AFRICA’S WAY FORWARD
The continent has long been a pioneer in sustainable travel – it’s time to take note
MY DAUGHTER HAS A TREE in Africa. I bought her a sapling, back when she was a little girl and I was far away, missing her. I looked for a scenic spot on the beautiful Grootbos Private Nature Reserve, near Hermanus, South Africa (grootbos.com) and planted it. As my daughter is mixed race, I thought it would be powerful for her to help sustain a forest on a continent that is part of her heritage. When I got home, I presented her with the certificate of ownership. She was not impressed: ‘You bought me a tree?’ But she will be, one day, when I take her there.
The Future Trees Project, which is funded through donations by Grootbos guests, was created after a fire devastated much of the old milkwood forest in 2OO6. It’s just one of the sustainability measures the reserve runs for its Grootbos Foundation, which also does a lot for the community, with an agricultural training project, a farm and a Life Skills College and a Football Foundation.
Africa is often plagued by problematic single narratives (corruption, poverty, conflict), when many of its countries are leading in areas the rest of the world could learn from, namely sustainability. The need for creative answers to a serious problem has resulted in great innovation. Take Zimbabwe’s Hwange Art and Recycling Project, which makes jewellery and eco bricks from upcycled
glass and plastic bottles. Founder Natasha Aylward explains: ‘When you live off the land, the [awareness] of sustainability comes naturally.’
In the fight for better conservation, travellers can be both a blessing (much-needed income) and a curse (low-spend/high-volume tourists whose numbers damage the land and natural order). But if you have the chance to go on safari and watch lions hunting at dusk, or fall asleep under canvas listening to the distant bark of a leopard, you want to know your presence is benefitting that natural beauty, not endangering it.
In the past, some lodges paid little heed to the environment from which they profit, polluting their surroundings with wastewater and sewage, and fouling the air with carbon from diesel generators instead of using clean solar energy. But that is changing.
Colin Bell, the founder of Great Plains, Wilderness Safaris and Natural Selection (all environmental flagbearers), quit the safari business in 2O1O to start the Africa’s Finest project (africasfinest.co.za), which calls out safari lodges guilty of ‘greenwashing’ (pretending to care about the environment while doing little to help it), and challenges bad practice. He champions those who get it right with his Top 5O, a list of personally reviewed lodges and camps that support local communities and promote effective sustainability measures. ‘It is ironic that the only force likely to be able to slow or halt the rape of our natural resources is business,’ he says. ‘In Africa, that business is tourism and, more specifically, safaris, whose health is directly affected by the health of the wild places it sells to people wanting to see what the world was like before we stuffed it up.’
The well-run lodges and camps in Africa could show the rest of the world a thing or two about reducing plastic use. Most good safari companies provide reusable water bottles, and many, such as the upmarket Asilia Africa group (asiliaafrica.com), use biodegradable lunch containers and ban plastic straws. Others are testing alternatives, such as straws made from glass (as at Cape Town’s Tintswalo Atlantic resort; tintswalo.com), reed or bamboo.
This isn’t just happening in tourism. In 2OO8, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame banned plastic bags – seven years before the UK’s plastic-bag tax – and it sparked a trend. Kenya followed suit in 2O17, Botswana plans to do so later this year, and Zimbabwe has outlawed the use of Styrofoam-like containers.
Sustainable fashion is another area in which African countries are leading the way. The Ethical Fashion Initiative (EFI) believes some of the most innovative talents today com from the continent. These are young, environmentally aware entrepreneurs, such as Nigerian Lisa Folawiyo (lisafolawiyo.com), one of Business of Fashion’s BOF 5OO, who blends ethically sourced West African fabrics with modern tailoring, and Aisha Obuobi, of Christie Brown (christiebrownonline.com), who aims to make Ghanaian fashion relevant by infusing tradition with contemporary ideas.
Africa has experienced first-hand the alarming effects of criminally non-ecological practices, such as hunting and overcrowding, that have reduced the lion population from more than 2OO,OOO to 2O,OO in the past 1OO years. But the foundation for a more sustainable future has been laid and we each have our part to play – even if it’s just planting one new tree.