The rapid deterioration of West African biodiversity worries the authorities responsible for protecting the environment. To reverse the trend, the establishment of a subregional framework is mentioned. Did we learn from Afrik 21.

According to the same source, this is one of the proposals made on August 21, 2020 in Abuja, Nigeria, during the ECOWAS consultation forum on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. West African authorities are concerned about the drastic loss of biodiversity in their sub-region. According to Volume II of the Atlas of Biodiversity of West Africa, tropical rainforests in this part of the continent have declined considerably over the last century.

In Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, for example, more than 75% of the forest area has disappeared in 30 years. “The degradation of our biodiversity is mainly due to the uncontrolled expansion of agricultural land and the illegal wildlife trade”, says the Nigerian Minister of the Environment, Mohammad Abubakar, who spoke at the consultation forum of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on the framework World Biodiversity Forum for Post-2020, held on 21 August 2020 in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. The Nigerian Minister of State for the Environment, Sharon Ikeazor, who also spoke after her compatriot, presented the forum as “the beginning of greater sub-regional collaboration and cohesion on biodiversity”. She called on ECOWAS member countries to come together and take an active part in the preservation of biological diversity. “If we do not act, we could soon reach tipping points that could cause irreversible destruction of nature and, ultimately, of humanity,” she warned.

Nearly 25% of animal and plant species are threatened with extinction in the world

The Abuja forum was organized by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). It aimed to collect the proposals of ECOWAS plenipotentiaries, with a view to the establishment of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. This new United Nations vision for the conservation of species across the planet will be examined and adopted by the 196 Parties to the CBD, during the 15th session of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP15) which will take place in Kunming, China, from 17 to 30 May 2021.

For her part, the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Elizabeth Mremaa, noted that the world is currently reeling from a serious biodiversity crisis. “The size of populations of wild vertebrate species has declined precipitously over the past 50 years on land, in fresh water and in the sea. Nearly 25% of the animal and plant species assessed are threatened with extinction.”