What is the Horn of Africa Regional Environment Centre?

The Horn of Africa Regional Environment Centre serves on the one hand as the secretariat for the Network, and on the other hand it facilitates and supports cooperation between member organisations and other environmental actors, including private sector and government, to carry out activities “on the ground”. The Centre has several components, of which the most important ones are the partnership programmes, capacity upgrading and demand driven action research. Concerning the latter, the Centre aims to motivate students in environment related studies by offering practice oriented research options in field situations.

Focus Areas

In order to optimize its effectiveness the Centre has opted direct its efforts mainly towards 3 environmental

• management themes
• Management of lakes and wetlands
• Management of parks and buffer zones
• Management of erosion prone highlands and dry lowland

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Geographic Focus

With regard to geographic focus, the Centre has chosen the following areas for its initial
interventions, based on the urgency of the environmental situation in the area:

• The cross border Greater Boma Nature Conservation Area and the wetlands in the central part of
  the Nile (the Sudd, Machar and Bahr el Ghazal wetlands)
•  Rift Valley Ethiopia
• Day forest in Djibouti

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Information Broucher

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The Horn of Africa of Africa Regional Environment Network is a network of members and partners consisting of environmental CBOs, NGOs and higher learning institutes from six countries in the Horn of Africa. Members of the network are  endogenous civil society organisations and higher learning and research institutes. Partners of the network consist mainly of non-endogenous (international) organisations working on environmental issues in the region.

Araya Asfaw

Over the years, as the result of human activities, the Earth has been experiencing stress from population pressure, economic growth, environmental degradation, which resulted in climate change we are currently experiencing.  Unless the human foot prints on Earth are reduced considerably, the change will be irreversible which could lead to major catastrophe. Mitigation and adaptation to climate change needs global governance and cooperation. It requires changes in our values, knowledge and way of life. It needs investment in sustainable technologies that would reduce the pressure on the Earth system to meet humans’ basic needs.      

Author:  Araya Asfaw, Addis Ababa
Category:  Ecology
Date:  3/4/2009
Source:  SciDev.net
Source Website:  www.scidev.net <http://www.africafiles.org/database/www.scidev.net>

African Charter Article# 24: All peoples shall have the right to a general satisfactory environment favorable to their development.Summary & Comment: Africa is the continent most affected by climate change; yet it has gained the least from past climate change negotiations. For Africa to effectively adapt to climate change, the rules of the game must change in Copenhagen, says Araya Asfaw.