Below is a discussion of the four majot sub-themes of the AARSE 2010 conference:

Food and Water Security>

Integrated management of natural resources is a way to maintain ecosystems capacity to produce a broad range of goods and services. New concepts and operational set-ups for integrated and sustainable resources management in Africa, taking into account long-lasting changes, in particular global and climate change, are called for. Those should address biodiversity, water, soil, forest, landscapes and ecosystems integrity considering African socio-economic conditions and institutional frameworks. The status of the environment, as well as human use of the environment through settlements, agriculture and other uses, for sustaining livelihoods have to be taken into account. Resource management tools should be applicable to a broad range of African geographical areas, landscapes or river basins.

With the focus on two critical factors - food and water - information and methodologies for assessment, monitoring and forecasting are needed:

Assessment of

• agricultural productive zones
• surface and sub-surface water resources

Monitoring of

• agricultural and pastoral systems
• seasonal hydrological characteristics (e.g. surface water bodies, soil moisture)

Forecasting of

• crop yields
• floods and droughts
• conflicts related to food and water scarcity.

Explicit information in space and time will have to be at the disposal of decision makers to effectively tackle the challenges for African nations.

Energy Resources

Worldwide demand of energy is growing and will continue to do so for the next decades to come. The International Energy Agency IEA has estimated that global primary energy demand will increase by 40 - 50% from 2003 to 2030 depending on whether currently contemplated energy policies directed towards energy-saving and fuel-diversification will be effectuated. Since energy production, transportation and consumption place considerable pressures on the environment, there is serious concern regarding the sustainability of the current and future pattern of energy consumption.

In order to reduce the increasingly problematic dependence on fossil fuels, regions need to take initiative for securing their energy supplies. Among the renewable energy sources of the future, the sustainable use of local biomass for energy production will be an important element next to solar, wind and others. Biomass related energy production requires large areas, is transportation-critical but can be stored to a certain degree and therefore compensates daily and seasonal dependencies of other renewable energy carriers.

Considering environmental pressures caused by the use of energy as well as the secured and sustainable availability of energy in Africa, there is a need of:

• Information to help assessing current environmental impact of the production, transport and use of energy on a continental, regional and local scale in order to make balanced decisions towards energy diversification;
• Information to assess the opportunities to diverse the energy portfolio towards a mix of energy resources which puts less pressure on the environment than the current one;
• Monitoring the spatial and temporal trends reflecting the impact of the production, transport and use of energy to support policies and decisions aimed at energy security and energy diversification.

Spatial planning will have to explicitly consider and account for renewable energy generation in the future.

Disaster Risk Reduction

Disaster risk reduction spans a set of measures which inhibit events associated with natural phenomena from causing damages, losses, destruction of property, interruption of services and processes, as well as loss of lives. These measures can comprise the enforcement of building codes and urban and rural planning incorporating land-use norms that facilitate prevention. In the past decades, governments have reacted to disasters via the establishment of emergency committees or commissions to improve the capacities related to disaster response. However, since the 90s, when the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction was launched, international, regional, national, and local efforts have been promoted to change this paradigm of response into one of disaster prevention and mitigation. The modern view of disasters defined as consequences of risks which are modeled as a combination of hazards and vulnerabilities is being dispersed throughout the developing world, and efforts on risk assessment are now beginning to take shape in many countries focusing on different types of hazards. Information from such assessments should then be fed into the current models of development to identify measures that need to be implemented not only to reduce existing risks, but also to inhibit the creation or generation of new risks in the future.

The impact of disasters on sustainable development and the coping capacity of societies have been stated again by the Hyogo Declaration. The following statements outline the challenges:

• States have the primary responsibility to protect the people and property on their territory from hazards, and thus, it is vital to give high priority to disaster risk reduction in national policy, consistent with their capacities and the resources available to them. (-> policy advice, capacity building for actors in government and civil society organisations)
• Strengthening community level capacities to reduce disaster risk at the local level is especially needed, considering that appropriate disaster reduction measures at that level enable the communities and individuals to reduce significantly their vulnerability to hazards. (-> ascertain information flow to local actors and provide mandates as well as means so that they can take appropriate measures)
• Disasters remain a major threat to the survival, dignity, livelihood and security of peoples and communities, in particular the poor. Therefore there is an urgent need to enhance the capacity of disaster- prone developing countries in particular, the least developed to reduce the impact of disasters, through strengthened national efforts and enhanced bilateral, regional and international cooperation, including through technical and financial assistance. (-> including the provision of geoinformation on hazards and risks by local institutions).

A frequent bottleneck exists between information providers and users: if the capacity to use the information effectively does not exist, and the dissemination of this information does not happen efficiently, even the best technology cannot have an impact.

Marine and Coastal Management

Coastal areas are the most densely inhabited and industrialized parts of almost every African country with approximately 50% of the population residing within 100 km of the coastline. The coastal area is also an economically important zone where fishery, mineral and oil exploitation and tourism contribute significantly to the financial well-being of the coastal countries.

In Africa, most of the people living in the coastal areas are dependent on the surrounding lagoons, estuaries, mangrove ecosystems, creeks and inshore waters for their food security and well being. Rivers, lagoons, and inshore and offshore waters serve as important sources of animal protein in the form of fish and shellfish, as well as provide significant income through the coastal fisheries.

These marine and coastal areas, including their upstream freshwater regions, are presently experiencing coastal degradation in the form of coastal pollution, coastal erosion, siltation, flooding, deforestation, salt-water intrusion and subsidence, over-exploitation of fishery resources, impacts from the land-based settlements activities; industrial, agricultural, mining activities such as oil and gas. The depletion of living resources, uncertainty in ecosystem status, deterioration of water quality and loss of habitats (including coastal erosion) have been identified as significant transboundary environmental problems in many African region.

The challenge for these African countries is to use the abundant but depleting coastal and marine environment resources wisely, so that economic development can be achieved without destroying the resource base on which it is founded. Consequently, coastal risk management has become an important programme for stakeholders in the region who are working towards sustainable development of the coastal area.

Integrated Coastal Areas Management (ICAM) is a proposed tool achieving sustainable coastal resource use, and one that has been adopted, in principle, by many coastal African nations. However, implementation in many countries has been hampered by lack of human and financial resources, lack of scientific data, monitoring programmes and institutional capacities, and by institutional fragmentation and lack of cooperative mechanisms, policies and strategies and integrated development models. The concept of integrated management emphasises the importance of coupling the economic, social and environmental dimensions for sustainable coastal and marine resources utilization. Integration of these three pillars of sustainable coastal development starts from the adoption and application of advanced technological tools including geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) that provide scientific knowledge and analysis and support decision-making for assessment practices and management methods.