The global community is at an inflexion point. As it faces a triple planetary crisis — accelerating climate change, mounting pollution, and intensifying biodiversity loss — the looming question is: how can we rapidly change course, invest in nature to tackle the environmental crises we face, and transform our economy?
This question is particularly pressing in Africa, whose unique natural capital constitutes up to 50% of the continent’s wealth.
The 2022 Africa Green Economy Conference has put us on the path to answering this question. The conference explored opportunities for investing in nature and developing public policy that better values Africa's unique natural capital assets, which are key to ensuring a robust, inclusive recovery and the transition to a nature-positive economy.
During the conference, experts, business representatives, and regional leaders who are leading the charge to mainstream natural capital approaches presented new research and initiatives, shared best practices, and engaged stakeholders in business, finance, government, and civil society.
On-the-ground actors were at the heart of the conference: between its opening and closing plenary sessions, the conference empowered local partners in Uganda, Gabon, South Africa, and Mozambique to host workshops, dialogues, and capacity-building sessions that brought a much-needed pragmatic perspective to the discussion.
Making sure that these voices are heard will be a critical step toward a richer, more nuanced dialogue, and yet they are just a small subset of the practitioners working to accelerate Africa’s shift to a nature-positive economy.
This Community group will help us reach the broader communities of practice that exist across Africa and beyond, and ensure that this dialogue can transcend the confines of the Conference to drive long-term change.
