Horn of Africa Regional Environment Centre and Network

[This text was borrowed from http://www.hoarec.org/ .]

The Horn of Africa Regional Environment Centre serves as the secretariat for the Horn of Africa Regional Environment Network, and as the facilitator of cooperation between member organisations and other environmental actors, including private sector and government. It is currently located in the new building of the Science Faculty of the Addis Ababa University.

Horn of Africa Regional Environment Network (HoA-REN) 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 organizations and higher learning and research institutes. Partners of the network consist mainly of non-endogenous (international) organizations working on environmental issues in the region.

Focus

The Centre has chosen to work on 3 environmental management themes:

• Management of lakes and wetlands: Governments in the Horn have recognized the need to protect wetlands and efforts are being undertaken to save Ramsar sites like the Sudd in South Sudan, Lake Abijata in the Central Rift Valley in Ethiopia, and Lake Naivasha?? and to develop their (sustainable) tourism potential.

Management of parks and buffer zones The Horn of Africa, naturally has a rich variety of plant and animal species, due to its topography and diverse climatic conditions. For example Ethiopia is included on the list of the most biodiversity rich countries of the world and also other countries in the region have unique endemic species. Despite this global recognition, biodiversity is threatened throughout the region. Factors contributing to this threat are for instance the expansion of cultivation and grazing, as well as the spread of alien invasive species. Wildlife is vanishing rapidly from most of the region. Except in Kenya, most protected areas in the form of game parks, bird sanctuaries and nature reserves only exist on paper. However, recently the government opf Ethiopia has formulated new legislation around protected areas and wildlife management and several Ethiopian universities are now developing (new) curricula to build human capacity in park and buffer zone management. In Sudan, with peace now gradually returning to the Southern part of the country, the realisation to properly protect and manage the valuable wetlands and wildlife is increasing.

Management of highlands and dry lowlands The Horn of Africa faces great problems with regard to severe land degradation. Loss of land is mainly due to extensive deforestation and cultivation and/or grazing of steep highland areas or ecologically fragile lowlands, without applying proper soil and water conservation practices. Water induced soil erosion is visible in too deep and wide gullies on uncultivated and to a lesser extent also in cultivated land, in extremely shallow soils in much of the remaining farmland and in increasing desertification. The use or sale of dung and crop residue for fuel contributes to lower fertility of soils and decreasing productivity per hectare of land and cubic meter of water.

External links

• Horn of Africa Regional Environment Centre Website