To become a priority for Africa’s governments, sustainable development must be clear about its economic as well as its ecological rewards.

The United Nations Environment Assembly has been meeting in Nairobi this week. It’s one of the major events on the global conservation calendar. This year, it’s held under the banner of Strengthening Actions for Nature to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

 Among the best options to tackle climate change and arrest the loss of biodiversity is to use nature-based solutions. This is not rocket science: it’s about understanding the challenges, and choosing the natural pathway to address them.

 Take mangrove restoration, which The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and partners, including the Kenya Forest Service, the Lamu County Government, and the Northern Rangelands Trust, are working with local women to achieve in Kenya.

 This might sound trivial and mundane, but when you restore mangroves, you’re helping to store more carbon, and improving wildlife habitat. With a significant proportion of human populations found in coastal environments, when you restore mangroves, you are creating shelter from the storm by building coastal erosion and sea-flood protection barriers. You are also providing people with food and opportunities to earn a living because you are creating somewhere safe for fish to breed. A fifth of animal protein in people’s diets comes from marine fisheries, which support more than 3.1 billion people globally.

 This is what sustainable development means in practice. Because in so many societies in Africa, people struggle to make ends meet every day, conserving or restoring ecosystems has to address development needs, too.

 It needs the triple bottom line: unlocking benefits for nature, which is the environmental pillar; two, for people, that is the social pillar, and three, for businesses, the economic pillar.

 The main challenge to nature conservation in Africa is the lack of sustainable financing, which is impeded by the lack of a couple of key enabling conditions.

 First, short-time political wins oftentimes trump long-term development gains. Second is the policy context. Where are the tax and other incentives for green business development, for example? That’s something that gives a biodiversity dividend, and also boosts employment. Part of the solution to both can be using policy levers like some of the multilateral environmental agreements in progress globally.

 The Convention on Biological Diversity’s ‘Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework’, due to be discussed in Kunming later this year, will have ambitious plans to protect biodiversity at scale across the planet, the so-called 30x30 initiative. Countries will sign up to protect 30% of their land and oceans, by 2030. 

 That is the sort of long-term framework that can really make a difference in terms of sustainable development, building climate resilience, and nature protection. Right now TNC is working with governments in Africa as they draft their national commitments to that ambitious global plan.

 However, there remains a missing link: a safe, sustainable self-financing model. Because the big challenge with environmental sustainability in Africa is who is going to finance nature conservation or nature protection. That partially accounts for ‘paper parks’: several designated Protected Areas do not have the financing to protect them into the future.

 This is starting to change, but the pace of change is still slow. Part of the reason is limited expertise in sustainable finance models to incentivise nature conservation, and weak policy frameworks to deliver benefits for nature, people, and society as a whole.

 Nature conservation should not be a deal-breaker for governments, but the problem is it has not been pitched in a manner that helps them to see the benefit for economies and people.

 Using rights-based approaches, TNC, in collaboration with both state and non-state actors, is unlocking market-based instruments, such as Bonds, Project Finance for Permanence programs, Trust Funds, debt restructuring, and more, to incentivise nature protection and empower people.

 A good example is TNC’s Water Fund model, brought to Africa from its first iterations in Latin America, and now operational in Kenya, South Africa, and soon in a number of other places. Water Funds raise money from businesses and utilities needing reliable water supplies, and from philanthropy, and use it to finance conservation programs supporting local people who can act to protect those water sources. 

 The benefits to people and businesses from the Greater Cape Town Water Fund, for example, are clear. It means more water is readily available in the taps in both homes and businesses. It helps companies both mitigate the impact of climate change on their businesses and support sustainability into the future.

 From a political perspective, having in place a framework to protect nature to deliver a benefit for people and support economic development will create a space for continued investment and enterprise. Nothing eliminates investment opportunities faster than constant stories of crisis. And, of course, the Water Fund also helps pay to restore a unique natural environment.

 These are the sorts of joined-up approaches we need to see governments and global conservation initiatives really get behind so they can reach the scale they must in order to have the impact they can, and make a real difference. Take that UNEA theme: these are the ‘actions’ that need ‘strengthening’ for ‘nature to achieve the sustainable development goals’. To succeed, we need ambition on that scale, with genuine commitments and urgent action to realise them. If there is ever a good time to act, now is.

 Ademola Ajagbe