Protecting African Marine Environment Eromosele Abiodun

Examines plans by the Association of African Maritime Administrations to protect Africa’s marine environment to support sustainable development

Following global economic turmoil and the increase call for governments across Africa to diversify their economies, there has been a steady rise across Africa in the attention given to the responsible use of the oceans to contribute to economic development. Experts believe the opportunities around Africa’s blue economies are enormous with significant potential to create jobs and improve livelihoods.

Africa’s vast coastline hosts a maritime industry estimated at $1 trillion per year and this is only scratching the surface.

Africa has 38 coastal states and a number of island states like Cape Verde, Sao Tomé and Principe, Mauritius, Seychelles and the Comoros. Collectively African coastal and island states encompass vast ocean territories of an estimated 13 million km2.

The Seychelles, for example, has 1.3 million square kms of ocean territory that remains largely underdeveloped. Somalia has the longest coastline in Africa (approximately 3 000 km) and claims ocean territory stretching about 120 km off shore.

But what is often missing in debates are issues of governance and security. Five themes are particularly important to ensure both: safety and security, rule of law and transparency, respect for human rights, sustainable economic opportunity and human development.

Experts believe many African countries are failing to ensure safe and secure conditions for those working and living off the oceans. Tracts of the sea off East, West and North Africa are often labelled lawless. Illegal fishing, sea piracy and armed robbery, drug and human smuggling have assumed staggering proportions. Capping this is the rise in illegal migration.

For this to change, experts said diverse actors need to start cooperating across national boundaries to secure and use ocean territories. It has become common knowledge that individual states can do little on their own. The solution of cooperation is simple but difficult to sell to a critical mass of African governments that are often suspicious of collective agendas.

Failure to ensure that ocean territories are secure promotes ungoverned spaces which criminals exploit. At worst, neglected maritime spaces benefit insurgents and terrorists as is obvious in Libya, Somalia and Nigeria.

Africa has had to contend with three volatile oceanic regions where criminality makes it impossible for countries to realise the potential of their oceans. These are the Horn of Africa, the Gulf of Guinea and the waters of the Mediterranean to the north of Libya.

A common denominator in the three hubs is that countries on these coasts have failed to make the areas safe. This has opened the door to criminal actors.

Marine Pollution

That is not all, the greatest danger now is the alarming rate of marine pollution. Experts believe the health of marine ecosystem is on the decline as a result of anthropogenic waste that is discharged into coastal or marine environments, resulting from the human activities on land or at sea.

They therefore warned that it is very critical that governments, global businesses and political leaders recognize the growing threats and urgently act to restore the marine environment to healthy state for economic development of Africa.

According to the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), plastics constitute about 95 per cent of marine litter found on coastlines, sea surface and the ocean floor. Also, an estimated 4.8 million to 12.7 million metric tonnes of plastic entered the ocean from land-based sources in 2010, and about 8 million metric tonnes has entered the oceans each year since then. It is estimated that between 1.15m and 2.41m metric tons of plastic trash currently flow from rivers into the oceans every year.

The top 20 polluting rivers were mostly located in Asia and account for 67 per cent of the global total. Shipping, fishing, aquaculture, tourism and recreation are directly affected by plastic pollution. Marine plastic pollution is estimated to cause at least $13 billion annually in economic losses.

In the same vein, a recent Greenpeace report found that the West African region loses about $2 billion to illegal fishing.

“Most African countries are keenly aware of both the ocean’s potential as well as the threats to this potential. A number of initiatives point to this. These include: the African Union’s 2012 Integrated Maritime Strategy 2050 which recognises and encourages the importance of African countries paying greater attention to their maritime interests and the recently agreed Lomé Charter – a continental effort to encourage and coordinate efforts by African states to attend to maritime security, safety and development,” the report stated.

Others the report said are: “the Yaoundé Code of Conduct for West Africa which maps out an inter-regional set of responsibility zones to oversee and facilitate responses to growing criminality in the Gulf of Guinea and an increase in the presence of international naval capabilities off the Horn of Africa to stem the piracy tide off Somalia. This was complemented by the Djibouti Code of Conduct that enabled East African intervention to counter piracy threats. The code has been extended to include other maritime crimes.

“At national level the Seychelles’ government has set the tone with its explicit focus on the importance of the blue economy. A National Blue Economy Roadmap aims to advance economic diversification, unlock investments