the creation of vitamin-
rich "golden rice" have the potential to greatly improve the quality of life
of the poor.
Regardless of the sector or type of technology, the challenge is to make
the private sector a positive force for the environment. This requires a



42  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
combination of positive and negative incentives, as well as technical
assistance to help businesses respond to these incentives. African coun-
tries need support for developing and implementing policies to establish
an appropriate business environment, which provides predictable and
effective regulation (for example, environmental standards), as well as
positive incentives for sound environmental practices such as clean tech-
nologies and pollution control measures. They need to build capacity in
both the private and public sectors for environmental assessment and
audits, and for implementation and monitoring of environmental mitiga-
tion plans. This is a particular challenge in Africa because a large propor-
tion of the manufacturing sector is typically composed of small-scale or
"informal" enterprises. They have little technical or financial capacity,
and perhaps little incentive, to "green" their production systems.
Although individually small scale, they can have a large cumulative
impact. One important trend is the emergence of "green" investment
funds (or "green" windows in broader investment funds) aimed at pro-
moting environmentally related investment in areas such as tourism,
recycling-based industries, and alternative energy.
Subregional Integration
One of Sub-Saharan Africa's greatest development challenges is its high
degree of political fragmentation. The region is made up of a large num-
ber of countries, many of them small and with a limited human, natural,
and financial resource base. Some have no direct access to the sea, which
is a major constraint given the poorly developed inland transportation
infrastructure. Many critical resources span national borders, including
rivers and lakes and their watersheds, aquifers, forests, fish stocks and
wildlife populations, transport corridors, and coastal currents. Political
unrest, natural disasters, and uneven distribution of economic opportu-
nities are not only national but subregional issues, as large numbers of
people become transnational migrants or refugees, increasing the pres-
sure on fragile ecosystems and on limited natural and financial resources.
For environmental management, the subregional, rather than the
regional, level is the most significant because many ecosystems and nat-
ural resources extend over adjacent countries. Many African govern-
ments are recognizing the need for cooperation in managing cross-border
natural resources, particularly in the wake of recent droughts and floods
such as those that afflicted Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe in
2000. The greatest attention has focused on efforts to coordinate the man-
agement and use of shared river basins. Existing initiatives in the region
include the Niger Basin Authority, the Lake Chad Basin Commission, and
the Nile Basin Initiative. Promotion of regional and subregional coopera-



URGENT ISSUES AND TRENDS: ENVIRONMIENT THROUGH A POVERTY LENS  43
tion is also one of the 12 focal program areas of the African Ministerial
Conference on Environment (AMCEN).
African governments and investors are also interested in economic
integration that can help their countries to become more competitive in
the world marketplace by harmonizing policies and standards, facilitat-
ing free movement of goods, achieving economies of scale in production
and marketing, developing diversified tourism products and routes, and
the like. While the purpose of subregional organizations such as the
Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), the East African
Cooperation Community (EACC), and the Economic Community of West
African States (ECOWAS) is economic integration and cooperation, this
inevitably includes addressing environmental issues. For example, coop-
eration in water resource management is a particular concern in southern
Africa, as 70 percent of the subregion's surface water is shared by two or
more member states. Furthermore, serious water shortages are predicted
for several of the countries within the next few decades if adequate man-
agement measures are not taken. In 1995, the SADC member states
signed a Protocol on Shared Watercourse Systems, aimed at equitable
sharing of water and 'ensuring the efficient conservation of the scarce
water resource.
Decentralization and Democratization
The political landscape within Africa has been changing rapidly in
recent years. Authoritarian regimes of the 1970s and 1980s have been
yielding to popular demand for multiparty elections and accountability
in public resource management. By 1999 nearly all countries had held
multiparty elections with varying degrees of credibility, although the
development of accountable, credible, and durable democratic institu-
tions is a longer process. Along with democratization there has been a
trend toward decentralization of power and responsibility in a number
of areas, including natural resource management. In many countries
colonial-era policies and laws, which' vested control and management of
forests, wildlife, and other resources entirely in the state, are being
revised to encompass yarying degrees of community ownership or par-
ticipation ("comanagement"). Sometimes this extends only as far as
increasing the role of provincial or district governments (which may just
represent extensions of the central government), but in other cases it
involves actual devolution to commumities or to representative, largely
elected bodies. These trends, while internally driven to a large extent,
have been bolstered by international aid policies that also emphasize
Community-Driven Development and government accountability to
domestic stakeholders.



44  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
Ideally, democratization improves the allocation and use of natural
resources by making the public sector more accountable to civil society.
While this may increase the likelihood that resources are used to serve
public rather than private interests, it does not necessarily translate to sus-
tainable management or environmental protection. In some countries,
such as Malawi, sudden democratization has triggered a widespread pub-
lic perception that there are no more rules-people are free to grab what-
ever they can and had better do so before someone else does. Similarly,
decentralization is regarded as beneficial because government officials at
the local level are closer to the people and therefore should more easily be
held accountable by the people for their actions. This is not necessarily
true, however, particularly if the officials are appointed rather than
elected, or if their constituents are poorly informed. It is also not uncom-
mon for elected officials to encourage their constituents to invade pro-
tected areas, violate hunting and fishing laws, and so on, as a means of
winning popular support and re-election. To be positive forces for envi-
ronmental management, democratization and decentralization must be
accompanied by education and by appropriate regulatory frameworks.
Community-based natural resource management and environmental
management go beyond decentralization to actual devolution of control,
and possibly ownership, of resources to the community level. In princi-
ple, this puts the power to manage in the hands of those who are most
affected when the resources are degraded. It can provide the incentive for
sustainable management if the communities can have exclusive access to
the resources, including the authority and means to exclude others, and
if they have the luxury to make some investments in the future rather
than struggling just to meet their immediate needs. In practice, common
constraints include internal conflicts (communities generally being com-
posed of different interest groups) and a lack of institutional capacity for
cooperative consensus-building, planning, and implementation. This is
particularly true where migrations and internal population shifts have
brought together people from different ethnic or social backgrounds who
have no tradition of working together. It is also difficult to coordinate
land or resource use over large areas (for ecosystem management) when
the authority is fragmented across many different small communities.
Globalization
Globalization, particularly its impact on the poor in developing countries
and on the environment, is one of the most controversial topics in inter-
national economics and development today. As with the other major
trends, globalization has the potential for both negative and positive con-
sequences at the poverty-environment interface.



URGENT ISSUES AND TRENDS: ENVIRONMENT THROUGH A POVERTY LENS  45
One major element of the globalization debate is the increasing domi-
nation and control of international and local markets by large, mostly
Western-based corporations. This has many economic, social, and envi-
ronmental implications for developing countries. As discussed above,
seeds have become an important focus of the debate that potentially pos-
itive impacts of higher yields and improved nutrition are offset by nega-
tive impacts such as a narrowing genetic base for major crops, increased
dependence on fertilizers and pesticides, and the need for farmers to pur-
chase seeds each year.
Developing countries are pressing for greater access to markets in
industrial countries. While this has obvious economic benefits, more
accessible global markets for Africa's biological resources present a grave
threat of overexploitation. However, this situation is by no means new:
tropical timber, commercial fish species, elephant ivory, and other high-
value products have always faced this pressure. Similarly, international
companies have long been active in Africa, selling products that present
environmental and health hazards (highly toxic pesticides, low-quality
motor vehicles, hybrid seed varieties that displace local landraces, and
the like).
The newer developments of "globalization" include the entry of inter-
national interests as investors rather than only as buyers and sellers, and
the freer flow of commodities and manufactured products into Africa,
where they compete with and can stifle local enterprises. Large, transna-
tional investors can be a positive force, as they are often more concerned
about reputational risks than are local companies, and therefore are more
likely to heed growing international pressure for good labor practices,
reducing environmental impacts, and so forth. The recently approved
Chad-Cameroon pipeline is an example. In addition to the need to adhere
to the World Bank's Safeguard Policies, the extensive attention paid to
environmental and social issues during project preparation reflected the
interests of the transnational investors (led by Exxon Mobil) to improve
their public image. Key elements of the program include an independent
International Advisory Group to monitor compliance with social and
environmental safeguards during project implementation; mechanisms
to target revenue flows in Chad to key sectors in the country's poverty
alleviation strategy; burial of the pipeline and its rerouting to mainly fol-
low existing infrastructure; the creation of two new national parks in
Cameroon as "offsets" for the destruction of a small area of tropical for-
est; and two parallel Bank-financed projects to strengthen Chad's and
Cameroon's capacities for environmental management and monitoring of
the petroleum sectors.
Transnationals are also more likely to have the resources to respond
when a problem arises (for example, cleaning up oil spills or repackag-



46 BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
ing and destroying or removing stockpiles of obsolete pesticides).
Given the interest of most African governments in attracting foreign
investment, it is not unusual for transnational companies' internal stan-
dards for environmental protection and labor practices to be more exi-
gent than governmental regulations. This is certainly not always the
case, however; some transnationals not only take advantage of lax gov-
ernment regulations but also use their economic power to loosen them
even further. Nevertheless, international consumer and political pres-
sure is proving increasingly influential, with consumer boycotts, "green
certification" schemes, voluntary codes of conduct, and similar instru-
ments. For example, the Global Compact is a United Nations-
led initiative to encourage businesses to work with governments and
civil society and incorporate into their policies and practices nine prin-
ciples derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the
Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work of the International Labor
Organization, and the Earth Summit-Agenda 21 principles on the envi-
ronment.7
Technology transfer can be a positive outgrowth of globalization, as
transnational companies can introduce more energy-efficient and envi-
ronmentally friendly technologies to replace antiquated production sys-
tems often found in African countries. While dedicated technology
transfer programs are important, the mere presence of alternatives can
be influential: new technologies historically have spread mainly by
example and observation (Diamond 1997). There are also risks of intro-
ducing potentially harmful technologies, as the ongoing vigorous inter-
national debate over genetically modified organisms illustrates.
Another aspect of globalization with potentially positive or negative
impacts is the tourism and travel industry, now one of the fastest-
growing economic sectors in the world. Tourism is the only export-
oriented commercial sector in which Africa's market share is growing.
Africa also has a clear comparative advantage in nature-based tourism
and "adventure" tourism (perhaps the fastest-growing subsector),
where the natural environment is the main attraction (beaches and
coral reefs, game-filled savannas, tropical forests, mountains). Envi-
ronmental management is clearly essential for maintaining this advan-
tage, and the potential for tourism income can provide an important
economic rationale for maintaining natural environments. Tourism
also generates high levels of employment. However, tourism develop-
ment itself can also be environmentally and socially destructive, creat-
ing pollution, altering natural ecosystems, and undermining
traditional livelihoods (for example, large-scale beach tourism devel-
opment often pollutes coastal waters and displaces fishing villages).



URGENT ISSUES AND TRENDS: ENVIRONMENT THROUGH A POVERTY LENS  47
Institutional and Human Resource Capacity Constraints
Institutional and human resource capacities are key to determining how
all these development trends will affect environment and poverty. On the
whole, Africa's instituions are currently poorly equipped to deal with
them because of such factors as inexperience, lack of technical capacity,
and lack of transparency and accountability. Institutional and human
resource capacity building must target these gaps if the positive potentials
of these trends are to be captured and the negative impacts avoided. For
example, rapidly growing private sector investment must be managed
and steered onto sustainable paths through effective planning, monitor-
ing, regulatory, and incentive structures. In most African countries today
the public sector is very weak in these areas. Furthermore, ongoing decen-
tralization of many aspects of financial and natural resource management
calls for planning and management capacity at district and local levels,
where the "skills gap" is even greater. A history of centralized economies
that limited private sector activity, and of inadequate investment in
human resource development, has resulted in governments and citizens
with a limited capacity to participate in and benefit from private invest-
ment opportunities. Strategies for building institutional capacity must
also be grounded in other practical realities, such as constrained
economies and underpaid civil servants; vested interests with strong
political influence; limited human and absorptive capacity, particularly at
community and local levels; and a weak or newly emerging private sector.



3
Lessons from World Bank Experience
The Bank's environmental program over the past few decades has
included direct investment in environmental improvements and indirect
interventions aimed at creating capacity and an enabling environment
for better environmental management. Direct investments have
included environmental components within sectoral lending operations
(for example, urban development, rural development, forestry, agricul-
ture) as well as free-standing environmental projects. In recent years the
Bank's main vehicles for "mainstreaming" environment in development
programs and building in-country capacity have been National Envi-
ronmental Action Plans (NEAPs), together with follow-up Environmen-
tal Support Programs (ESPs), financed by the Bank and other donors, to
support implementation of the actions identified in the NEAPs. Several
environmentally related professional and information networks have
also grown out of the NEAP process with varying degrees of success. At
the community level, mainstreaming of environment has mainly been
through community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) pro-
grams, which typically include awareness-raising and capacity-building
elements as well as modest levels of direct investment in the form of
"micro-projects."
The experience gained from these efforts has been mixed, with some
promising models and pilot initiatives and important lessons for a for-
ward-looking strategy. Although a detailed discussion is beyond the
scope of this paper, the strategy also draws upon the experience of the
broader development community in areas such as CBNRM, institu-
tional capacity building, and environmental information.
The main instruments the Bank has used to bring environmental
issues into its development support are (a) Environmental Assessment,
(b) the Global Environment Facility (GEF), (c) NEAPs, (d) ESPs, (e)
regional environmental networks, (f) CBNRM, and (g) Country Assis-
tance Strategies (CASs). Discussions of each instrument follow.
48



LESSONS FROM WORLD BANK EXPERIENCE                        49
Environmental Assessment
The EA process, now mandated by most donors and governments, has
become a powerful tool for ensuring that development actions take into
account issues of environmental sustainability and social equity. It also
provides an important entry point for incorporating environment into
development activities on the ground. Many Bank-financed environmen-
tal operations and components originate as elements of Environmental
Management Plans (EMPs) developed under the EA process. There have
been numerous assessments of the implementation and impact of EA in
Africa (see box 3.1). Overall the conclusions from the African experience
are very similar to those in other regions, that is, EA is an important but
limited tool that (a) can prevent or reduce specific types of environmen-
tal damage, but is generally too narrow in scope to deal effectively with
secondary, indirect, cumulative, or long impacts; (b) is usually under-
taken too late in the project cycle to influence design except at the mar-
gins; and  (c) rarely includes adequate follow-up  to ensure
implementation and to evaluate the success of proposed mitigation mea-
sures called for in the EMPs.
One recent development with major operational implications was the
introduction of the independent "Inspection Panel," which enables orga-
nizations and private citizens to challenge how the Bank applies its Safe-
guard Policies in specific cases. While a grievance mechanism is
important for transparency and can result in improvements in perfor-
mance and sustainability of investments, it also absorbs a great deal of
staff time that could otherwise be devoted to improving the overall EA,
process. It can also lead to risk-averse behavior such as avoiding Bank
involvement in projects that are regarded as likely to trigger an appeal to
the Inspection Panel or the ill-advised reorientation of project designs in
an effort to make them "Inspection Panel-proof."
Observations such as those from the 1995 review have led to a greater
focus on the EMP, which outlines the'mitigating and monitoring activities
to be undertaken and by whom, as well as measures to enhance the
implementers' capacity for environrmental review and monitoring. Mak-
ing the EMP an integral part of project design and implementation,
including referencing: it in project legal agreements, provides greater
assurance that the mitigation measuires will be carried out. To address the
capacity issue, Bank projects have, helped strengthen the authorities
responsible for implernenting EA legislation in many countries. The Bank
is also supporting a regional initiative, the Capacity Development and
Linkages for Environmental Impact Assessment in Africa, which aims to
help every African country have a functional system in place, adapted to



50   BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
Box 3.1. The World Bank and Environmental Assessment
A 1995 review of EA in the Africa Region since 1989 reached the following
conclusions:
* Progress in EA in Africa has been significant during this 15-year peri-
od, with EA legislation now existing in more than half of the countries,
although human and technical resources for implementation are often
inadequate. For example, insufficient resources are being mobilized for
the field supervision of Bank-financed projects. Coordination among
donors is also still far from satisfactory, and there is limited experience
in monitoring environmental impacts in the field.
* The EA process is hampered by a lack of financial support and insuffi-
cient dialogue among assessors, governments, and other stakeholders.
The general weaknesses of national institutions and the scarcity of
trained African EA specialists have added to the difficulties.
* EA preparation has not included enough decisionmaking tools like
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and environmental economics.
* The Environmental Review process is fully effective at present on only
a limited part of the Bank's portfolio. In particular, there has been
insufficient integration into structural adjustment instruments as well
as strategic documents such as Country Assistance Strategies.
* EAs have contributed to improved project design through increased
capacity building and monitoring, and have, for example, improved
management of involuntary resettlement in many cases.
The assessment recommended increased assistance for capacity and
institution building, development and dissemination of improved tools
and methods, improved communication and awareness building, and
promotion of "win-win" solutions such as the use of clean technologies
and renewable energy.
Source: Mercier (1995).
the local needs and capacity, by 2010. Similarly, country-specific projects
and regional technical networks have been put in place to help improve
the availability and use of tools such as Environmental Information Sys-
tems and environmental economics.
Whereas some progress has been made on the first three issues identi-
fied in the 1995 review, there has been relatively little progress on the
fourth. To capture its full potential, EA must evolve from a reactive mech-
anism for avoiding negative impacts to a positive, proactive planning tool.
This is particularly important as the Bank continues to increase its use of



LESSONS FROM WORLD BANK EXPERIENCE                        51
non-project-lending instruments such as sectoral investment programs,
budget support (including Structural Adjustment Loans [SALs], Poverty
Reduction Strategy Credit [PRSCI, and Public Expenditure Review Credit
[PERC]), and Community-Driven Development initiatives. The project-
specific EA model is a poor fit with these types of operations. Environ-
mental practitioners are therefore promoting the use of Strategic
Environmental Assessments (SEAs), which go beyond the project-by-
project approach. The Bank is committed to moving in this direction (as
outlined in the WBES), but so far there are few accepted procedures or
experiences to draw upon. However, some SEAs have been undertaken,
including a few in Africa (such as an SEA for the water sector in Zambia),
and efforts are being made to integrate EA into structural adjustment
lending, PRSCs, and Community Action Programs (see box 3.2). Another
issue the Bank is tackling is how to apply EA to projects in which funds
are used to capitalize financial intermediaries, rather than being disbursed
directly by the Bank for pre-identified activities.
Aside from these technical issues, one of the main dilemmas of EA is
that clients still often regard it (along with many of the Bank's other Safe-
guard Policies) as an externally imposed "conditionality" and obstacle,
rather than as a means to improve the quality and impact of projects. This
in part accounts for the typically poor execution of EMPs and the lack of
impact monitoring during implementation.
All of this highlights the need to emphasize building of constituency,
commitment, and capacity in-country, rather than simply ensuring com-
pliance with the Bank's Safeguard Policies in Bank-financed operations.
Bank-financed projects, and policy dialogue have encouraged and helped
many African governments to enact, EA laws and regulations. This is a
positive development, but some problems still often arise (for example,
overly bureaucratic and cumbersome procedures that can lead develop-
ers to circumvent the process whenever possible, inadequate financial
and human resources to prepare and review EAs, and a lack of resources
or even procedures or legal mandates to enforce implementation of miti-
gation measures or monitor impacts). In keeping with its policy and
strategy of facilitating private sector-led growth, the Bank is trying to
expand the scope of awareness raising and capacity building for EA to a
wider range of stakeholders and actors.
The Global Environment Facility
Many bilateral donors are willing to provide grant funding to African
countries for environmental initiatives. However, having a source of ded-
icated grant funds administered by the Bank itself has been very useful
for introducing environmental elements into Bank-financed programs



52 BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
Box 3.2. Integrating Safeguard Policies into Community
Action Programs
A pilot study (for Bank-wide application) is being conducted in the Africa
Region to ensure smooth and cost-effective integration of the 10 Safeguard
Policies into the new Community Action Programs (CAPs, also known as
Community-Driven Development [CDD]). Contrary to common belief,
community-based projects can present a significant risk of environmental
harm if they are not planned and managed properly. Water, agriculture,
forestry, and infrastructure projects in particular require attention. Broad-
scale programs implemented through numerous small community pro-
jects can have cumulative impacts (for example, communities may deplete
forests for firewood to bake bricks for building schools), and even single
micro-subprojects can have harmful local effects (for example, latrine
effluent seeping into a source of drinking water).
CDD/CAPs will be treated as the EA-category Financial Intermediaries
-a category introduced by the Operational Policy/Bank
Procedures/Good Practice 4.01 in February 1999-implying that the
Safeguard Policies should be integrated in the same way as projects
implemented through Financial Intermediaries. Thus, the capacity of com-
munities and local governments in environmental assessment and man-
agement needs to be gradually strengthened. Two pilot case studies are
being started: one on an ongoing urban project (Senegal) and one on a
rural project (Chad) still in preparation.
The final report of this study includes recommendations on standard
terms of reference for EAs of CAPs, as well as the design and compar-
isons of various models of capacity and institution building and of moni-
toring systems for putting in place and maintaining the mechanisms
needed to screen the subprojects generated by the CAPs and submit them
to Environmental and Social Assessments.8
and operations that might not otherwise include them. A substantial pro-
portion of Bank-financed natural resource management operations in
Africa now include GEF-financed components. There have been difficul-
ties, such as a lack of understanding of GEF objectives and processes and
a lack of client and stakeholder (and Bank) support and ownership for
what are sometimes regarded as low-priority projects that do not address
poverty or contribute to economic development. In response, the Bank's
(and more broadly GEF's) strategy has been to seek "win-win" opportu-
nities for interventions that address both global and local objectives, and
to reduce the number of free-standing GEF projects. The most common



LESSONS FROM WORLD BANK EXPERIENCE                       53
are community-based land and natural resource management projects
that also aim to promote biodiversity conservation and/or carbon stor-
age. Blended GEF/World Bank projects are appealing from the perspec-
tive of ownership and leverage, but they can run into processing
problems, such as diverging time frames, as the GEF component requires
additional steps in processing and approval. Some Task Teams are reluc-
tant to integrate GEF components too fully into Bank-financed operations
because of the risk that approval of the GEF element may be delayed or
even denied, leaving a hole in the project concept. Another approach to
increasing client ownership of GEF projects has been supporting the
preparation of National Biodiversity Conservation Strategies and Plans
(NBCSPs), with the aim of ensuring that projects proposed for GEF sup-
port reflect identified national priorities. While this has sometimes been
useful, many African countries have not completed NBCSPs, and those
that have been completed do not always give clear guidance with respect
to national priorities or commitment.
National Environmental Action Plans
NEAPs have been prepared by almost all African countries over the past
10 to 15 years (along with all other IDA countries, in response to a
requirement set out for IDA 10 financing). A recent World Bank Opera-
tions Evaluation Department (OED) evaluation (Shilling 2001) concluded
that the process of preparing NEAPs helped build within countries
awareness of and consensus on the importance of environmental issues,
but their impact to date in terms of improving environmental manage-
ment capacity and performance has been fairly limited. Another review9
examined the process and impacts of NEAPs and follow-up Environ-
mental Support Programs, combining a general overview with case stud-
ies on three countries (Benin, The' Gambia, and Uganda) that had
completed NEAPs and are now implementing them through ESPs
financed at least in part by the World Bank. The latter study echoed the
positive conclusions regarding the role of NEAPs with respect to in-coun-
try building awareness (putting environment on the national agenda, at
least briefly), and stimulating participatory processes and dialogue
between the public sector and other stakeholders. However, it also noted
that in many countries in which NEAPs were regarded as externally dri-
ven and undertaken only to meet an IDA requirement, governments dis-
played little real ownership and commitment to the NEAPs. As a result,
these countries have done little follow-up after the document was com-
pleted and approved by the Bank.
Overall, NEAPs have enhanced the visibility of environment,
strengthened environmental institutions, and supported some positive



54 BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
investment, but they have generally not succeeded in making environ-
mental sustainability a core objective in countries' development agendas.
In fact, it may be argued that by establishing a distinct NEAP process sep-
arate from overall development planning, and by supporting dedicated
environmental projects implemented mainly by environmental agencies,
NEAPs and ESPs have contributed to isolating the environmental agenda
from the mainstream of development (World Bank 2000c).
Environmental Support Programs
About one-third of the countries that prepared NEAPs in African coun-
tries have implemented ESPs based on them (six of them financed at least
in part by the Bank). The ESPs have mostly focused on putting in place
the policy, legal, and institutional reforms recommended under the
NEAPs. They also aim to adjust or supplement ongoing sectoral pro-
grams and projects to help make them consistent with the policies and
strategies articulated in the NEAP. In general, donor support provided
through the ESPs targets the following:
* Institutional development and capacity building
* Development of policy, legal, and regulatory frameworks
* Generation and management of environmental information
* Biodiversity conservation and protected areas management
* Community-based and decentralized environmental management ini-
tiatives
* Environmental education, public awareness and communication, and
research programs.
The ESPs provide limited lessons because most are relatively new and
the institutional development and other impacts they seek take time to
come to fruition. In all three case studies covered by the recent
NEAP/ESP review, however, the review concluded that there has been
success in developing a "functional institutional, policy and regulatory
framework" built mainly upon a central environmental agency and EA
legislation and regulations. It also pointed to success in improving infor-
mation systems and datasets and gave examples of how they have influ-
enced policy and development decisions.
The review also notes that the rate of implementation of ESPs is gen-
erally quite slow because of the limited technical, administrative, and
managerial capacity in the countries in both the public and private sec-
tors. Skills had to be developed in EA, pollution control, information
systems, and the like, before other aspects of the projects could really be
implemented. The responsibility for administering and coordinating



LESSONS FROM WORLD BANK EXPERIENCE                        55
multisectoral ESPs has in some cases overwhelmed environmental agen-
cies, preventing them from carrying out other important functions such
as continuing policy and strategy development. Capacity building
within most ESPs has emphasized the public sector, neglecting the
equally important need to build capacity in the private sector and civil
society (for example, NGOs). In addition, while most of the NEAPs and
ESPs stress the objective of decentralizing environmental and natural
resource management to district, local, and community levels, they have
not paid enough attention to building the necessary capacity at these
levels. The report notes that the overall lack of monitoring and evalua-
tion of the impact of ESPs is due in large part to the difficulty of identi-
fying suitable interim indicators. It also recommends greater use of
participatory monitoring and evaluation as one means of increasing the
relevance and ownership of ESPs on the part of their wide range of
stakeholders.
The review identifies financial sustainability as a major issue, noting
that in many cases donors (including the Bank) are providing far greater
funding for these environmental agencies than the governments would
normally have provided. This often includes generous staff salaries and a
substantial investment in equipment, creating a situation that is highly
aid-dependent and unsustainable.
The two most important strategic conclusions of reviews of NEAPs
and ESPs are the following: (a) the time frame for ESPs (typically five to
six years) is too short, given that human resource and institutional capac-
ity must be built up before implementation of other aspects can even
begin, and (b) the model of environmental capacity building must evolve
in light of important changes occurring in Africa, particularly changes in
the role of the state. Institutional and skills development needs to focus
on assisting the public sector to act as a facilitator rather than a "doer"
and "controller," and on the capacity of all stakeholders to participate in
partnerships for environmental management.
Regional Environmental Networks
During the period when many African countries were preparing
NEAPs, the Bank facilitated the development of a network for informa-
tion exchange and mutual support armong environmental professionals
(mostly government officials) involved in the NEAP process. Over sev-
eral years this has evolved into the Network for Environment and Sus-
tainable Development' in Africa (NESDA), and has also spun off several
other professional networks focused on specific elements of NEAP
implementation and environment in general (environmental informa-
tion, environmental economics, and local environmental management,



56  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT SIRATEGY
such as the MELISSA [Managing Environment Locally in Sub-Saharan
Africa] program and network). A number of other networks also oper-
ate in Africa, such as the biodiversity strategies network in southern
Africa, the West African Enterprise Network (WAEN), and the Sustain-
able Use Network of the World Conservation Union. These networks
often have high technical quality, but questions have arisen regarding
their constituency, ownership, and sustainability once donor funding
ends. One approach has been to try to spin off the project management
unit into an independent entity, such as an NGO, which can then seek
funding from its membership, donors, or contracts. The membership of
some networks, including NESDA, is primarily made up of and run by
environmental professionals in public service institutions, perhaps in
part because they have the greatest access to donor support to meet
travel and equipment costs. Building academic or private sector mem-
bership is more difficult in Africa than in many other regions because of
the financial constraints of academic institutions and the weakness of
the private sector, particularly in environmental service fields. Moving
to a "user community model" with broader membership may be essen-
tial for the effectiveness and sustainability of these networks, but it will
be difficult to achieve unless membership confers clear career or com-
mercial benefits, such as access to professional (for example, consulting)
opportunities.
Community-Based Natural Resource Management
CBNRM provides a people-centered framework for responding to prior-
ity environmental problems. It also helps to mobilize communities and
enable them to become more effective players in political and economic
decisionmaking processes. It empowers communities not only by
improving their access to natural resources but, in many cases, by estab-
lishing or strengthening their rights to use and control access to those
resources. It also supports other important objectives such as participa-
tory approaches and accountability. This is enhanced even further as
CBNRM programs are in some cases evolving into Community-Driven
Development (CDD) programs, in which communities have much
greater freedom and flexibility to make their own decisions in managing
and allocating resources, including money from externally financed
"Social Funds."
Lessons can be learned from the problems that have emerged in the
implementation of CBNRM approaches. The heart of a CBNRM project is
usually some type of Community Action Plan (CAP) in which commu-
nity members identify priority issues and activities for the project to sup-
port. This CAP is often developed through a Participatory Rural



LESSONS FROM WORLD BANK EXPERIENCE                        57
Appraisal (PRA) process, facilitated by the project sponsor. However, the
PRA is not necessarily a good instrument for encouraging communities
to define a sustainable, self-help-oriented natural resource management
agenda. The output of a typical PRA is typically a long "wish list" of
investments activities with an emphasis on social infrastructure to meet
immediate needs, such as schools, clinics, boreholes, and the like. While
some natural resource or environmental management-related activities
usually also appear, they tend to be given relatively low priority by the
community members but high priority by the sponsor. This can lead to
mutual frustration. A PRA also tends to focus attention on proximate and
short-term solutions rather than on addressing underlying issues. For
example, it may identify fertilizers, a borehole, or an irrigation system as
a priority development need while overlooking deeper issues such as
land security or depletion of the water table. Community resource map-
ping exercises tend to produce better results from this standpoint, as they
focus attention on identifying natural resource availability and con-
straints.
The most common shortcomings of CBNRM projects are (a) allowing
too little time for truly participatory preparation and to enable underly-
ing and long-term issues to emerge;! (b) providing inadequate up-front
support for strengthening the capacity of communities to participate
effectively in project design and implementation; and (c) building depen-
dency rather than self-sufficiency by trying to solve problems mainly
through externally funded "micro-projects" rather than assisting com-
munities to mobilize their own resources. Box 3.3 gives an example of a
CBNRM-oriented project, currently m preparation, which incorporates
some of these lessons.
Country Assistance Strategies, Poverty Reduction
Strategies, and Mainstreaming
In addition to their in-country role, NEAPs were meant to provide the
basis for integrating environment into the Bank's Country Assistance
Strategies (CASs), which play a central role in shaping the more detailed
Bank interventions. Several recent reviews (Ekbom and Bojo 1997;
Shilling 2001; Shyamsundar and others 2001) generally concluded that
environment has made some inroads into CASs, in stiff competition with
other priorities. However, most CASs still treat environment as a sector,
with separate funding, objectives, activities, and the like, rather than a
cross-cutting theme affecting all sectors. The OED report (Shilling 2001)
also notes that overall few specific NEAP findings and recommendations
have been integrated into CASs. However, there is considerable variation
in the quality of treatment given to environmental matters, and therefore



58   BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
Box 3.3. Improving Livelihoods through Promoting Sound
Management of Microwatersheds in Nigeria
The Nigeria Microwatershed and Environmental Management Project
(under development) supports community-managed investments in
microwatersheds in six states within three macrowatersheds in Nigeria:
the Niger Trough, Upper Benue Trough, and Anambra/Imo Trough. The
project supports direct investments at the community level to promote
sustainable management of natural resources. The investments may
include activities to mitigate gully erosion, reforestation, basic water sup-
ply and sanitation, and environmental education. The program aims to
decentralize decisionmaking authority for prioritizing activities and also
financial resources for implementation to community associations. The
project would also provide support to the federal, state, and local levels of
government to (a) develop an enabling environment, (b) reduce the poten-
tial for conflict among stakeholders, (c) provide the required incentives for
long-term investments, and (d) develop capacity at all levels for environ-
mental assessments. The project will also promote partnerships and col-
laborative arrangements in wildlife and biodiversity management, includ-
ing incentives for promoting sustainable use of biodiversity. Direct pro-
gram benefits are expected to include (a) decreased soil erosion (land
degradation) on upland areas; (b) reduction in downstream floods; (c)
increased production of fodder, woodfuels, and grasses; (d) increased
agricultural productivity on arable lands; and (e) improved management
and use of biodiversity and natural habitats. The project's special empha-
sis on women and vulnerable groups within the target watersheds is
expected to lead to empowerment of these groups and to improvement of
their economic and social conditions.
scope for learning from examples of best practice (see box 3.4). The same
can be said of integrating environment into Poverty Reduction Strategies,
which are becoming the basis for preparation of CASs in the future (see
box 3.5).
Mainstreaming of environment also remains a challenge at the sectoral
level. Progress has been made in some key sectors, such as forestry and
energy, where mainstreaming has been supported by Bank-wide policies.
In others, however, enviromnental issues continue to be regarded as
related primarily to the environmental Safeguard Policies and sometimes
treated as burdensome "add-ons." The agricultural and rural develop-
ment sectors are particularly significant in terms of the impact on envi-
ronmental management in Africa. Issues such as soil conservation and
agroforestry have been significantly internalized within the rural devel-



LESSONS FROM WORLD BANK EXPERIENCE                              59
Box 3.4. The 1998 Country Assistance Strategy for Lesotho
The 1998 Lesotho CAS has been cited as an example of good practice in
integrating environment into a country assistance strategy. It identifies
increased environmental degradation as one of the fundamental con-
straints to economic growth and discusses the need to manage poverty-
related environmental degradation, particularly the loss of soil fertility
and productive pasture land and the occurrence of environmental disas-
ters such as droughts and floods.
The section on "Focus of Bank Assistance" states that the Bank will
support "a comprehensive approach to the natural resource environment;
ensure conservation of natural resources and protection of the environ-
ment, especially land degradation, through support for the Government's
environmental action plan, agricultural sector development strategy,
water management systems, and population planning."
Specific support (complementing support for NEAP implementation
being provided by other donors, such as the United Nations Development
Programme [UNDPI) includes water supply and sanitation, biodiversity
conservation linked with tourism development, and range management
and land reform through a Policy Reform and Capacity Building Project
for Agriculture.
opment agenda, but others, such as integrated pest management and the
conservation of genetic diversity of crops, have received less attention. In
some cases this may be because these objectives are (wrongly) perceived
as going counter to the core objectives of intensifying and modernizing
agricultural production. Overall, the management of specific natural
resources such as trees, pastures, and water sources has been integrated
as a core element in sustainable rural development, but the concept of
maintaining a well-functioning agro-ecosystem has not. In all sectors,
there are clear opportunities for better mainstreaming of environment
(see box 4.1).



60   BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
Box 3.5. Burkina Faso Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper
The Burkina Faso Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) is based on
seven major principles, including sustainable development of natural
resources. Key links between poverty and environment are identified,
especially land degradation leading to low yields and therefore to pov-
erty. The urban poor cite "climate-related hazards" as a major concem,
indicating a high degree of vulnerability to natural forces.
With agriculture identified as the major economic sector, the PRSP
notes that short fallow periods, inadequate use of fertilizers, overgrazing,
and woodfuel harvesting contribute directly to degradation of the vegeta-
tive cover. The country's climatic conditions, land-locked status, and low
agricultural productivity, coupled with degradation of soil and water, are
seen as the major constraints to economic growth and contribute to mas-
sive poverty and food insecurity.
The PRSP states that particular attention must be paid to preventing
soil degradation and preserving soil fertility in the context of actions for
promoting agricultural growth, and that one of these actions will be reha-
bilitation of degraded lands. It calls for promotion of soil and water con-
servation techniques, as currently only 15 percent and 8 percent of farms
apply erosion control and agroforestry, respectively. Land ownership is
also to be made more secure to encourage better land management.
However, the paper does not note that this type of agricultural develop-
ment can be a double-edged sword from an environmental perspective.
Higher profits in agriculture will create incentives and resources for soil
and water conservation, but they may also lead to cultivation of fragile
lands, salinization of irrigation areas, and increased use of pesticides.
Inadequate water supply and sanitation, links to waterbome diseases,
and poor health among the poor are also emphasized. Since 1995 the
Ministry of Environment and Water has been responsible for the cross-
cutting agenda of enhancing water quality for the poor.
Economic growth is also expected to be fueled by an expansion of min-
ing, industry, and tourism. Making the economy "more attractive for
investors" and "simplifying red tape needed to establish an enterprise"
are laudable objectives. However, no mention is made of the need for ade-
quate Environmental Assessment as part of this process.



4
Priorities for Action
Thematic Priorities
The World Bank Environment Strategy (WBES) organizes priorities for
action within three broad categories: improving (a) the quality of life, (b)
the quality of growth, and (c) the quality of the global commons. In Africa
these categories tend to blend together, inextricably linked through the
common denominator' of the region's renewable natural resources. These
resources form the basis for both the day-to-day lives of the majority of
African people and the region's main prospects for economic growth and
development. At the same time, the international community regards
Africa's indigenous biological resources and its multinational water bod-
ies as important elements of the "global commons."
Based on the WBES organizing framework, the Africa Region Envi-
ronment Strategy (ARES) emphasizes the following areas:
a. Quality of life-means enhancing natural resource-based livelihoods
through sustainable management of soils, water, and biological
resources; protecting peoples' health from environmental burdens
including pollution and environmentally related diseases; and reduc-
ing peoples' vulnerability to environmental risks and natural disasters.
b. Quality of growth-highlights the need to establish an enabling insti-
tutional environment; specifically, this means strengthening the regu-
latory, incentive, and institutional frameworks needed to promote and
support environmentally sustainable, private sector-led economic
growth.
c. Quality of the global commons-prioritizes subregional and regional
cooperation in management of: shared environmental resources;
strengthens African countries' capacity to predict and adapt to impacts
of climate change; and assists African countries in participating in
international efforts to achieve global environmental objectives and to
capture a greater share of emerging markets for global environmental
services.
61



62  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
Subregional Priorities
Africa is so diverse ecologically and socially that only very general prior-
ities can be defined at a continent-wide level. For more specific analysis,
the continent is usually divided into six subregions characterized by sim-
ilar environmental conditions and socioecological challenges and priori-
ties for environmental action to alleviate poverty. These are the
Sudano-Sahelian Belt, humid West Africa, the Congo Basin, East Africa,
southern Africa, and the Indian Ocean Islands (World Bank 1996).10 The
following section outlines the highest priorities for environmental man-
agement for each subregion, emphasizing issues that affect the liveli-
hoods, health, and security of the poor; opportunities for economic
development based on environmental resources; and unique global
assets under threat. Some issues, such as land degradation, are equally
significant across the continent, whereas others, such as coastal zone
management and water scarcity, are more localized.
The most urgent environmental issues and needs identified for each
subregion are as follows:
Sudano-Sahelian Belt. Drought preparedness, integrated water resource
management, halting or reversal of land degradation (desertification),
sustainable woodfuel supply, migratory pest outbreaks
Humid West Africa. Integrated coastal zone management (particularly
from C6te d'Ivoire to Nigeria, where one-third of the population lives
in coastal areas), including both sustainable management of fisheries
resources and urban and industrial environmental waste management
and sanitation; land tenure and land management; conservation of the
remaining primary rainforest; and protection of the high watersheds of
major river systems (particularly in the Central African Republic,
Guinea, and Sierra Leone)
Congo Basin. Meeting of peoples' needs and development aspira-
tions while conserving the second largest contiguous primary tropi-
cal rainforest in the world, through a combination of core protected
areas and improved management of forest production areas; coastal
zone management, particularly in areas with intense urban devel-
opment
East Africa. Reversal of land degradation resulting from inappropriate
agricultural practices, particularly in arid/semi-arid areas; integrated
water resource management in areas of growing local scarcity; insur-



PRIORITIES FOR ACTION                                       63
ance of the sustainability and broadening of the benefits of nature-
based tourism, including maintaining critical wildlife habitats and
managing human/wildlife conflicts; urban and industrial environ-
mental management in coastal areas
Southern Africa. Water resource conservation and management,
drought preparedness and adjustment to climate variability, land
tenure, balancing of agricultural development and maintenance of bio-
diversity resources for tourism development and for global signifi-
cance, urban environmental management in highly urbanized and
rapidly urbanizing areas, meeting of energy requirements
Indian Ocean Islands. Reversal of land degradation; intensification of
efforts to protect unique biodiversity, pollution control, and industrial
environmental management for public health and for compatibility
with tourism; adaptation to climate change.
Even a subregional breakdown is'too broad to give a full picture, as
particular countries or even areas within countries will have their own
urgent priorities that must emerge from country- and location-specific
analysis and consultation. For example, environmental and health
impacts of wastes and emissions from mining of copper, gold, aluminum,
and other minerals may be the most urgent environmental issue in cer-
tain parts of some countries.
Sectoral Priorities
While environment is intrinsically cross-sectoral, most governments,
donor organizations, and development programs are organized along
sectoral lines. Therefore, most direct environmental action will have to be
achieved through integrating the environmental agenda into sectoral
strategies, policies, and programs: in other words, by ensuring that envi-
ronmental soundness; and sustainability become integral objectives
within these sectors and are recognized as important elements of success.
This includes finding suitable entry points and synergies with existing
sectoral strategies (see,box 4.1). Sectors targeted for their strong signifi-
cance to environmental management include agriculture and rural devel-
opment, natural resource management (including water, mineral and
biological resources), energy, urban development, transport, health, and
private sector development (including tourism).
Based on the strategic documents described in box 4.1 and others, table
4.1 proposes the priority environmental issues for key sectors.



64   BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
Box 4.1. Environmental Entry Points for Some
Key Sectoral Strategies
Rural Development. The Bank's Rural Development (RD) Strategy for
Africa focuses on increasing rural incomes, aiding service delivery to
improve both the quality of life and income generation (for example,
inputs, credit, infrastructure), and reducing risk. Agriculture is regarded
as the main engine of growth because of the important forward and back-
ward linkages, and certain aspects of environment, such as soil fertility
and vegetative cover, are recognized as significant factors in maintaining
agricultural productivity. Productivity gains are to be achieved by increas-
ing land and labor productivity-by increasing inputs where land is the
main constraint and increasing financial and capital inputs where labor is
the constraint. Operationally, there is an ongoing shift from direct invest-
ment in assisting growth in agricultural productivity to indirect interven-
tions such as strengthening institutions, improving the efficiency of factor
markets (seed supply, land reform), improving access to markets (through
information and infrastructure), and reforming agricultural policy. Risk
reduction is seen as key because unmanaged risk pushes people back
down into poverty. Some major sources of risk for the poor are isolation,
environmental degradation, and disease.
Energy. In Fuelfor Thought, the World Bank (2000d) has articulated a clear
strategy around the multifaceted interface between energy and environ-
ment. It emphasizes reforming the energy sector, improving supply- and
demand-side efficiency through pricing reform and other means, acceler-
ating the substitution of traditional fuels by modem energy, promoting
new energy technologies (including renewables) by removing barriers to
the development of their markets, and strengthening monitoring and
enforcement of mitigation of environmental impacts of energy production
and use. In urban and peri-urban areas, Bank support will focus on
improving the efficiency of energy utilities and promoting improvements
in end-use efficiency. In rural areas, it will focus on developing and main-
streaming new solutions to the challenge of expanding access to modem
energy services, including renewables, and on more sustainable manage-
ment and efficient utilization of traditional fuels. Another important
aspect of the strategy is selectivity-supporting investments in the energy
sector of countries that have shown a commitment to improving sector
efficiency through policy reform and/or sector restructuring, and sup-
porting private sector investment in cases where this can support the
momentum toward efficiency gains through further sector reform. In
addition to this Bank-wide energy/environment strategy, the Africa
Region has developed a Renewable (Nontraditional) Energy Strategy for
Africa (RESA). The RESA emphasizes decentralized rural electrification



PRIORrITES FOR ACTION                                            65
(DRE), with a large element of renewable energy technologies, such as
solar photovoltaic and thermal sources, as these are often the least-cost
solution for DRE.
Water Resources. The water resources management strategy is based on the
principle that water is a scarce good with dimensions of economic effi-
ciency, social equity, and environmental sustainability (Sharma and others
1996). It recommends an integrated, cross-sectoral, catchment area
approach to water resources management in African countries and identi-
fies five priority areas: household water security, catchment area and wet-
land protection (environmental stewardship, food security, water quality
and human health, intranational and international cooperation, and con-
flict resolution.
Private Sector Development. The Bank's Africa Region strategy identifies
four essential dimensions: securing the economic and infrastructural foun-
dations (macroeconomic stability, liberalized markets for trade and invest-
ment, alleviation of power, water, telecommunications, and transport con-
straints that hamper business activity); strengthening the institutional
underpinning of markets (refocusing public institutions to become more
supportive of private sector development through reducing transaction
costs and the risks of doing business); building business capacity, particu-
larly among indigenous small and medium-size enterprises; and develop-
ing robust financial systems. It further recommends that in most countries
the Bank should focus its efforts on entry points in five key areas: private
participation in infrastructure, agribusiness, manufacturing and other
urban commercial activity, extractive industries, and tourism. Like the
energy strategy, it stresses selectivity, including prioritizing the agenda
within countries as well as directing efforts and resources toward those
countries that demonstrate a political commitment to helping themselves
and instituting necessary economic reforms (World Bank 1994).
Cross-Cutting Priorities
People-Focused Ecosystem Management
The issues and priorities presented above are not new. In fact, most have
been the focus of many strategies and programs, but the continued and
even accelerating rate of environmental degradation demonstrates that
we have not yet succeeded in addressing them. This highlights the need
for the Bank and its clients to pursue new approaches and paradigms.



Table 4.1. Priority Sectors and Sectoral Issues
Sector                                          Prioritiesfor improved environmental management
Macroeconomic policy          Integrating environment into Poverty Reduction Strategies, Country Assistance Strategies,
and planning                  and budget support operations
Collecting and analyzing country-specific, geo-referenced data to elucidate the linkages
between environmental degradation and poverty and to identify and monitor environmental
assets that are essential for sustainable development
Realigning economic policies to remove perverse subsidies and provide incentives for
sustainable resource management
Reorienting development planning to give appropriate consideration to maintaining strategic
environmental assets (e.g., important watersheds)
Agriculture                   Ensuring environmentally sustainable agricultural intensification (including soil fertility
management, integrated pest management, and farming systems; meeting international trade
standards)
Improving land administration and land tenure
Maintaining crop and livestock genetic diversity and indigenous biodiversity in agricultural
systems
Managing irrigation (including restoration of salinized soils)
Improving extension and dissemination of environmentally sound methods
Matching economic development to environmental conditions and sustainable capacity (e.g.,
removing artificial incentives that encourage agriculture in drought-prone areas)
Adapting to climate change (including improved medium- and long-term weather predictions)
Developing policies on the introduction and use of genetically modified organisms



Renewable natural               Removing perverse policy incentives (and power structures) that favor nonsustainable
resource management             exploitation
(forests, rangelands,           Addressing resource tenure issues and community-based natural resource management
fisheries, wildlife, etc.)
Maintaining biodiversity in utilization areas (e.g., exploited natural forests, plantations,
heavily fished waters, areas of livestock and wildlife conflict)
Shifting economic systems from exploitation of natural biological assets to production (e.g.,
aquaculture, plantations, and woodlots), without displacing or degrading natural habitats
Nonrenewable natural            Controlling and containing toxic effluents, emissions, and waste products
resource management (mining)    Introducing and disseminating more environmentally friendly mining and refining processes
Cleaning up severely toxic and highly hazardous mine sites
Managing environmental liabilities in privatization processes
Urban development,             Improving infrastructure and services in water supply, drainage, waste collection, etc.
water supply, and               (with user participation and cost recovery for sustainability)
sanitation                      Undertaking integrated urban planning, with attention to environmental conditions (e.g.,
discouraging dense settlements in environmentally fragile or risky areas)
Setting and enforcing standards
Providing environmental and hygiene education
Performing risk assessment and disaster management planning
Health                          Providing water and sanitation services and hygiene education
(Table continues on thefollowing page.)



Table 4.1. (continued)
Sector                                        Priorities for improved environmental management
Providing environmentally sound vector control
Improving woodstoves and indoor ventilation
Managing biohazard waste management
Ensuring occupational health and safety
Maintaining biological resources and a knowledge base for traditional medicine
Energy                       Providing a sustainable woodfuel supply
Managing community-based woodlands and woodlots
Developing alternative domestic energy sources
Managing watershed and water resources for hydropower
Reducing biodiversity and socioeconomic impacts of dams
Transport                    Reducing primary and secondary environmental impacts of roads
Improving port management, including reducing chronic and acute oil spillage
Reducing particulate air pollution and vehicle-based lead burden in major citiesa
Private sector development   Establishing transparent, equitable, and predictable regulatory regimes with realistic
standards reliably enforced
Building environmental assessment and environmental management capacity (in large,
medium, and small enterprises)
Providing economic incentives and technology transfer for environmentally friendly
manufacturing and procurement
Developing environmentally sound tourism
Dealing with environmental liabilities in privatization



Containing and ecologically restoring hazardous sites (especially mining sites)
Community-Driven                  Raising awareness and building capacity for environmental management at the community
Development                      level
Subsidizing or otherwise encouraging the use of community funds and resources for
environmental managementb (e.g., reduced matching requirements, earmarked funds)
a. Note, however, that in most cases, leaded fuel is probably not the major source of lead burden affecting African people.
b. This is needed to overcome the natural tendency to "discount" environmental issues as less immediate than other needs.



70  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
Perhaps the most significant is the need to move to an ecosystem-based
approach to environmental management and development.
An ecosystem is a community of interacting organisms and the physi-
cal environment in which they live. In geographic terms, it is an area
defined by ecological functions rather than administrative boundaries.
Actions affecting any part of an ecosystem affect the whole, and a break-
down of any element can have repercussions for the entire system. The
ecosystem is therefore the logical operational unit for environmental
management. Beyond this, these ecosystems provide the base for liveli-
hoods and economic development in Africa, and this base is rapidly erod-
ing (see box 4.2). To reverse this catastrophic process, the ecosystem
paradigm must be extended beyond environmental management to
become the underlying framework for development in the region.
Integrated ecosystem management (IEM) is not just a theoretical con-
struct but is becoming widely accepted and adopted as the keystone of
the environmental action agenda. The Global Environment Facility (GEF)
has endorsed the IEM approach under its latest Operational Program
(Integrated Ecosystems and Natural Resource Management) and now
looks for evidence of an IEM approach in virtually all proposals. Major
international environmental organizations such as the World Wildlife
Fund, the Nature Conservancy, and the African Wildlife Foundation have
formally adopted the IEM approach, as has the United States govern-
ment, among others (Council on Environmental Quality 1993, chapter 6).
The African Ministerial Conference on Environment (AMCEN) has also
structured its agenda along ecosystem lines (see box 1.1).
Most recently, the report World Resources 2000-2001: People and Ecosys-
tems, The Fraying Web of Life (World Resources Institute 2000) highlighted
the need to halt the deterioration of the major ecosystems that provide us
with food, fiber, energy, and all the essentials of life. In the foreword to
this report, the president of the World Bank, the administrator of the
United Nations Development Programme, the executive-director of the
United Nations Environment Programme, and the president of WRI
stated: "If we choose to continue our current patterns of use, we face
almost certain declines in the ability of ecosystems to yield their broad
spectrum of benefits ... .The poor, who often depend directly on ecosys-
tems for their livelihoods, suffer most when ecosystems are degraded." In
endorsing the report, these heads of agencies "reconfirm their commit-
ment to making the viability of the world's ecosystems a critical devel-
opment priority for the 21st century." This volume echoes their
commitment and seeks to make it a reality.
The ecosystem concept applies to modified ecosystems such as cities,
farms, plantations, and reservoirs, just as much as it does to natural habi-



PRIORITIES FOR ACTION                                            71
Box 4.2. World Resources 2000-2001 and the Pilot Assessment
of Global Ecosystems
World Resources 2000-2001: People and Ecosystems, the Fraying Web of Life is
published by the United Nations Development Programme, the United
Nations Environment Program, the World Bank, and the World Resources
Institute (WRI). It brings together information from more than 175 scien-
tists around the world, who contributed to a pilot-scale assessment of five
major ecosystem types around the world. The Pilot Assessment of Global
Ecosystems (PAGE) evaluated the state of these ecosystems by examining
their capacity in relation to essential goods and services, such as produc-
ing food and fiber, providing sustained flows of clean water, maintaining
biodiversity, storing atmospheric carbon, and providing recreational and
tourism opportunities. It included both the current level of production of
these goods and services and the likely capacity of the ecosystems to pro-
duce them in the future.
The findings of the PAGE are sobering:
* Future world food production is threatened by ongoing degradation of
many agro-ecosystems.
* Forest areas in some industrial countries are increasing slightly, but in
developing countries, agricultural expansion, logging, and other fac-
tors are reducing forests by at least 140,000 square kilometers per year.
* Freshwater ecosystems are the most degraded of all ecosystems world-
wide, and their ability to support human, plant, and animal life is
greatly imperiled.,
* Grassland ecosystems have declined in extent and condition and in
their ability to support plant and animal life.
* Coastal and marine ecosystems are in danger of losing their capacity to
provide fish, protect coastal infrastructure, reduce pollution and ero-
sion, and sustain biodiversity.
The PAGE also produced statisticsion the status and use of key envi-
ronmental resources. For example, it concluded that existing fishing fleets
worldwide are 40 percent larger than Ithe ocean can sustain and nearly 70
percent of the world's major marine fish stocks are being exploited at or
above their sustainabie limit.
The WRI report recommends that governments and people regard the
sustainability of ecosystems as essential to human life and calls for an
Ecosystem Management approach to managing the world's critical
resources. Specifically, decisions on land and resource use must be evalu-
ated on the basis of how they affect the capacity of ecosystems to sustain
life and to produce goods and services, both now and in the future.



72  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
tats. In all cases, diverse communities of living organisms (including
human beings) rely on ecological processes such as energy, hydrological,
nutrient, and mineral (including carbon) cycles to provide life essentials
such as water, air, and food. Disruption or elimination of these basic eco-
logical processes can result in a wide range of negative impacts, includ-
ing soil erosion and depletion; drought or flooding; the spread of
vector-borne diseases of humans, animals, and crops; and species extinc-
tions. The devastating impact of recent floods in Mozambique, South
Africa, and Zimbabwe, is believed to have been aggravated by deforesta-
tion and soil compaction in watershed areas. If the cycles and processes
are disrupted on a large scale or over a long period, the ecosystem can
collapse beyond the point of recoverability.
Ecosystem management is sometimes misunderstood as excluding or
sidelining human activities in favor of preserving pristine nature. In fact,
the essence of IEM is maintaining the capacity of ecosystems to produce
environmental goods and services that are essential for life and liveli-
hoods. Ecosystems moderate the climate; produce food, fiber, and energy;
purify, store, and transport water; and recycle wastes. Human activities
can in turn have profound impacts upon the biological, chemical, and
physical processes that underlie these life-supporting functions. This
impact can involve total transformation, as when forests are cleared for
agriculture or wetlands are drained or dredged for development. It can
also take the form of selective exploitation of specific products, such as
particular species of timber or fish, or burning vegetation to trigger new
sprouting of grasses. Past practices of modifying and managing ecosys-
tems in this way have often further impoverished the rural poor because
they lose important assets, often without sharing in whatever benefits
may result (for example, see box 2.1 on the Lake Victoria ecosystem).
For the purposes of this strategy, we have coined the phrase people-
focused ecosystem management to emphasize the fact that the IEM approach
is not only about preserving natural habitats. Meeting human needs and
enhancing economic production on a sustainable basis are the ultimate
objectives of an IEM-based approach to development.
Integrated ecosystem management is proposed as an alternative to the
conventional, sector-by-sector approach to managing natural resources,
which has failed to produce sustainable results because it ignores or com-
promises the linkages and interactions among natural systems. Even
community-based natural resource management (CBNRM), which is
more cross-sectoral, still fails to deal with the full scope of the relation-
ship between people and their environment, and the range of ecological
functions and linkages that affect the production and sustainability of
natural resources. CBNRM also works on a relatively small geographical
scale, which is rarely sufficient to encompass ecological processes. For



PRIORITIES FOR ACTION                                      73
example, soil erosion caused by deforestation in distant watersheds can
lead to siltation of lakes and rivers, and therefore to declining fish popu-
lations.
Adopting an ecosystem-based approach has some important strategic
and operational implications:
* It usually involves coordinating management across relatively large
landscapes, including areas and resources owned or controlled by dif-
ferent groups of stakeholders (often across national borders).
* It is fundamentally cross-sectoral and holistic, calling for coordination
among many stakeholders.
* The objectives combine conservation and use of environmental and
natural resources, which often entails compromises and tradeoffs.
* Ecosystem management requires a regular assessment of the condition
of ecosystems and a!n understanding of the processes that sustain them
and their productivity.
* Presently, however, our knowledge of ecosystem functions and the
impacts of different kinds of perturbations is very limited; this calls for
applying the "precautionary principle."
The "Malawi Principles" for the ecosystem approach further stress
that the objectives of management of land, water, and living resources are
not predetermined but are a matter of societal choice, to be determined
by those directly affected (see box 4.3). Ecosystem management therefore
represents integrated' area and development planning, built upon a
sound understanding of ecological assets and processes. Planning must
be driven by communities and coordinated by local and national govern-
ments to provide the framework for integration across larger landscapes.
The role of environmental agencies and specialists is to support and
influence planning processes with information and analysis on environ-
mental opportunities and constraints and on the importance of environ-
mental goods and services that only healthy ecosystems can provide.
Common entry points' for the environmental agenda into these develop-
ment planning processes include water resource management, soil con-
servation, environmental health, and tourism development.
Building an Enabling Environmentfor Environmental
Management
In Africa, as elsewhere in the world, people and governments generally
understand in principle the importance of maintaining a healthy and pro-
ductive environment, yet they continue to act in ways that diminish or
degrade it. This contradiction arises because the political, economic, and



74 BUILDING A SUSrAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
Box 4.3. The Malawi Principles
1. The objectives of management of land, water, and living resources
are a matter of societal choice.
2. Management should be decentralized to the lowest appropriate
level.
3. Ecosystem managers should consider the effects (actual or potential)
of their activities on adjacent and other ecosystems.
4. Recognizing potential gains from management, there is usually a
need to understand and manage the ecosystem in an economic con-
text. Any such ecosystem management should (a) reduce those mar-
ket distortions that adversely affect biological diversity, (b) align
incentives to promote biodiversity conservation and sustainable use,
and (c) internalize costs and benefits in the given ecosystem to the
extent feasible.
5. To maintain ecosystem services, conservation of ecosystem structure
and functioning should be a priority target of the ecosystem
approach.
6. Ecosystems must be managed within the limits of their functioning.
7. The ecosystem approach should be undertaken at the appropriate
spatial and temporal scales.
8. Recognizing the varying temporal scales and lag effects that charac-
terize the ecosystem processes, objectives for ecosystem manage-
ment should be set for the long term.
9. Management must recognize that change is inevitable.
10. The ecosystem approach should seek the appropriate balance
between, and integration of, conservation and use of biological
resources.
11. The ecosystem approach should consider all forms of relevant infor-
mation, including scientific, indigenous, and local knowledge; inno-
vations; and practices.
12. The ecosystem approach should involve all relevant sectors of soci-
ety and scientific disciplines.
Source: Workshop organized in Malawi in January 1998, in association
with the Fourth Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological
Diversity.
institutional environment in most countries overwhelmingly favors
actions that degrade the environment rather than protect it. Environmen-
tal management is not something that can be done once and then ignored,
nor can it be solely the responsibility of a few people or institutions. For
a real and lasting impact, maintaining a healthy and productive environ-



PRIORITIES FOR ACTION                                       75
ment must be everyone's goal and everyone's business. Therefore, the
Bank places a high priority on creating an environment that motivates
and enables a broad range of individual and institutional stakeholders to
manage and protect it for the sake of their own interests.
The essential elements of an enabling environment are a broad and
informed consensus on environmental and sustainable development
objectives; policy, regulatory/legal, and institutional frameworks to sup-
port these objectives; and mechanisms to track results and feed them back
into the decisionmaking processes. While specific needs will vary among
countries, in general priority actions include the following:
* Putting in place an umbrella policy that sets out core objectives for
environmentally and socially sustainable development (identified
through a broad consultation process) and articulates a national com-
mitment to them
* Harmonizing key sectoral policies with this umbrella policy, including
transparent and locally accepted mechanisms for allocating owner-
ship, access, and use rights for natural resources and other public
assets
* Establishing some form of legally mandated environmental assess-
ment requirement, including mechanisms to ensure early and effective
disclosure and prior consultation with potentially affected people and
other stakeholders, as well as grievance procedures
* Stocktaking of environmental assets, including economic valuation
* Building and maintaining a geo-referenced database of environmental
assets and trends, including data analysis and packaging in forms that
are accessible and usable by stakeholders and decisionmakers
* Creating a sound and predictable investment environment by putting
in place the basic "operating rules" (for example, minimum standards
for environmental quality, tax regimes, and other economic instru-
ments) and the instruments and capacity to apply them consistently to
create a predictable investment environment
* Enhancing in-country capacity to implement all the above by provid-
ing educational and training opportunities, as well as productive
employment opportunities for the trained personnel.
The World Bank and other development partners have supported
these types of actions in many African countries, but with limited success.
In many cases the problem has been a lack of real consensus among the
important actors on the tradeoffs that must sometimes be made. In reori-
enting our approach for greater effectiveness, we must focus on two fun-
damental aspects: (a) reversing the incentives that currently drive people,
individually and collectively, to destroy or degrade the environment and



76  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
(b) providing the essential technical and institutional tools for environ-
mental stewardship.
CREATING INCENTIVES FOR BETTER ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT. Incentive
structures must be addressed from both ends: creating significant disin-
centives for environmentally unsound practices as well as concrete and
meaningful rewards for good practices. The particular challenge for envi-
ronmental management is that many activities that degrade the environ-
ment provide immediate, direct benefits, whereas the benefits of
protecting the environment tend to be long term and diffuse. This
dilemma exists regardless of whether control of the resources is in the
hands of government, private companies, communities, or individuals. It
represents a form of market failure, which may have to be addressed
through government intervention such as subsidization.
Examples of policy measures to improve incentives for environmental
management include the following:
* Eliminating direct and indirect subsidies for ecologically inappropri-
ate activities (for example, compensation or relief for crop failure,
which reduces the grower's risk; free or highly subsidized infrastruc-
ture); conversely, directly and indirectly subsidizing ecologically sound
land uses to make them more competitive with destructive practices
(for example, specialized extension or marketing services for "conser-
vation farming")
* Eliminating policies that allow people to lay claim to public land by
clearing, draining, or otherwise altering it; conversely, instituting policies
that allow people to claim degraded land by restoring it ecologically
* Eliminating tax or other incentives that encourage environmentally
damaging agricultural or industrial activities; conversely, providing tax
and other incentives.
Aside from these indirect measures, in some cases it is appropriate to
provide incentives in the form of direct payment for environmental pro-
tection services. For example, in Costa Rica the Environmental Services
Payment Program pays landowners to maintain forest in critical water-
shed areas. Similar "land stewardship contracts" and direct payment pro-
grams are found in many countries. In the case of most developing
countries, global stakeholders must be mobilized to help pay for these
environmental services. This is the principle behind the Global Environ-
ment Facility, the Prototype Carbon Fund, and others. One key strategic
objective is to help African countries capture a substantial share of the
market for global environmental services such as biodiversity conserva-
tion and reduction of atmospheric greenhouse gases.



PRIORITIES FOR ACTION                                       77
PRoviDING THE TECHNiCAL TooLS FOR BETTER ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGE-
MENT. Better environmental management requires a number of technical
tools. These tools include up-to-date and accurate information, knowl-
edge management, economic analysis, and the appropriate technology to
translate the knowledge into usable practices.
Information. Probably the most important technical tool for environmen-
tal management is up-to-date, geo-referenced data on environmental con-
ditions and trends, analyzed and presented in a form that is relevant and
usable for decisionmakers. Putting in place mechanisms to collect, process,
and disseminate such information is an essential aspect of building an
enabling environment.,Experience shows, however, that such information
systems are often "the first to go" when funds become scarce, and they typ-
ically do not survive long past the closing of the externally financed pro-
jects that supported their creation. To be sustainable, they must either
become firmly institutionalized within government systems (for example,
environmental laws in some countries mandate regularly updated State of
the Environment Reports that require data inputs), or be strongly targeted
to producing information that has a clear commercial value with willing
buyers. In either case, the costs must be kept as low as possible.
Knowledge management. Information does not generate knowledge until
it is verified to be accuirate and is provided in a usable form. External sup-
port for environmental information often emphasizes providing state-of-
the-art data management technology such as Geographic Information
Systems, without adequately addressing the issue of the quality or relia-
bility of the data being fed into it. For example, many countries do not
have accurate and current local information concerning the extent, rate,
and location of deforestation and forest degradation, but rely on large-
scale and often outdated databases, such as the U.N. Food and Agricul-
ture Organization's satellite-based Global Forest Resource Assessment,
which provides information on a national level and is updated every 10
years. One important strategy for generating more up-to-date informa-
tion on an appropriate: scale is to ensure that environmental assessments
undertaken for proposed development projects include thorough base-
line studies. The scope:of these studies should extend beyond the project
site to the ecosystem scale and should cover all the elements of the
ecosystem and its functions. This is one form of Strategic Environmental
Assessment, which supports the ecosystem-based planning approach
called for in the WRI 2000-2001 report (2000).
Economic analysis. Another area of environmental information that has
received a great deal of attention by the World Bank and others is the eco-
nomic valuation of environmental goods and services. Although it is
important to have credible data on the current and potential economic
ramifications of deforestation, soil erosion, declining fish populations,



78  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
polluted water, and the like, an overemphasis on this type of environ-
mental economic analysis can be counterproductive. Although many val-
uation paradigms and models have been developed to try to capture the
broadest possible range of environmental goods and services, they can-
not reflect the full value of nonmonetizable and intangible outputs of
ecosystems, such as ecological stability and resilience, as the option value
of maintaining genetic diversity. Accepting such assessments as the pri-
mary basis for decisionmaking can lead to discounting these types of val-
ues relative to other, more easily monetized ones. Furthermore, economic
value information will have an influence only if decisions are made on a
rational economic basis. Often this is not the case, as political considera-
tions regularly outweigh strictly economic ones when it comes to resource
use and environmental management. Therefore, while economics-
related information is needed, its importance should not be overempha-
sized relative to other priorities, such as obtaining good baseline and
monitoring data on ecological resources and processes, and sociological
and political assessments that help reveal the interests of stakeholders
and the intricacies of decisionmaking processes.
Appropriate technology. Technology is often the means by which knowl-
edge, based on research, is translated into usable tools. Many resource
users are concerned about environmental degradation and would be pre-
pared to shift to less destructive practices if presented with viable alter-
natives. Barriers to the adoption of alternative technologies can include
the following:
Higher production costs (in terms of inputs of capital, labor, land, and
so on)
* Lower productivity
* Higher demands for knowledge and management skills
* Lack of information about the new technology
* Lack of experience and confidence in the new technology
* Custom and resistance to change.
Sometimes these barriers can be overcome through improvements in
the technology itself. In other cases they can be overcome by putting in
place positive incentives that compensate for negative ones (see box 4.4).
These incentives may be provided by the market (for example, premium
prices for organic or "green"-certified products) or through direct or indi-
rect subsidies that serve to "internalize" the externalities of environmen-
tal degradation.
PROVIDING THE INsTnLrrmONAL TOOLS FOR BETTER ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGE-
MENT. Technical solutions are often known but not implemented because



PRIORITIES FOR ACTION                                            79
Box 4.4. Integrated Pest Management as an Example of
Alternative Technology
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) refers to an approach in which a vari-
ety of measures are used to control the size of pest populations and
reduce their negative economic or health impacts. It includes ecological
manipulation aimed at making the local environment less hospitable to
the survival and multiplication of the pest species and direct interventions
to exclude or kill them. Synthetic chemical pesticides often represent one
tool, but they are used only as a last resort when other measures fail and
pest populations exceed a predetermined "economic threshold" where the
benefits from treatment are expected to exceed the costs.
While IPM is practiced in many cropping and disease vector control
systems around the world, its overall adoption rate remains relatively
low. Some of the reasons include the following:
* Effective, reliable nonchemical pest control measures may not yet have
been developed for the particular cropping system in a particular envi-
ronment.
* It can require more labor and more expensive inputs (for example,
selective pesticides).
* Productivity per unit of land may be reduced (for example, through
the need for intercropping, crop rotation, or the use of lower-yielding
crops selected for their pest resistance).
* It requires active observation and management (for example, scouting
for pests, calculating thresholds).
* Far fewer promoters are disseminating information on IPM than on
chemical pesticides.
Where IPM has been adopted, it has often been because there was no
alternative (for example, crashes in cotton production in Texas and
Mexico and rice production in Indonesia because of an explosion of
pesticide-resistant pests following the! destruction of natural enemies
through excessive pesticide use), or because growers have been able to tap
premium markets for crops grown without pesticides (for example, pro-
duction of organic cotton and vegetables by smallholders in Uganda). In
other cases education land awareness raising have succeeded in convinc-
ing growers that the longer-term benefits of adopting an IPM approach
compensate for the short-term costs.
of institutional obstacles and constraints. Institutions-in the broad sense
of "rules of the game" rather than just organizational structures-are the
means for translating intention and policy into collective action. Despite
a great deal of targeted support from the World Bank and other donors,



80  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
institutional structures across the region generally remain weak and inef-
fective, as well as being heavily dependent on financial and technical
assistance. To achieve greater and more lasting impacts in the future, we
must learn from past experience and acknowledge and explicitly address
a number of important "real world" constraints and obstacles, such as
those outlined in table 4.2.
Aside from these long-standing and general issues, the evolving
African context and new strategic approaches to environmental manage-
ment in Africa present new institutional challenges, such as the following:
* Pursuing intrinsically cross-sectoral objectives within the typically sec-
toral organizational framework of government
* Promoting and implementing environmental management in the con-
text of decentralization and Community-Driven Development
* Achieving cooperation and coordination in planning and implementa-
tion across political and jurisdictional boundaries
* Introducing "adaptive management" through an effective planning-
monitoring-replanning cycle
* Achieving affordability and sustainability.
Mobilizing Resources for Environmental Management
Environmental management is habitually underresourced because envi-
ronmental services are undervalued or treated as free goods, both in pub-
lic policy and in private transactions. A key objective over the next 5 to 10
years will be to address this market distortion and generate sustainable
funding for environmental management by "internalizing" environmen-
tal externalities in the form of user fees, taxes, and other economic and
market-based instruments. This includes developing and capturing a
substantial share of emerging markets for local and global environmental
services such as water supply and purification, biodiversity conservation,
and carbon sequestration.
African governments are putting a priority on reducing their depen-
dency on international aid and increasing the role of private sector
investment as an engine of economic development. The same objective
must be applied to environmental management, as international aid is
variable and finite and will never be adequate to meet the full scope of
the needs. There is an important international trend toward increased
corporate commitment to environmental stewardship and social equity,
fueled in large part by consumer demand and a stronger regulatory
environment. This includes cleaning up the results of past pollution;
introducing more environmentally benign production methods and
technologies in industry, agriculture, and energy generation; and seek-



Table 4.2. Institutional Issues and Responses
Institutional issue                                                    Proposed strategic responses
Institutional development and capacity building is a complex  Select phased programs with longer time frames.
undertaking that requires a sustained political and financial
commitment. Often it involves fundamental changes in      Focus explicitly on issues of institutional culture.
individual attitudes and institutional cultures.
This is much harder to achieve than bureaucratic
restructuring and generally takes significantly longer
than expected.
Institutional development and strengthening often involve  Develop an explicit strategy for "managing the losers" in any
loss of "turf," loss of control over valuable assets, and  institutional change, that is, identify the interests that may be
other threats to vested interests.                        threatened and find ways to either address their concerns or
neutralize their influence.
Environment is-ihescapably political.-Natural resources are  Analyze and take into account the political roots and ramifica-
often used to obtain, reward, or demonstrate political support,  tions of environmental management issues when engaging in
and stakeholders who protest environmental degradation    country dialogue or designing interventions.
may be regarded as politically motivated.
There are no proven, universally applicable models of     While trying to learn from the experiences of others, tailor solu-
effective environmental institutional structures and      tions suitable to the historical, social, and political contexts of
systems to follow.                                        the governments and stakeholders themselves.
Be aware that a certain amount of trial and error, as well as
compromise (accepting less than ideal solutions), is inevitable
and must be accommodated through flexible program design.
(Table continues on thefollowing page)



Table 4.2. (continued)
Institutional issue                                                     Proposed strategic responses
Most African governments are still geared to a highly     Encourage and assist client governments to (a) simplify and
"command-and-control"-oriented approach to managing       streamline regulatory systems as much as possible (focusing on
private sector activity, despite their general lack of capacity  those controls that give the most return per unit effort) and (b)
(and sometimes political will) to regulate it effectively.  explore alternative models based on incentives, self-regulation,
The effectiveness of environmental laws and regulations   and decentralized controls.
is limited by factors such as low fines and penalties, the
absence of clear environmental standards, inadequate
resources allocated to regulatory and monitoring functions,
weak judicial systems, interference by political and other
vested interests, and a generally weak "culture of
compliance" with government regulations.
The most effective weapon against environmental           Understand that environmental education and building stake-
degradation is a large, informed, and empowered           holder consultation into Environmental Assessments and simi-
constituency. In many countries, however, affected people  lar processes are important, but only part of the agenda. They
are presently poorly informed or lack the means, influence,  must be complemented by financial, technical, and policy level
and organization to demand accountability and action.     support to enable the various stakeholders to play their roles
effectively. For example, constitutional provisions and laws that
establish an individual's right to a healthy environment can
enable citizens to mount legal challenges against destructive
actions or misallocation of resources by private or public sector
actors.
It is difficult to evaluate the progress and impact of    Note that monitoring and evaluation of institutional capacity-
institutional development actions. Unlike direct environ-  building projects must accommodate subjective forms of data
mental interventions that can be evaluated in terms of    and reporting (avoiding reliance solely on narrow checklists),



tangible and (in principle) objectively measurable impacts  use leading indicators to identify trends, and take a long-term
on the ground, institutional capacity-building programs   view of visible impacts.
tend to use process indicators. Efforts to reduce processes
to outputs to provide a checklist for monitoring progress
can create a misleading picture. For example, commonly
used objective indicators such as the official adoption of
policies, enactment of legislation and regulations, and
establishment of organizational structures have little
meaning without an assessment of subjective aspects
such as their quality and-sustainability.



84  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
ing opportunities for environmentally and socially positive investments.
African countries can and should benefit from this trend; they must also
take measures to avoid becoming a "dumping ground" for private inter-
ests seeking to avoid responsibility and regulations imposed by other
countries.



5
Implementing the Strategy
This volume will serve as a guiding framework for the World Bank's
Africa Region to achieve objectives at four levels:
* Mainstreaming environment in economic development
* Building an enabling environment and strengthening environmental
management capacity within the region at all levels
* Further enhancing the environmental quality of the Bank's lending
operations, including both project-based and nonproject lending
* Exercising selectivity.
The Implementation Matrix (appendix A) summarizes implementa-
tion priorities based on the main strategic objectives, the urgent issues
relating to them, and the desired future situation (desired outcomes). It
identifies key policy and operational-level actions needed to improve
environmental conditions in the short term, and to build an enabling
environment for environmental management in the longer term. Progress
at the regional level is; to be measured in terms of the numbers or per-
centages of countries where such actions have been undertaken. The
baseline values for these indicators (fiscal 2002 status) are to be filled in
through consultation with country teams and sectoral units by June 2002.
Where the information to do so credibly is lacking, either the indicator
will be dropped as nonessential or work will be initiated to obtain the
necessary information. The ARES Business Plan for fiscal 2002 (appendix
B) follows the overall structure of theMWorld Bank Environment Strategy,
that is, categorizing objectives under the headings of Strengthen Analyt-
ical and Advisory Services, Improve Project and Program Design,
Improve the Safeguard System, and Support Institutional Alignment.
Under the objective "Undertake systematic monitoring and reporting on
performance," the main activity will be completing the fiscal 2002 base-
line indicators for the Implementation Matrix, against which future
progress will be tracked.
85



86  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
The following sections provide the background behind the Implemen-
tation Matrix and the Business Plan.
Mainstreaming Environment in Economic Development
Mainstreaming means building environmental objectives, actions, and
targets into macroeconomic and sectoral strategies and also into
("nonenvironmental") operational programs and projects. This may be
regarded as a four-step process. The first step involves data collection and
analysis to demonstrate and quantify the contribution of environmental
resources and services to economic stability, development, and poverty
alleviation, and conversely the actual and opportunity costs of continu-
ing environmental degradation. Only when key actors and stakeholders
agree on the overall objectives of environmental management and are
committed to it can mainstreaming become a reality. The second step is to
identify and analyze alternative development options and to identify-
and, to the extent possible, quantify-the costs, benefits, and tradeoffs
associated with each. The third step is to mobilize the technical and insti-
tutional tools needed to support the implementation of environmentally
favorable options. Finally, the fourth step is to monitor and track impacts,
based on realistic indicators, and apply principles of adaptive manage-
ment to ensure continued progress toward agreed-on objectives.
Activities under the ARES for mainstreaming environment will there-
fore include the following:
• Developing and piloting tools and models for country-level analysis of
environmental resources, trends, and conditions, with a particular
emphasis on aspects directly linked to causation and alleviation of
poverty. One key element is strengthening coverage of environment and
natural resource issues in the analysis of the determinants of poverty in
the context of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), and then in
the operational strategies and programs emerging from this analysis.
* Developing and piloting tools and models for analysis and compari-
son of alternative economic development scenarios based on an assess-
ment of environmentally related opportunities and constraints.
* Enhancing environmental sustainability in key sectors by identifying
key environmental linkages, improving incentive structures, introduc-
ing and disseminating information, and supporting appropriate tech-
nology transfer both through direct investment and by removing
barriers.
* Introducing an "integrated ecosystem management" approach, partic-
ularly in natural resource management and spatial development ini-
tiatives. In some areas this will include an emphasis on strengthening



IMPLEMENTING THE STRATEGY                                    87
subregional cooperation for the management of transborder resources
and ecological systems.
Developing meaningful, and piloting the use of, practical indicators
for assessing environmental conditions and trends and environmen-
tally related poverty impacts. At the program level, more objective
indicators are needed to assess the extent and quality of integration of
environment within sectoral strategies, project and program designs,
portfolio assessments, and the like.
Consistent with regional objectives and the World Bank Environment
Strategy, a primary objective will be mainstreaming environment within
key strategic and planning instruments such as PRSPs and CASs. This
should be reflected at the operational level in the form of environmental
objectives and measures being incorporated into macroeconomic support
operations such as Poverty Reduction Strategy Credits, Public Expendi-
ture Review Credits, Structural and Sectoral Adjustment operations, and
sectoral investment programs. To be able to engage meaningfully in these
strategic exercises and operations, a solid groundwork must be laid in the
form of up-front analytical work. To some extent this calls for targeted
environmental studies, but it is equally important to ensure that relevant
environmental issues are covered in other economic and sector work
(ESW), including cross-cutting work such as poverty assessments.
For mainstreaming at the macroeconomic and policy levels, priority will
be given to countries where the link,ages between environmental action
and poverty alleviation are strong and well recognized, as reflected in a
willingness on the part of both the!client governments and the Bank's
country teams and management to support the necessary analysis and con-
sultation processes and to incorporate the results of these processes into
their strategic thinking. Other considerations include putting a priority on
countries where the Bahk has a strong ongoing dialogue and a substantial
and diverse lending program, as these provide leverage and opportunities
for engagement and action across a range of sectors and programs.
For mainstreaming at an operational level, the main targets will be mul-
tisectoral development programs, such as community- and district-level
action plans and spatial development initiatives, including those involv-
ing transborder resource management and integration. Highest priority
will be given to (a) opportunities to, influence, from an early stage, the
development of sectoral strategies and programs with a strong linkage
between environmental issues and poverty impacts (for example, water
resource management, energy, urban development, land redistribution);
(b) situations where the policy framework provides, or may be influenced
to provide, an enabling environment for local stakeholders to participate
in land and resource management decisions; and (c) situations where



88  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
ongoing or prospective development pressures present an urgent threat to
locally and/or globally significant environmental assets and there may be
an opportunity to propose more sustainable development options.
Building an Enabling Environment and In-Country
Capacity for Environmental Management
As discussed above, the disappointing record on in-country institutional
capacity building can and must be improved (see table 4.2). Specific
actions that the Bank will take to support effective capacity building
include the following:
* Building and supporting environmental constituencies, including
local NGOs, professional associations, and environmentally oriented
journalists; raising awareness and knowledge among political leaders
and the like
* Orienting Environmental Support Programs to ensure development of
broad-based capacity, including sectoral agencies, decentralized and
community levels, the private sector, and civil society
* Complementing regulatory instruments with other approaches,
including financial incentives, self-regulation and public/private part-
nership, and civil action
* Establishing sustainable subregional and regional networks and insti-
tutions to capture "efficiencies of scale" for technical fields such as EA
and Environmental Information Systems
* Strengthening and supporting environmental objectives, capacity, and
programs of organizations working for subregional integration and
coordination
* Developing career paths and opportunities for environmental profes-
sionals in the region.
Mobilizing resources to maintain the capacity for environmental man-
agement over the long term remains one of the greatest challenges, par-
ticularly in developing countries. Key actions for the Bank are as follows:
* Building government commitment for support for environmental
management by demonstrating the development and poverty linkages
* Supporting the development of mechanisms to "internalize" environ-
mental externalities and ensure that users pay a greater part of the cost
of environmental services, including both maintaining ecological func-
tions (for example, water supply) and absorbing waste products (the
"polluter pays" principle)



IMPLEMENTING THE STRATEGY                                 89
* Enhancing African,countries' access to markets for global environ-
mental services by helping them to identify opportunities and elimi-
nate barriers and obstacles, and by serving as an "honest broker" to
bring parties together and facilitate negotiations
* Supporting policy reforms that create an enabling environment for
environmentally sound private sector investment and restricting and
discouraging environmentally damaging investment
* Supporting the development of long-term financing mechanisms such
as trust funds.
Enhancing the Environmental Quality of Bank Lending
Two specific aspects of environmental quality of the lending portfolio can
be identified: (a) ensuring compliance with EA and other environmental
and social Safeguard Policies (SPs), as well as going beyond the "do no
harm" nature of the SPs to mobilize Bank lending as an active, positive
force for improving environmental conditions and management; and (b)
incorporating concrete objectives an'd targets within the logframes of
Bank-financed operations, and ensuring that everything possible is done
to achieve them. There is room for improvement in both of these areas. At
the same time, in an environment of' limited resources, quality improve-
ment goes hand in hand with selectivity-focusing greater attention on a
smaller number and range of high-priority initiatives.
Environmental Assessment and Safeguard Policies
The Bank is widely recognized, evenlamong its critics, as a leader among
bilateral and multilateral agencies with respect to its progressive and far-
reaching EA requirements and its environmental and social SPs. Our
application of these policies is sometimes questioned, occasionally to the
extreme, when dissatisfied stakeholders bring cases to the Inspection
Panel. Most criticism focuses on the implementation of the Environmen-
tal Management Plans and Resettlement Plans (and the quality of the
Bank's supervision of' this implementation), and on the fact that a sub-
stantial portion of our lending portfolio (particularly adjustment lending)
is not covered by the EA or other SPs. These issues are regularly raised
within the Bank as well as externally.
Proposed actions to improve the Africa Region's performance and
impact in relation to EA and SPs include the following:
* Strengthening "ownership," both within the Bank and among our
clients, by increasing awareness and knowledge not only of the con-



90  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
tents and provisions of the Bank's environmental and social SPs but
also of the reasoning and experience behind them
* Improving the integration of environmental and social assessment and
mitigation, including a particular emphasis on poverty linkages
* Providing guidance for task teams on issues that frequently emerge as
confusing or problematic in the application of SPs (for example, inter-
preting the requirements and putting in place an acceptable "Process
Framework," as called for in the recently revised Involuntary Resettle-
ment Policy)
* Increasing support for, and monitoring of, the implementation and
impacts of mitigation measures identified through the EA process, as
outlined in project Environmental Management Plans
* Strengthening in-country and regional EA capacity through develop-
ment of policy, legislation, and institutional development; technical
training; and professional networks including both public and private
sector players
* Developing tools and piloting the application of "strategic" environ-
mental assessment (SEA) tools to the Bank's "nonproject" lending
instruments such as budget support (SALs, sector adjustment loans,
PRSCs, PERCs), sectoral investment programs, long-term program-
matic lending (for example, horizontal and vertical Adaptable Pro-
gram Loans), and decentralized multisectoral operations such as
Community-Driven Development initiatives and social action funds.
Quality of Design, Implementation, and Supervision of
Lending Operations
A recent internal review of quality issues in Africa Region lending iden-
tified the need for an improvement in design ("quality at entry") and
supervision, both for environmental projects and for environmental
aspects of lending operations in general. Specifically, objectives should be
more concrete and better articulated, performance indicators and targets
should be more specific and measurable, and project supervision should
give greater attention to reviewing and reporting on these indicators and
objectives. The review also noted that risk assessments should be more
frank and realistic, particularly with regard to the possible impacts of
constraints such as inadequate high-level government and stakeholder
commitment, lack of supporting policies, and weak institutional capacity.
Task teams, country teams, and the Africa Region Environment and
Social Development Unit (AFTES) have a shared responsibility for
achieving these quality improvements.
Experience to date indicates the importance of moving toward longer-
term, programmatic operations that combine identification of concrete, sub-



IMPLEMENTING THE STRATEGY                                  91
stantive goals for improving environmental quality with a flexible, "adaptive
management" approach to implementation. Furthermore, Bank lending is
moving increasingly toward nonproject models, including policy-based
lending on the one hand, and CDD approaches, including social action
funds, on the other. These more open-ended lending models and instru-
ments call for new approaches to quality assurance, focusing on processes
and impacts rather than the design and implementation of specific activities.
Exercising Selectivity
Given the scope of the environmental agenda and the large number of
countries in the region, the Bank will have to exercise selectivity both in
the nature of its interventions and in the countries where it concentrates
its financial and human resources. In some cases this will mean that ini-
tiatives which are regarded as relatively low priority, or as unlikely to
succeed given capacity, political, or other constraints, will not be under-
taken. In other cases, it will mean that the Bank will seek partners to
undertake initiatives that are important and timely, but for which the
Bank is not the best source of support. General guidance is provided in
other strategic documents, such as the Joint Operational Strategy for Bio-
diversity Conservation and Improved Forest Management (JOS), and the
Integrated Coastal Zone Management Strategy. For example, the JOS rec-
ommends priorities for Bank involvement in the forest management sec-
tor in various countries, based on factors such as the economic and social
importance of forests'and their biodiversity and the suitability of the
existing policy framework. Beyond this, decisions must be based on
country-specific, up-front analysis of!the urgency and complexity of envi-
ronmental issues and the commitment and capacity to undertake them.
Many of the Bank's! stakeholders and partners regard the Bank's com-
parative advantage as being at the level of influencing policy, both
through technical assistance and dialogue and through linkage with
large-scale budget support and sectoral investment programs. The role of
individual investment operations is; likely to decline within the Bank's
portfolio over the next decade, with those that remain being placed in the
context of longer-term, multidonor umbrellas such as the Comprehensive
Development Framework and PRSCs.
Over the past decade GEF support has been an important catalyst for
raising interest in the environmental agenda and triggering environmen-
tal investment in many countries. Until recently there has been little pres-
sure for selectivity in the allocation of GEF resources, as there appeared
to be more money available for Africa than the region could readily
absorb. This is now changing, as demand for GEF resources has increased
rapidly while donor commitments have not kept pace. The likely entry of



92  BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: THE AFRICA REGION ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY
other Implementing Agencies may further reduce the amount of GEF
resources channeled through the Bank in the future. In addition, as out-
lined in the Africa Region's GEF strategy, priority is now increasingly
being given to using GEF resources to support broad-based, multidonor
programs, rather than stand-alone GEF or blended GEF-IDA projects.
Resources for Implementing the Strategy
Financial and technical resources for implementing the ARES are
expected to come from (a) country program budgets for country-specific
ESW and operations; (b) regional budget allocations for implementation
of the ARES and associated environmental strategies,9 for enhancing the
understanding and application of Safeguard Policies, and for studies and
other initiatives with wider regional application, such as development
and testing of new methodologies and tools; (c) Bank-wide instruments
such as the Mainstreaming Fund for Environment, the Institutional
Development Facility, research grants, the GEF, and other multinational
and bilateral trust funds; and (d) financial and in-kind support in the con-
text of strategic partnerships.
The GEF will continue to represent an important source of support for
environmental action, with an emphasis on using it strategically to max-
imize benefits to regional and local objectives. Regional priorities and
opportunities for such local and global linkages are identified in the
Bank's Strategic Frameworks and the Joint Operational Strategy for Bio-
diversity Conservation and Improved Forest Management in Africa, and
in the Integrated Land-Water Management Action Program in Africa
(ILWMAP) currently under development. The GEF Operational Program
# 12 provides new opportunities to obtain GEF support for reversing land
degradation trends, through an Integrated Ecosystem Management
approach that links land management with biodiversity conservation
and carbon storage. GEF support is also likely to be particularly helpful
in facilitating transfrontier initiatives, which are becoming increasingly
important with the adoption of ecosystem-level programs.
Strategic Partnerships
Strategic partnerships will be vital to the implementation of the ARES, as
its challenges transcend the Bank's own capacity. Currently the Africa
Region participates in several Bank-wide initiatives as well as a number
of Africa-specific partnerships with a variety of development partners.
Existing partnerships include the World Bank/World Wildlife Fund
Forestry Alliance, the Critical Ecosystems Partnership Fund executed by
Conservation International, the Soil Fertility Initiative, the Nile Basin Ini-



IMPLEMENTING THE STRATEGY                                      93
tiative, the Central African Regional Environmental Information Man-
agement Program (REIMP), and the Regional Program in the Traditional
Energy Sector, all of which involve several international partners. In
addition to traditional arrangements with bilateral donors and interna-
tional NGOs, opportunities for partnerships with the private sector are
likely to grow as external (or intraregional) private sector investment is
becoming more significant in many African countries. At a global level
the private sector is increasingly seeking to demonstrate a commitment to
environmental stewardship and social equity. There are important oppor-
tunities to mobilize substantial technical and financial resources within
the private sector, for technology transfer, training, EA, environmental
cleanup, and program investment. Because this is a relatively new type of
collaboration with the potential for conflicts of interest and other issues,
the Bank will need to develop a policy framework and guiding principles
for engaging in these types of partnerships.
Over time the Bank will phase out its direct participation in some of its
existing partnerships as the activities they support become self-sustaining,
or if it is determined that they do not make the best use of the Bank's com-
parative advantages or that their objectives lie outside the Bank's main
priorities. Key criteria for selecting continuing and new partnerships
include ensuring that they address the countries' and the Bank's strategic
priorities and are in the best interests of the client, that administrative
costs are minimized but fully supported, and that they are completely in
accordance with the Bank's Safeguard and fiduciary policies and obliga-
tions.



Appendix A
Africa Region Environment Strategy Implementation Matrix
Required actions                 Performance monitoringa
Desired                       Operational!    Impact        Baseline  Target
Objective      Key issues      outcomes        Policy         investment      indicator     FY2002   FY2010
Direct actionsfor environmental management
Maintain and   Land degra-     Erosion and    Land tenure    Agricultural   Number of
improve sus-   dation and      degradation    reformb        research and   countries
tainable nat-  desertifica-    of arable                     extension tar-  with progres-
ural          tion            lands           Eliminate      geting (a)     sive land
resource-                      reduced or    incentives      sustainable    tenure poli-
based liveli-                  halted         and sub-       agricultural   cies (a) offi-
hoods                                         sidies for     intensifica-   cially adopt-
Fertility of   inappropriate  tion and (b)    ed and (b)
degraded       land use        management     under imple-
arable lands                   of marginal    mentation
restored       Integrated     lands and
regional       soils           Number of
Land restora-  planning                       countries that
tion and sus-  (including      Support for    have made
tainable land  land use        community-     policy
management     planning), on   based land     reforms to
articulated as  ecosystem     restoration     reduce or
an important   scale           action         remove sub-
objective in                                  sidies for
agricultural                                  nonsustain-
able natural
resource use



strategies                                    Number of
and pro-                                      countries
grams                                         with sustain-
able land use
as an explicit
objective of
agricultural
policy
Numnber of
countries in
which agri-
cultural
research and
extension
explicitly
include sus-
tainability
objectives
Depletion or    Rational allo-  Eliminate      Use multi-     Number of
deterioration   cation of      incentives      stakeholder,   countries
of surface      water          and             Integrated     with water
water and       resources       subsidies for  Coastal Zone   resource
groundwater                    inefficient     Management     management
Efficient use  and low-        framework      policies that
or conserva-   value water     for all inter-  explicitly
tion of water  uses            ventions       address (a)
resources



Africa Region Environment Strategy Implementation Matrix (continued)
Required actions                  Performance monitoringa
Desired                        Operationall     Impact        Baseline   Target
Objective       Key issues      outcomes         Policy         investment       indicator     FY2002    FY2010
Maintain and                    Water bodies    Reorient        Water          sustainable
improve sus-                    cleaned up      water policy    resource       use and (b)
tainable nat-                   and pro-        objectives      assessments    ecological
ural                            tected from    from focus      (cross-bound-   value of
resource-                       pollution       on delivery     ary where      water
based liveli-                                  to focus on      appropriate)
hoods                           Sustainable     water                          Number of
(continued)                     management      resource        Efficient      countries
of water sup-   management      (water-spar-    with water
ply and qual-                  ing), user-      quality stan-
ity articu-     Expand cost     controlled      dards and
lated as an     recovery       irrigation       regulations
important       objectives                      under imple-
objective of    beyond sup-     Water quality   mentation
water and       ply/delivery    monitoring
related poli-   costs to                        Number of
cies (e.g.,    include          Improve         countries
agriculture,    value/oppor-    wastewater     introducing
energy,         tunity costs   treatment        water-effi-
industry,       of the water    infrastructure  cient irriga-
trade)          itself                         tion tech-
nologies and
Establish                       user-group
industrial                      management



policies                       Number of
requiring                      ongoing
water efflu-                   transfrontier
ents to meet                   water man-
suitable min-                  agement ini-
imum quality                   tiatives
standards
Incorporate
traisfrontier-
water
resource
management
objectives
(beyond exist-
mg tocus on
flow volumes
of transna-
tional rivers)
Ensure a
direct linkage
between
development
of water sup-
ply infra-
structure and
wastewater
treatment
infrastructure



Africa Region Environment Strategy Implementation Matrix (continued)
Required actions                  Performance monitoringa
Desired                        Operationall     Impact        Baseline   Target
Objective       Key issues      outcomes         Policy         investment       indicator     FY2002    FY2010
Loss of pro-     Deforestation   Reform poli-    Surveys and    Number of
ductive nat-    in priority      cies/subsi-     inventories to  countries that
ural ecosys-     areas slowed,   dies that       identify nat-  have made
tems             halted, or     encourage        ural ecosys-   policy
reversed        uneconomic      tems of high    reforms to
conversion of   economic        reduce or
Conversion      natural habi-   value           eliminate
and degrada-   tats and                         subsidies for
tion of key     short-term      Studies and     uneconomic
rangelands      exploitation    assessments to  conversion of
slowed, halt-   of natural      clarify impacts  natural habi-
ed, or          resources       of loss of nat-  tats
reversed                        ural ecosys-
Decentralize    tems on the     Number of
Degradation     and devolve     poor            countries
of wetlands     natural                         with proac-
and aquatic     resource        Strengthen     tive policies
habitats        owner-          communities'    and/or pro-
(marine and     ship/man-       capacity for    grams
fresh water),   agement to      sustainable     encouraging
and decline    local/com-       natural         or subsidiz-
in fish popu-   munity levels   resources      ing mainte-
lations                         management      nance of nat-
slowed,         Establish                       ural habitats



halted, or     legal mecha-    Multistake-
reversed       nisms for       holder         Number of
establishing   Integrated      countries
Maintenance    and protect-    Coastal Zone   with declin-
of productive  ing commu-      Management     ing deforesta-
natural        nity reserves   initiatives    tion rates
ecosystems
articulated as  Subsidize                     Number of
an objective   landowners                     countries
both at the    for maintain-                  with wet-
national level  ing natural                   lands conser-
(e.g., in      habitats that                  vation poli-
National       provide                        cies under
Biodiversity   social or                      implementa-
Strategy and   environmen-                    tion
Action Plan)   tal goods
and in key                                    Number of
sectoral poli-                                ongoing
cies (e.g.,                                   Integrated
agriculture,                                  Coastal Zone
water,                                        Management
forestry, fish-                               programs
eries)
Improve        Environmen-     Reduced inci-  Develop         Cross-         Number of
environmen-   tally related    dence and      health poli-    sectoral       countries
tal health     diseases        severity of    cies that       health proj-   with health
waterborne     emphasize      ects (focus     policies that
and water-     addressing      on reducing    target envi-



Africa Region Environment Strategy Implementation Matrix (continued)
Required actions                  Performance monitoring'
Desired                        Operationall     Impact        Baseline   Target
Objective       Key issues      outcomes         Policy         investment      indicator      FY2002    FY2010
Improve                         related dis-    health prob-    sources of     ronmental
environmen-                     eases;          lems of the     environmen-    disease pre-
tal health                      respiratory     poor and        tal disease)   vention
(continued)                     diseases       take a cross-
sectoral        Energy proj-    Number of
approach        ects includ-    countries
ing promo-      with declin-
Provide sub-    tion of        ing rates of
sidies to       reduced-        water-related
encourage       emissions       disease
adoption of     woodstoves
alternative     and alterna-    Number of
domestic        tives to        countries
fuels           woodfuels       with declin-
for home use    ing rates of
respiratory
disease
Pollution and    Air and        Transport        Transporta-    Number of
solid and        water pollu-   and indus-       tion and       countries
hazardous       tion from       trial policies   industrial     with air qual-
wastes (lo-      major indus-    to reduce       projects       ity standards
cally signifi-  trial point     toxic and        include emis-  for (a) par-
cant)            sources         particulate    sions reduc-    ticulates and
reduced         emissions



tion compo-    (b) toxic
Solid waste    Policies to     nents          emissions
accumulation   enable and
in urban       encourage       Urban proj-    Number of
environ-       participation   ects with      major cities
ments          of private      waste man-     with improv-
reduced        sector and      agement        ing air qual-
civil society   components     ity indicators
Biohazards     in waste       involving
contained      management      gov-ernment,   Number-of
private sec-   cities with
Develop bio-    tor, and end-  urban waste
hazard polh-    user partner-  programs
cies and        ship          involving
implementa-                    public/pri-
thon mea-       Medical        vate/user
sures           waste man-     partnership
agement
components     Number of
in health proj-  health proj-
ects, includ-  ects that
ing AIDS       include bio-
prevention     hazard man-
agement
Loss of tradi-  Important       Health polh-   Projects to    Number of
tional medi-    role of tradi-  cies incorpo-  maintain and   countries
cines           tional medi-   rate tradi-     strengthen     with health
cine recog-    tional medi-    knowledge,     policies



Africa Region Environment Strategy Implementation Matrix (continued)
Required actions                 Performance monitoringa
Desired                       Operational!     Impact        Baseline  Target
Objective      Key issues      outcomes        Policy          investment      indicator     FY2002    FY2010
Improve                        nized in       cine as an      effectiveness,  including
environmen-                    health sector  area for gov-   and availabil-  traditional
tal health                                    ernment sup-    ity of tradi-  medicine
(continued)                    Important      port            tional medi-
habitats and                   cine           Number of
populations    National                       programs
of medicinal   Biodiversity    Projects for   supporting
plants con-    Strategy/Ac-    protection,    development
served/sus-    tion Plan       sustainable    and sustain-
tainably       identify areas  management,    able use of
managed        and species of  and (where     traditional
high priority   appropriate)   medicines
Alternative    for traditional  ex situ culti-
sources of     medicine        vation of
medicinal                      medicinal
plants devel-  Bioprospect-    plant and ani-
oped (ex situ  ing policies    mal species
cultivation)   aimed at
ensuring        Community/
Traditional/   both conser-    private sector
indigenous     vation and      partnerships
medical        commu-          for develop-
knowledge      nity/national   ing tradition-
retained and   benefit         al medicine
disseminated                   technologies



Reduce vul-     High degree      Climate-        Agricultural,    Development      Number of
nerability to   of climate       related liveli-  land, hous-     of cross-        countries
climate         variability      hood risks      ing, and other   sectoral risk    with effec-
extremes and    (especially      reduced         policies pro-    management       tive climate
natural disas-  precipita-                       mote match-      strategies       forecasting/
ters            tion-            People able     ing land use     and climate      dissemina-
droughts and     to cope with     with land       change miti-    tion systems
flooding) and    normal range     potential (e.g.,  gation strate-
associated       of climate       discourage      gies             Number of
livelihood--     variation        cultivation or                   countries
impacts          without          building in     Improved         with Poverty
severe liveli-  high-risk        systems for     Reduction
hood impacts    areas; support   climate fore-   Strategies
transhumant      casting and     that include
pastoralism      dissemina-      mitigation of
inarid and       tion of fore-   climate varia-
semi-arid        casts to users  fion and cli-
areas)           (particularly   mate change
at time frame
Agricultural     for predicting
policies re-     crop growing
sponsive to      conditions)
natural cli-
mate varia-
tion (e.g., in-
clude drought
management
provisions to
assist reduc-
tion of herds)



Africa Region Environment Strategy Implementation Matrix (continued)
Required actions                   Performance monitoringa
Desired                         Operationall      Impact        Baseline   Target
Objective       Key issues       outcomes         Policy         investment       indicator       FY2002    FY2010
Reduce vul-     High human       Human and       Disaster risk   Disaster risk    Number of
nerability to  impacts of       livelihood       preparedness    preparedness     countries
climate         extreme cli-     impacts of      and manage-     initiatives      with natural
extremes and    mate events      extreme         ment strate-    (emphasizing     disaster risk
natural disas-  ("natural dis-   events/nat-     gies.           up-front pre-    preparedness
ters            asters")         ural disasters                  vention,         strategies
(continued)                      reduced         "Safety net"    short-term       and initia-
systems         safety net,     tives
(including      and medium-
insurance       term restora-    Number of
schemes         tion of liveli-  countries
accessible to   hoods)           with climate-
small hold-                      related
ers)                             "safety net"
systems
"Beyond                          and/or
safety net"                      accessible
systems to                       insurance
assist recov-                    schemes
ery of pro-
ductive
livelihoods



Maintain       Continuing       Biological      National        Support        Number of
global envi-   and acceler-     resources       Biodiversity   (cross-         countries
ronmental      ating loss of   important for    Strategies     sectoral, par-  with natural
values, with   biodiversity     livelihoods     and Action     ticipatory)     resources
equitable dis-                  and eco-        Plans pre-      development    management
tribution of   Funds avail-     nomic devel-   pared and        and imple-     policies that
costs and      able for bio-    opment main-    adopted at      mentation of   support com-
benefits       diversity       tained and       senior gov-     National       munity-
conservation     sustainably    errnent lev-    Biodiversity    based natural
often not        managed        els (beyond     Strategies and  resource
used effi-                      direct envi-    Action Plans    management
ciently          High-priority  ronmental       based on
(repeating       globally sig-  agencies and    principles of   Number of
failed mod-      nificant bio-  interests)      the Strategic   countries
els; lack of     diversity                      Frameworks      with com-
monitoring       assets identi-  Naturaf        for Bio-        pleted
feedback)        fied and pro-  resources       diversity       National
tected          management      Conservation    Biodiversity
(emphasizing    policies pro-   and Im-        Strategies
ecosystem/      vide incen-     proved Forest   and Action
habitat-level  tives for sus-   Management      Plans
protection,     tamiable use   in Sub-
not species     and conserva-   Saharan         Number of
level)         tion rather      Africa         biodiversity
than short-                     conservation
Strong          term exploita-  Include bio-    support activ-
national and    tion            diversity      ities designed
local con-                      conservation   based on the
stituencies     Policies to     components      principles set
support com-    within natu-



Africa Region Environment Strategy Implementation Matrix (continued)
Required actions                  Performance monitoringa
Desired                        Operational!     Impact        Baseline   Target
Objective       Key issues      outcomes         Policy         investment       indicator     FY2002    FY2010
Maintain                        for biodiver-   munity-         ral resource-  out in the
global envi-                    sity conser-    based natural   related oper-  Strategic
ronmental                       vation          resources       ations         Frameworks
values, with                                    management      (including     for
equitable dis-                                                 leveraging      Biodiversity
tribution of                                    Land-related    GEF and        Conservation
costs and                                       and natural     other cofi-    and
benefits                                       resources        nancing)       Improved
(continued)                                     management                     Forest
policies                        Management
explicitly
articulate bio-
diversity con-
servation as
an objective
Climate          Livelihood      Agricultural    Develop        Number of
change and       impacts of      and other rel-  cross-         countries
its impacts      climate         evant policies  sectoral, par-  with climate
change mini-    and strate-     ticipatory cli-  change miti-
mized and       gies incorpo-   mate change     gation strate-
mitigated       rate climate    mitigation      gies (a) pre-
change issues   strategies and  pared and
programs        (b) under



Sub-Saharan    Energy poli-    Develop and    implementa-
African coun-  cies incorpo-  implement       tion
tries actively  rate reduc-    initiatives to
engaged in     tion of green-  reduce green-
reducing       house gas       house gas
atmospheric    emissions as    emissions
greenhouse     an objective
gases          and provide
appropriate
incentives
Actions for building an enabling environment for enlvironniental managemzent
Policy frame-  Current         Policy frame-  Review and      Introduce a    Number of
work           macroeco-       works iden-    revise rele-    longer time    countries
nomic and       tity environ-  vant policies,  frame for      with an artic-
sectoral polh-  mental sus-    articulate      country        ulated 10- to
cies favor      tainability as  macroeco-      develop-       15-year
short-term      an objective    nomic and      ment/assis-    development
exploitation    and provide     key sectors    tance plan-    strategy
over sustain-   appropriate                    ning and       incorporating
able manage-    incentives     Use "green      strategy-      environmen-
ment                           accounting"     either revise  tal sustain-
Real values    at national     Country        ability objec-
Environmen-     of environ-    level and       Assistance     tives
tal goods       mental         incorporation   Strategy
and services    resources       of environ-    approach or    Number of
not valued;     captured in     mental costs   use another    country pro-
"extemali-      economic       and benefits    instrument     grams that



Africa Region Environment Strategy Implementation Matrix (continued)
Required actions                 Performance monitoringa
Desired                      Operationall     Impact       Baseline   Target
Objective      Key issues      outcomes       Policy         investment      indicator     FY2002   FY2010
Policy frame-  ties" not cap-  instruments   in economic    (e.g., Com-    include at
work          tured           (pricing and   evaluation of   prehensive    least one for-
(continued)                   penalties)     projects and    Development   mal environ-
Development                    programs       Framework)     mental eco-
planning and    Development                                  nomic and
action pro-     planning       Indude         Shift empha-   sector work
ceeding with-   based on       poverty-       sis in invest-  activity
out adequate    Strategic      oriented       ment from
knowledge of    Environmen-    environmen-    short-term     Number of
O                   environmen-     tal Manage-    tal analysis in  project       formal
tal assets,     ment Frame-    Poverty        approach to    macro-
trends,         work           Reduction      long-term      economic
opportuni-                     Strategy       programmatic   ESW activi-
ties, and con-                 Papers         approach       ties integrat-
straints                                                     ing environ-
Adopt          Use econ-      mental sus-
Ecosystem      omic and sec-  tainability
Management     tor work to    issues in
as an overall  identify and   objectives
strategic      quantify       and design
framework      environmen-
for develop-   tal values,    Number of
ment plan-     particularly   CAS, PRSP,
ning           with respect   PRSC, etc.,



to livelihood  explicitly and
security and   effectively
quality of life  incorporating
for the poor   environmen-
tal issues
Develop        (per the Joint
area-based     Staff
Strategic      Assessment)
Environmen-
tal Manage-    Number of
ment Frame-    CASs, PRSPs,
works as a     PRSCs, etc.
key input to   that include
development    environmen-
planning       tal perfor-
mance indi-
cators
Number of
program-
matic loans
in environ-
mental
and/or nat-
ural resource
areas
Number of
sectoral pro-
grams explic-



Africa Region Environment Strategy Implementation Matrix (continued)
Required actions                  Performance monitoringa
Desired                       Operationall     Impact        Baseline  Target
Objective      Key issues      outcomes        Policy          investment      indicator     FY2002    FY2010
Policy frame-                                                                itly and effec-
work                                                                         tively incor-
(continued)                                                                  porating
environmen-
tal issues
Institutional  Environmen-     Sectoral insti-  Development   Institutional  Number of
capacityc      tal issues and  tutions incor-  of national    restructuring  countries
values not      porate envi-    environmen-    and training    with national
internalized    ronmental       tal policies   to develop      environmen-
by sectorally   sustainability  with cross-    environmen-     tal policies
oriented        into their      sectoral ori-  tal capacity    and strate-
institutions    mandates in     entation       within sec-     gies
and actors      principle and                  toral, local
in practice    Elaboration     government,    Number of
Sectoral insti-                 of policies to  community-     countries
tutions have    Sectoral insti-  promote       based, and      with ongoing
little techni-  tutions have    environmen-    private sector  Environmen-
cal capacity    capacity for    tally sound    institutional  tal Support
for environ-    environmen-     private sector  entities-      Programs
mental plan-    tal planning    development    distributed     (World Bank-
ning and        and manage-                    across the      financed or
management      ment            Policy-based   institution,    other)
lending         not restricted



Local gov-      Local gov-     addresses      to an envi-    Number of
ernments,       ernments,      key environ-   ronmental      countries
community-      community-     mental and     "focal point"  with a func-
level organi-  level organi-   natural                      tioning envi-
zations, and    zations, and   resource       Strengthen-    ronmental
private sector  private sector  management    ing of envi-   agency
companies       companies     issues          ronmental
have inade-     have ade-                     agencies       Number of
quate capac-    quate capac-   Policy         through        environmen-
ity and lack    ity ana man-   reforms to     enabling leg-  tal agencies
mandate or      date or        support and    islation, tech-  with a busi-
authority for   authority for  facilitate     nical capacity  ness plan to
environmen-     environmen-    environmen-    building, and  achieve inde-
tal manage-    tal planning    tal action by  mechanisms     pendence
ment            and manage-    NGOs and       for financial  from donor
ment           civil society  security, using  support
Environmen-                    constituen-    models rele-   within 15
tal agencies    Environmen-    cies, includ-  vant to the    years
are generally  tal organiza-   ing property   country
politically    tions and       rights and/or  situation-     Number of
and finan-      agencies       management     special        operations
cially weak,    enjoy the nec-  authority     emphasis on    supporting
dependent       essary politi-  over natural  Environmental  local- and
on external     cal and finan-  resources     Assessment     community-
support         cial support                  procedures    level envi-
to be effective               and capacity   ronmental
Government                                                   planning and
accountabil-    An effective,                 Strengthen-    management
ity to civil    organized                    ing of in-



Africa Region Environment Strategy Implementation Matrix (continued)
Required actions                 Performance monitoringa
Desired                       Operationall     Impact       Baseline  Target
Objective      Key issues      outcomes        Policy         investment      indicator     FY2002   FY2010
Institutional  society on      environmen-                   country envi-  Number of
capacity      environmen-      tal con-                      ronmental      Community-
(continued)   tal issues is   stituency                      constituen-    Driven
inadequate      demanding                      cies; support  Development
accountabil-                  for develop-    programs
Legislation     ity from gov-                  ment of the   that include
and regula-     eminent                        NGO/CBO        (a) capacity
tions for envi-                               sector          building for
ronmental       Local, nation-                                environmen-
management      al, and inter-                               tal manage-
lacking,        national                                      ment at the
inadequate,     markets for                                   community
or not          environmen-                                  level and (b)
enforced        tal goods and                                 community
(coupled with   services                                      activities for
a culture of    mobilized to                                 improved
"noncompli-     meet costs of                                 environmen-
ance" with      providing                                    tal manage-
environmen-     them                                          ment
tal require-
ments in pub-   Appropriate,                                  Number of
lic and pri-    relevant leg-                                 projects iden-
vate sectors)   islation and                                  tified by the
regulations                                   Africa Region



in place for                                Quality and
environmen-                                 Knowledge
tal protection                              group as hav-
and manage-                                 ing (a) inade-
ment, includ-                                quate
ing both                                    Environmen-
enforcement                                  tal Assess-
and incen-                                  mentor (b)
tives/part-                                  inadequate
nership ele-                                implementa-
ments                                        tion of En-
vironmental
Institutional                               Management
mechanisms                                   Plans
and incen-
tives m place                               Number of
to promote                                  countries
cross-sectoral                               with a strong
thinking and                                or growing
action                                      environmen-
tal NGO sec-
tor
Human         Inadequate      Informed       Policies sup-  Public infor-  Percentage of
resource      mechanisms      and civil      portive of     mation and    countries
capacity      and institu-    society con-   civil society  awareness     with active
tional disin-  stituency      organization   educational    programs for
centives for                  and action     and commu-     training of
cross-sectoral  Cadre of                     nications      environmen-
qualified



Africa Region Environment Strategy Implementation Matrix (continued)
Required actions                  Performance monitoringa
Desired                       Operationall     Impact        Baseline  Target
Objective      Key issues      outcomes        Policy          investment      indicator     FY2002    FY2010
Human          thinking and    environren-    Government      campaigns      tal profes-
resource       action          tal specialists  commitment    (informal      sionals
capacity                       in public and  to support      education)
(continued)   Inadequate       private sector  environmen-                   Number of
knowledge       (inside and     tal policy and  Improved       countries
or apprecia-    outside dedi-  regulatory      coverage of     with an
tion of the     cated envi-    institutions    environment     increase in
importance      ronmental                      in formal       the annual
of environ-     organiza-       Legislative    education at    number of (a)
mental man-     tions)          and regula-    all levels      diplomas
agement                         tory frame-                    and (b) post-
among the                       work that      Strengths-      graduate
general pub-                    establishes    weaknesses-     degrees
lic                            responsibility  opportuni-      awarded by
of private      ties-threats   in-country
Lack of qual-                   sector for its  analysis to    institutions
ified environ-                  environmen-    identify
mental spe-                    tal impacts     human
cialists                        and perfor-    resource
mance           strengthen-
ing needs
(public and
private sec-
tors)



Strengthened
local techni-
cal and pro-
fessional
training insti-
tutions (uni-
versities, etc.)
Targeted
technical and
professional
training sup-
port for indi-
viduals (not
restricted to
government)
Environmen-   Inadequate      Up-to-date,    Incorporation  Programmatic   Number of
tal informa-  baseline        geo-refer-     of environ-    (long-term)    countries
tion and      information     enced data     mental qual-   support for    with actively
knowledge     on environ-     on environ-    ity and man-   environmen-    managed
management    mental          mental         agement        tal survey     geo-refer-
resources       resources     indicators      and monitor-   enced envi-
and ecologi-    and trends,   into national   ing            ronmental
cal processes   analyzed and   development                   databases
presented in   planning and                  developed
Lack of use-   forms useful    monitoring
ful, practical  to decision-   (and assis-                   Number of
environmen-     makers        tance pro-                     functioning
grams)



Africa Region Environment Strategy Implementation Matrix (continued)
Required actions                Performance monitoringa
Desired                      Operational!    Impact       Baseline   Target
Objective      Key issues     outcomes        Policy        investment     indicator      FY2002   FY2010
Environrmen-  tal quality     Demand-                                     regional net-
tal informa-  indicators      driven pro-                                  works for
tion and                      duction and                                  environmen-
knowledge     Lack of use-    dissemina-                                   tal informa-
management    ful, sustain-  tion of envi-                                tion
(continued)   able environ-   ronmental
mental         information                                  Number of
monitoring      products                                    operations
systems         (used by                                    with compo-
diverse pub-                                 nents to
Inadequate     lic and pri-                                 enhance
knowledge       vate sector                                 incorporation
and apprecia-   users)                                      of environ-
tion among                                                  mental infor-
the general     Well-edu-                                   mation in
public of the   cated public                                development
importance of   mobilized as                                planning and
environmen-     an effective                                decisions
tal quality     environmen-
and ecosys-    tal con-
tem functions   stituency
Inadequate      Functioning
exchange of    regional net-



environmen-       works of
tal informa-      environmen-
tion at techni-  tal specialists
cal and           (in various
political         specialties,
levels            e.g., environ-
mental eco-
nomics, envi-
ronmental
-law, environ-
mental infor-
mation sys-
tems, etc.)
Key environ-
mental issues
incorporated
into interna-
tional diplo-
matic interac-
tions and
negotiations
Note: NGO = nongovernmental organization; CBO = community-based organization.
a. These indicators are to track progress at a regional level; individual country strategies will have country-specific indicators.
b. May include individual land titling or alternative community-based tenure schemes more suitable to some lifestyles or produc-
tion systems (for example, pastoralism).
c. Refers not only to organizational structures and entities but to all aspects of "the rules and means of the game," legislation and
regulations, organizational structure, and financial sustainability.



Appendix B
Africa Region Enviromnent Strategy Business Plan FY2002/2003: Activities and Monitoring Matrix
Objectives                          FY2002/2003 activity                Monitoring and reporting indicators
Country level
Strengthen country-level      Country environmental diagnostic studies  * Number of countries with formal
environmental analysis and    for mainstreaming environment in          environmental economic and sector work
advisory activities to inform  Country Assistance Strategy (CAS)        (ESW)
country dialogue (e.g.,       Countries:                             * Number of papers produced
country diagnostic studies)   * Benin (CAS)                           * Number of CASs reflecting environment
* Madagascar (natural disasters)         input
* Democratic Republic of Congo
Strengthen analytical work    Mainstream environment in PRSP         * Number of papers produced
on poverty-environment        process. Countries:                    * Number of PRSPs with mainstreaming of
linkages and inputs to Poverty  * Nigeria                               environment
Reduction Strategy Papers     * Zambia                                * Summary review of completed and
(PRSPs)                       * Benin (Public Expenditure and           ongoing PRSPs (update)
Reform Adjustment Credit)
Identify priority cross-sectoral  Identify potential SEAs            * Number of SEAs identified
issues and use Strategic      Participate in SEA                     * Number of SEAs completed or ongoing
Environmental Assessments     Countries:
(SEAs) more systematically to  * Tanzania (mining)



influence planning and        * Nigeria (transport)
decisionmaking processes early
Regional level
Strategy development and     Completion, dissemination, and main-   Dissemination and outreach of regional
supporting analytical work   streaming of regional strategies       strategies and related analytical pieces
* Africa Environment Strategy          * Completed studies
* Biodiversity Strategic Framework     * Published papers
* Irnproved-Forest Management          * Presentations to diverse audiences
* Integrated Coastal Zone Management   * Training workshops held
(ICZM)
* African Land and Water Management
Initiative (ALWMI)
a Sustainable Rural Energy
* Forestry Management/Biodiversity
Joint Operational Strategy
Background studies and analyses
* "Framework" paper on applying
Integrated Ecosystem Management
approach to natural resource
management in Africa
* Study on opportunities and constraints
to enable Sub-Saharan Africa to benefit
from emerging global market in carbon
emissions reductions and carbon
sequestration (through Clean
Development Mechanism)



Activities and Monitoring Matrix (continued)
Objectives                          FY2002/2003 activity                   Monitoring and reporting indicators
* Case study on integration of traditional
medicine in public health systems
* Monitoring and evaluation: concept
paper on establishing pragmatic
indicators for impacts on
environmental quality
Support client initiatives
* Support and participate in preparations
for the World Summit on Sustainable
Development
* Support mainstreaming of environ-
mental sustainability in the New
Partnership for African Development
(NEPAD), and support development
of the NEPAD Environment Initiative
Improve the performance       * Incorporate integrated ecosystem     * Number and status of projects with
and development effective-      management approach in at least        Integrated Ecosystem Management
ness of environment projects    three projects                          approach
and programs                  * Integrate environment in             * Number of CDD operations incorporating
Community-Driven Development            environmental capacity building and
(CDD) operations                        activities
Mainstream environment into   * Sector strategies and assessments (water,  * "Portfolio review" of sector strategies in
sector programs and portfolios  rural, land policy, community-based    two key sectors
biodiversity management), e.g.,      * Number of projects that include specific
Malawi land reform                     components to reduce vulnerability
* Mainstream responses to environmental
risks and natural disasters: projects and



planning (infrastructure, watershed
protection, land use planning)-use of
EA process and other tools to introduce
these elements; climate forecasting and
early warning; safety nets and
post-disaster rehabilitation
Maximize synergies between    * African Land and Water Management    * Implementation of ALWMI
local, regional, and global     Initiative (ALWMI)                   * Number of biodiversity components in
priorities                    * Include global biodiversity-components  projects
in natural resource and other related  * Program launch
projects
* Africa Stockpile Program (obsolete
pesticides)
* Support for development and
implementation-of-biodiversity
strategies and plans and improved
forest management in Sub-Saharan
Africa
Strengthen the implementation  * Implementation Review of OP4.09     * Review completed
of safeguard policies           (Pest Management policy)
Work with clients and other   * Regional Capacity Building Program   * Number of training courses
development institutions to     for Environmental Assessment
review and strengthen client  * Strengthen partnerships with
safeguard capacity and          regional networks
harmonize safeguard           * Pilot decentralization of safeguards  * Number of projects reviewed with SAIEA
procedures                      review to South African Institute



Activities and Monitoring Matrix (continued)
Objectives                           FY2002/2003 activity                    Monitoring and reporting indicators
of Environmental Assessment
(SAIEA)
Improve incentives and         * Increase participation of environmental  * Number of teams identified and activities
mechanisms for work on           staff in multisectoral teams             undertaken
cross-sectoral activities
and policy issues
Strengthen World Bank          * Recruit "brown" environment specialist  Recruitment
Africa Region capacity in
urban and industrial
environment
Leverage the role of institu-  Maintain and strengthen partnerships, e.g.:  * Status reports
tional engagements and         * Critical Ecosystems Partnership
partnerships to support          Fund (CEPF)
implementation of the          * World Wildlife Fund/World Bank
Environment Strategy             forestry initiative
* Africa Stockpile Program (ASP)
Undertake systematic moni-     * Periodic review of Implementation     * Collect baseline information for indicators
toring and reporting on          Matrix and Business Plan                 column of Africa Region Environment
performance                                                               Strategy Implementation Matrix (data for
FY 2002/2003)
* Monitoring of Business Plan indicators



Notes
1. The World Bank has strategies and programs in the areas of population, con-
flict and postconflict, and HIV/AIDS.
2. With the exception of South Africa, which accounts for approximately 0.8
percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.
3. Center for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters and the Office of U.S.
Foreign Disaster Assistance (CRED/OFDA), as cited in World Bank (2000e).
4. See MDG website http://www.developmentgoals.org/goals-environ.html.
5. There are some exceptions, such as Botswana, which has strict policies and
priorities for water allocation and management.
6. The World Bank supported the establishment of industrial parks with appro-
priate wastewater treatment facilities as one response to this problem.
7. For further information, see the Global Compact homepage at
http: / /www.un.org/partners/business/gcevent/second-page.htm.
8. GOPA Consultants. May 2001. Mainstreaming Safeguard Policy Compliance
within Community-Driven Development Initiatives (CDDs) in World Bank-
Funded Operations. Unpublished final report for the World Bank
9. Njie, Ndey-Isatou. "Report of ESP Study." Draft report, April 2000.
10. Also based on extensive consultations with clients, stakeholders, and devel-
opment partners in-country, as well as World Bank management and staff.
123



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Ekbom, A. and J. Bojo. 1997. Mainstreaming Environment in Country
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