African states urged to incorporate green mechanisms to infrastructural development

  From Albert Oppong-Ansah, a GNA Special Correspondent, Hyderabad, India (Courtesy, Convention on Biodiversity Secretariat, Global Environmental Facility and Internews).     Hyderabad (India), Oct. 15, GNA - Mr Bakary Kante, Director, Division of Environmental Law and Conventions (DELC) charged to with carrying out the functions of United Nations Environmental Programme, has urged African countries to incorporate green environmental mechanisms to infrastructural development.     He said the move would help promote greener cites and reduce the continuous destructions of the continent’s valuable biodiversity resource.    “We cannot stop the growth of cities but we can make the cities more environmentally friendly for our survival and the action is now,” he said.     Mr Kante said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency during the launch of the Cities and Biodiversity Outlook Report at the on-going 11th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), known as COP 11 in Hyderabad, India.     He said if Africa and the world wanted to survive, then there was no choice left than to adopt and live with green and wildlife’s.     “Although it is estimated that from the world’s total urban area is expected to triple between 2000 2030, with urban population set to double to around 4.9 billion in the same period, our continent has the opportunity, capacity and the resource to be part of the development but can still maintain its biodiversity,”, he said.     Mr Kante said the continent had lots of biodiversity yet it was tagged as poor, adding that the resource could be a good source of wealth creation if properly kept.     “The average person in Africa depends on the near-by river for fish and water for free. One can just also walk straight to the forest and pluck a leaf or the bark to be used as medication”, he said.     Mr Braulio Dias, Executive Director of CBD, said the report identified Africa as one of the fastest continents urbanizing resulting in the growth of people in the cities of less than one million people.     He said these cities had weak governance structures, high level of poverty and low scientific capacity regarding biodiversity.     Mr Dias said: “The way our cities are designed, the way people live in them and the policy decisions of local authorities would define, to a large extent, future global sustainability. The innovation lies not so much in developing new infrastructural technologies and approaches, but to work with what we already have. The results often requires fewer economic resources and more sustainable”. ... Read Full Story