ACBA welcomes the Gaborone
Declaration adopted at the close of the first Africa Biodiversity
Summit convened 2-5 November 2025. The hosting of the Summit by the African
Union and the government of Botswana is a truly historic achievement. It
further reaffirms the importance of biodiversity in strengthening Africa’s
ecosystems, contributing to adaptation and mitigation outcomes, and being
central to the culture, livelihoods and wellbeing of African people.
More critical, biodiversity was recognised as a strategic
asset for sustainable outcomes for the continent. Any chance to
achieve sustainable outcomes for people and nature, must recognise the connectedness
of the underlying causes of biodiversity loss and nature’s decline and the need
for our responses to be equally linked. To address biodiversity loss, requires
addressing the underlying causes of the crisis. This can happen when we deliberately
shift views, structures and practices in ways that address the very underlying
causes of biodiversity loss. This is well articulated by the IPBES
transformative change assessment report released in November 2024 and presented
at the CBD SBSTTA 27 in Panama.
While the preamble to the declaration doesn’t specifically
mention governance as one of the key indirect drivers of the biodiversity loss,
the Declaration calls for strengthened governance and accelerated implementation of the Africa
Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan 2023-2030, a document that ACBA was
privileged to contribute to. The Declaration emphasises the need to integrate
biodiversity considerations systematically across all sectors. To be effective,
governance systems and institutions must be inclusive, accountable and adaptive.
The Declaration also emphasizes the expansion of protected and
transboundary conservation areas, reinforcing Africa’s contribution toward
achieving the 30x30 target under the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
(KM-GBF). In relation to the 30x30 target and the expansion of protected areas,
ACBA has consistently advocated for inclusive, bottom-up approaches to
conservation that leverage local knowledge and citizen science. ACBA maintains
that conservation should take place where people live and derive their
livelihoods.
Not surprisingly, as with other Rio
Conventions, financing biodiversity was a central theme. Encouragingly, leaders
called for the mobilization of domestic resources, urging countries to progressively
allocate at least 1% of GDP to
biodiversity. ACBA has argued that the continent’s
biodiversity contributes towards global public goods such as adaptation and
mitigation to climate change, resilient societies, water availability and
quality, food systems and health. As such, the developed countries must
contribute towards biodiversity conservation and its sustainable use and
equitable and fair benefit sharing. The call for an African Biodiversity Fund, while
welcome, requires that the modalities for operationalizing the Fund, consider existing
funds and the continent’s commitment to its capitalisation.
The labelling of financial instruments, such
as biodiversity
credits, green and blue bonds, and payments for ecosystem services (PES), as innovative financial mechanisms, must
be interrogated. Whilst they represent potential opportunities for the
continent to raise funding free of conditionalities, there are serious risks of
green washing and false solutions when implementing these so-called “innovative
financial mechanisms”. Many initiatives that fall under this “innovative”
banner are opaque, lack transparency and marginalise frontline communities. Africa
must avoid solutions that legitimize
or even expand the very systems that drive biodiversity destruction. There must
be a clear definition of what constitutes funding for biodiversity
conservation.
One critical shift required for
transformative change that addresses the underlying causes of biodiversity loss,
is a mindset shift. ACBA welcomes the call to integrate biodiversity education in national curricula and
civic programs. It is important that there is consciousness about the choices
people make and the values that underpin such choices. Such a shift will
inevitably contribute towards a shift away from practices harmful to
biodiversity loss and natures decline.
The
debt crisis imposes an unfair financial burden on African countries, limiting
their fiscal capacity to invest in social services, including climate change
and biodiversity actions. African countries often face higher interest rates on
loans compared to their developed counterparts, as rating agencies classify
Africa as a high-risk destination for capital. Therefore, ACBA welcomes the
call by African governments for reforms to the global financial architecture
that could facilitate grant-based funding for biodiversity.