The African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) is a leading international conservation organization focused solely on Africa. To ensure the conservation of biodiversity and its contribution to Africa's development, AWF complements its field-based programs with a policy agenda entitled 'Sustainable Economic Resources for Africa' (SERA). SERA articulates policy priorities which AWF promotes in its relationships with partner national and local governments, NEPAD, the African Union, regional economic bodies, and donor governments to encourage a supportive legal, financial, and political environment to achieve Africa's conservation and development goals.

AWF recognizes that African governments face enormous challenges in assuring food security and creating employment opportunities for their citizens. These challenges occur against the backdrop of significant megatrends including:

• Population growth, wherein Africa's population is expected to double in the next 20 years thereby increasing exponentially the demand for food, water, and energy;
• Rapid growth in demand for land as both domestic and foreign investors convert land for agriculture, extractive industries, and infrastructure, noting that in 2011 the volume of foreign direct investment in Africa exceeded the volume of aid for the first time;
• Impacts of growing climate change in terms of rising temperatures and growing numbers of extreme weather events;
• Urbanization, noting that in 2011 the world's urban population exceeded its rural population for the first time; and
• Increasing globalization and connectedness of people and businesses.

While tradeoffs will be necessary, AWF believes that tools, such as land use planning and conservation-based enterprises, capacity building, and empowerment can help governments and communities navigate these challenges, optimize land use based on carrying capacity, wisely plot physical investments for the long-term resilience of people and ecosystems, and safeguard space for wildlife and conservation areas. AWF supports policies that:

Wildlife is one of Africa’s greatest sources of competitive advantages in the global marketplace, and, where it is conserved and exploited through tourism, contributes sizably to national GDPs. Wildlife is dependent on habitat, and in light of increasing pressures on land, AWF encourages African nations to rethink land use strategies and landscape and national planning, including as it pertains to the placement of infrastructure, in order to leave sufficient room for thriving, dynamic populations of wildlife. Prudent planning can help nations and regions realize and replicate successful large-scale conservation and tourism destinations, where world class wildlife tourism products, physical infrastructure, and sound planning and management converge. Such destinations, such as the Serengeti/Maasai Mara system and Okavango Delta, generate more ecological and economic benefits than small, fragmented efforts.

The national and local development and conservation agendas for Africa must be set and led by African leaders who are accountable to and function in the best interest of their citizenry. Where leadership capacity is nascent, AWF believes that it is incumbent upon all stakeholders to invest time and resources to build capacity and to foster continued learning. Capacity is key to enabling African governments to navigate through tradeoffs and to ensure that economic development does not occur at the expense of the environment and local people’s social development and cultural preservation.

Government-owned and managed protected areas function as anchors for larger landscape conservation efforts and are central to the delivery of long-term conservation goals. AWF encourages every African nation to create and maintain a representative protected area system. Protected areas systems must realize that their long-term success depends increasingly on integrating with what occurs to people and resources outside of park boundaries, and on accelerating efforts to become self-financing through tourism and other private uses as aid for parks declines.

Protected areas alone are insufficient to conserve Africa’s biodiversity and ecosystem services. Community engagement, in the form of community-managed conservation areas and sustainable utilization of resources, offers important means of maintaining connectivity and ecosystem viability while ensuring that human needs and wants are satisfied. AWF encourages partner governments to help local people to secure tenure; guarantee access and user-rights, particularly for poor communities, commensurate with ecosystem carrying capacity; encourage co-management and cooperation schemes between communities and authorities; create legislation which enables community-managed conservation areas; and support well-planned agricultural intensification to ensure a secure supply of food without depleting water resources or prompting new conflict with wildlife. AWF believes that sustainable use ultimately creates incentives for resource conservation as people come to value a resource independently and therefore wish to see it maintained and available in the long term. This balance is set to come under increasing pressure as population and competition for land increase.

Electoral politics often do not encourage administrations to plan and set policy with an eye to the long-term, yet in the face of overriding megatrends, particularly concerning climate change, water scarcity, and energy demand, governments, both African and other, must have the prescience and courage to make decisions today which will enable their people to begin adapting for tomorrow’s changes. African governments frequently make important decisions today that bind their land and their nations in long-term contracts with both foreign and domestic investors. AWF encourages governments to accurately value land and ecosystem services as they consider infrastructure, extractive industry, and agriculture developments such that they commit their nations to contracts with a full accounting of the cost and value of resources which will be conserved, utilized, and in some cases lost.

Climate change stands to be the greatest challenge the world will face in the coming generation and is predicted to become the biggest single driver of terrestrial biodiversity loss, exceeding loss of habitat, over-exploitation, and introduction of invasive species. AWF encourages our partner governments to join us in increasing our understanding of likely climatic impact and to adopt climate-induced risk assessment and scenario planning, water and soil conservation, reforestation, and other ‘climate proofing’ measures to build and increase the resilience of people and wildlife. AWF believes that the effective management of ecosystems in the first place creates an initial, important safety net as people and wildlife learn to adapt.

AWF believes that afforestation and avoided deforestation, particularly in the Congo Basin and Upper Guinean forests, will play a significant role in mitigating climate change, and supports the formalization of a global carbon market that creates transparency and equity in pricing and payments and reward countries that prioritize conservation and social benefits. AWF is amassing experience in working with rural communities to quantify carbon, understand and address causes of deforestation, and build capacity and understanding for REDD and forest stewardship. AWF encourages African governments to formalize national REDD strategies, ensure broad public participation for communities eligible to engage in REDD, and establish strong systems of accountancy to track openly carbon and the distribution of payments to ensure that benefits reach the people directly living with and conserving forest resources.

Food security and agriculture must prioritize a healthy environment if production levels are to be maintained and increased despite finite amounts of land and water. Africa’s agricultural revolution is underway, but governments, investors, and practitioners must not lose sight that the investments in agricultural systems today affect Africa’s ecosystems and people for generations to come. Agriculture investments require sound planning and consideration of available resources such as soil type and water, as well as the fossil fuels needed to move goods through respective value chains, and a willingness to invest in capacity and technology.

The gap between water needs and an accessible, reliable supply is growing throughout sub-Saharan Africa. A new and intense focus on agriculture development is increasing demand for water, while at the same time, climate models indicate a drying trend for many, already food insecure portions of inland Africa. Changes in land management and use can have profound effects on water systems; thus, well maintained forests, grasslands, and soils are important natural infrastructure for assuring water for people and biodiversity.

Many African states endure chronic power problems which impede growth and productivity. Yet traditional sources of energy are dependent on non-renewable sources and can have irreversible consequences on wildlife and people as large swaths of land and water are converted. In light of its geography, Africa has the opportunity to be a world leader in pioneering and growing renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. AWF encourages partner governments to champion the development of renewable energy as a development priority and in their negotiations with donor governments and prospective investors.

Biodiversity and ecosystems do not recognize national boundaries. Creating conservation that works requires strategic transfrontier collaboration. AWF works towards effective policies which encourage cooperation and compatible management, tourism, and revenue-sharing practices, and which facilitate the flow of resources, visitors, and the net benefits of conservation across national borders. Treaties are an important step but are no substitute for functional coordination of conservation efforts across boundaries.

Approximately half of Africa’s population is women; yet women continue to be under-represented in most spheres of society, presenting untapped, valuable human resource capacity for Africa’s future. AWF supports the full participation of women in decision-making and leadership, and guaranteed access to opportunities in conservation and all sectors of life. AWF strives to create equal opportunities within its programs, both through internal recruitment and by engaging women externally through training and activity implementation.

AWF calls on the international community to encourage, support, and invest in the Africa-defined agenda for the continent. AWF recognizes the increasing role of private direct investment, which is increasingly pivotal in raising incomes and affording people, particularly in urban areas, newfound social mobility. Bilateral and multilateral aid has grown increasingly transparent and diligent in their consideration of environmental and social benefits. The emergence of foreign direct investment creates a need for new norms and standards to ensure that private investment also gives appropriate regard for people’s social welfare and biodiversity.