Apocalyptic Scenarios at the Outset of the 21st Century
Besides the critique of CBC approaches it was mainly global concerns that led to a reconsideration of conservation policies in the beginning of the 21st century. Again, for the third time within sixty years (after the late 1950s/early 1960s and then the 1980s) the looming collapse of African wildlife was dramatically broadcasted. WWF (2020) emphasizes that ‘Africa’s unique nature and natural resources are under greater pressure than ever before’. While previously it had been poachers and weak state institutions, now a multiple crisis caused by climate change, habitat fragmentation, and pollution-endangered wildlife was diagnosed as the cause of the impending collapse. A few entries must suffice to illustrate the doom scenario.
A World Bank communication estimates that climate change alone will result in the loss of over half of African bird and mammal species by 2100. Habitat loss and landscape fragmentation due to agricultural intensification, and the expansion of agricultural activities conditioned by growing population numbers, is an important driver of biodiversity loss (Perrings and Halkos 2015 for the continent) and biological annihilation (Ceballos et al. 2017 for the global scenario). Rivers have been progressively impounded for hydroelectric use, causing large-scale ecological changes in aquatic biodiversity (Mahe et al. 2017). Rapid deforestation linked to agricultural encroachment, and increasing commercial logging, is significant in many African countries. The explosion of invasive species is displacing indigenous animal and plant species in all biomes across the continent (UNEP 2016, Seebens et al. 2020). The rapid growth of agro-industrial estates, often linked to land grabs and encroachment on natural habitats through mining activities, is a further driving force for habitat change (Balehegn 2015, Batterbury and Ndi 2018). Violent conflicts in many contexts have contributed to habitat destruction, biodiversity decline, and species extinction (Merode et al. 2007, Brito et al. 2018). In a number of instances rebels and insurgents made use of national parks as strongholds benefitting commercially from the wildlife found there and using the artificially instituted wilderness as protective devise (e.g. in the Kongo’s Virunga Mts. National Park and Garamba National Park). This doom scenario underlined not only that the state had failed but also that communities simply did not have the resources and institutional capacity to address these grand problems. International NGOs, philanthropists, and donors were called to the fore to address this situation.