Zambezi River Basin

UN Millennium Development Goals The objective of the Millennium Declaration of 2000 is to promote a comprehensive approach and a coordinated strategy, tackling many problems simultaneously across a broad front. The declaration calls for halving poverty by the year 2015, through reducing by half the number of people who lived on less than one dollar a day in 1990. This involves finding solutions to hunger, malnutrition and diseases, promoting gender equality and empowerment of women, guaranteeing a basic education for everyone, and supporting the Agenda 21 principles of sustainable development. Direct support from the richer countries, in the form of aid, trade, debt relief and investment is to be provided to assist the initiatives of developing countries. • Goal 1 Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger • Goal 2 Achieve universal primary education • Goal 3 Promote gender equality and empower woman • Goal 4 Reduce child mortality • Goal 5 Improve maternal health • Goal 6 Combat HIV and AIDS, malaria and other diseases • Goal 7 Ensure environmental sustainability • Goal 8 Develop a global partnership for development. MDG 7 Environmental Sustainability This chapter tracks Goal 7 on Environmental Sustainability (Table 4.1), with profiles of the eight countries of the Zambezi River Basin. Overview All Zambezi Basin states show progress on some aspects of all of the four Targets for environmental sustainability, although some of the indicators are not prioritized or well- populated. Existing information is often dated and incomplete, and may be obtained from secondary sources, although some data exists for all Basin states for most indicators. The data The solutions form the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

is generally accessible at national level rather than for specific areas, such as those within the Zambezi River Basin. Therefore of necessity the data that follows is national rather than specific to that portion of the country within the Basin.

Target 7A – Reverse the loss of environmental resources

The most immediate challenge for the Zambezi basin states out of the five indicators for Target 7A is deforestation, and this is likely to continue to be a challenge until economically viable alternatives to fuelwood are in general use. That is, until the economies improve and acceptable alternatives are easily accessible and affordable. There is a growing body of evidence that the rate and extent of deforestation contribute to climate change in the Basin (SARDC and HBS 2010). The major causes of deforestation in the Basin are agricultural expansion, fuelwood collection, harvesting of non-timber forest products, commercial harvesting of natural/ indigenous timber species and forest fires. These are some of the issues that must be addressed in order to stem the destruction of forests and meet the MDG Target 7A of reducing the loss of environmental resources. Figure 4.1 shows the reduction in forest reserves by country in hectares over a 20-year period from 1990. With regard to the other indicators, the extent of carbon emissions is not well documented and is not considered a significant factor in the Zambezi Basin. The consumption of ozone depleting substances has not been well studied in the Basin. Some data on the proportion of freshwater fish stock has been assembled by FAO for Lake Malawi/Nyasa/Niassa and Lake Kariba, although not yet for Cahora Bassa, and there is no general agreement on the definition of “safe biological limits” for those water bodies. Proportion of total water resources is based on estimates drawn from modelling and is dated, but significant work on this subject has been applied in the publication by Hirji et al. (2002) entitled Defining and Mainstreaming

The Millennium Development Goals

Table 4.1. MDG 7 Ensure Environmental Sustainability

Targets

Indicators

Target 7A Integrate the principles of sustainable development into the country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources Target 7B Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving by 2010 a significant reduction in the area of loss Target 7C Halve by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation Target 7D By 2020 to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers

7.1 Proportion of land area covered by forest 7.2 Carbon emissions total, per capita and per $1 GDP (ppp) 7.3 Consumption of ozone depletion substances 7.4 Proportion of fish stock within safe biological limits 7.5 Proportion of total water resources

7.6 Proportion of terrestrial and marine areas protected 7.7 Proportion of species threatened with extinction

7.8 Proportion of population using an improved water source 7.9 Proportion of population using an improved sanitation facility

7.10 Proportion of urban population living in slums

Source: UNEP 2008.

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