UNEP in the Regions: Africa - Environment for Development

The environment in Africa is deeply woven into the lives of Africa’s peoples and into their traditional and cultural values. That environment has recently changed profoundly because of serious droughts and floods, the loss of forests and of animal and plant species, land degradation, increasing water shortages and declining water quality. The main pressures on the environment are largely the result of population growth that has outstripped the capacity of natural resources to meet expanding human needs, the high dependence of many economies on natural resources exploitation, unsustainable natural resource utilization, increasing inequality of incomes, and limited planning, especially in urban areas. The challenges are immense, but governments have responded, setting environmental agendas for action, forming regional and sub regional environmental bodies and introducing measures to protect national environments and those of the wider region.