Africa Forward

Climate scientists agree that protecting and conserving 30-percent is the absolute minimum needed to slow down the alarming loss of biodiversity. Sounds like a movement everyone can get behind. And yet...nearly 50 foundations and indigenous rights activists sent a joint letter to the plan’s drafters at the UN, saying that the 30x30 focus on creating new protected lands would, as they write, “lead to human rights abuses across the globe,” with millions evicted from their ancestral lands

Critics say 30x30 is more of the same, fortress conservation, separating nature from people.That’s the debate between Western and African-led conservation models. What is the role of people? Do you protect nature by walling it off from people, or do you put people at the center?

This season we’re looking at African-led conservation. You could call it a “new” model of conservation, but its roots are in Africa’s traditional ways of conserving nature. African-led conservation takes a holistic approach, connecting the dots between conservation, climate change and economic development. Above all, it has Africans leading the charge.

In this episode, we’ll look at the linchpin of this model: people.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Introducing Africa Forward, a podcast from Africa50 produced by FP Studios,. Hosts Isha Sesay and Carol Pineau explore infrastructure challenges, successes, and opportunities in Africa.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of Africa Forward highlights how Africans are finding new ways to fund energy projects and how this is creating transformational change on the continent. The episode begins with a story from the reporter Laura Rosbrow-Telem looking at the financing and construction of the Benban Solar Park in Egypt.

Later, co-host Carol Pineau leads a conversation on creating the best energy mix and how to properly fund large-scale projects. Her guests include Vera Songwe, the executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa; Hafez El-Salmawy, a professor of energy engineering at Zagazig University in Egypt; and Ernest Moniz, a former U.S. energy secretary.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Introducing Season 2 of Africa Forward, a podcast supported by The African Wildlife Foundation and produced by FP Studios In this season, host Carol Pineau explores green infrastructure, Africa’s tremendous biodiversity, and how African-led conservation may not only help save endangered species but also the planet.

The show will also challenge the Western model of conservation. That system, which was started under colonialism, protected nature by walling it off from people. It made it so that Africans, who for millennia had co-existed – and protected nature – could no longer access their own traditional lands

Get ready for a tour of the continent, seeing how African-led conservation is changing the way Africa sees its biodiversity, not just protecting it, but sustainably using it to create a biodiversity economy that can be a driver of social and economic development.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Africa has 30-percent of the world’s biodiversity, with much of it unique to the continent. It also has 1.3 billion people. And like people everywhere, they want social and economic well-being and hope to pass on a good life to their children. Africa’s biodiversity plays a big role in reaching those goals.

In this episode, we’ll delve into Africa’s biodiversity – the threats its facing, the ways it’s being preserved, and even restored. Above all, we’ll focus on the biodiversity economy, looking at how biodiversity should be valued. We’ll also explore ways in which Africans can sustainably use their natural resources to forge a new path forward where conservation and social and economic development work in harmony.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices