African coastline threatened

Africa’s coastline is in trouble. Research shows that over the past three decades, the amount of fish in West African waters has declined by up to 50%. Pollution has also increased in the same waters, including South Africa’s west coast as more oil companies set up shop in Africa’s west coast waters. A damning report shows that sensitive wetlands (mangroves) and coastal forests have been lost forever, while the increased nutrient loads in fresh-water and coastal systems are causing coastal ‘dead zones”.

It is against this backdrop that South Africa hosted about 200 African experts, government officials and other stakeholders in Johannesburg this week to discuss how the different coastal countries could, together, tackle the rising environmental threats against the continent’s coastline. The African countries are part of two United Nations conventions that govern the way they deal with environmental issues along their coastlines.

‘The degradation of coastal and marine environments are most evident in Africa,” said the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) executive director Achim Steiner.

Countries on the east coast are bound by the Nairobi convention and west coast countries by the Abidjan convention. However, while the Nairobi convention has been a success, with all the affected countries contributing financially and politically, the Abidjan convention has been a lame duck.

During the past decade, substantial oil and natural gas resources have been discovered offshore in Western Africa and this has raised environmental concerns. Delegates pointed out that depleting fishing stocks as well as inland pollution that spills into the ocean needed to be addressed. But these programmes cost money.

Unep said only two countries were contributing funds to the Abidjan convention. The convention was simply ‘too poor” to perform its task of protecting Africa’s west coast. Only 14 of the 22 countries have ratified the convention.

South Africa is also the only country that is a member of both and it hopes to extend its experience with the Nairobi convention to that of the west coast.