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STRATEGIC ORIENTATION DOCUMENT

A discussion paper

prepared by André BASSOLÉ
Chairman of the Advisory Committee
EIS Program in Sub-Saharan-Africa
July 2000

 

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgement

This document was prepared with the contribution of Dan Tunstall, WRI Washington DC who reviewed the very first draft and provided advice for its improvement. Jacob Gyamfi-Aidoo, Coordinator of the EIS Program contributed in providing parts of the prospectus content and reviewing this second version. Other colleagues, namely Yves Prevost, TheWorld Bank Washington DC, and Paul Bartel, USAID Washington DC, made comments before and during the IWG meeting in October 1999 in Washington.

May everyone receive in full a just recognition of his contributive efforts.

 

I. BACKGROUND

1. This end of millennium calls constantly for a review of the past in view of a better development planning for the future. The future of our planet is often described or illustrated by the following type of sentence: “Unless we use the resources of the Earth sustainably and prudently, we deny people their future ”. This warning stems from the alarming status of the environment at global level as observed today. Despite the progress made in confronting environmental challenges since the Rio Conference in 1992, observers agree on the fact that “the gap between what has been done thus far and what is realistically needed is widening ”.

2. In this global picture, the indicators concerning the African continent are showing rather threatening figures. The population growth rate in the Africa region is the highest in the world; poverty has perpetuated underdevelopment and mismanagement of resources; environmental degradation continues and there is a great imbalance in the use of natural resources: soil and vegetation are overexploited whereas water, energy, minerals and organic resources are underused or exported raw2. The major environment and development challenge in Africa remains striking a balance between economic development and sustainability for the growing number of people. This alarming situation was already perceptible in the late eighties/beginning of the nineties when continent wide series of National Environmental Action Plans (NEAP’s) emerged. These action plans required information, and made people aware of environmental problems and understand that accurate, timely and useful information was essential for addressing the related issues; hence the initiative of a Program on Environment Information Systems (EIS) in Sub-Saharan Africa. This Program started in the NEAP ambiance, as a multi-donor initiative led by the World Bank, with the contribution of African experts. The aim was to help Sub-Saharan Africa countries create operational Environmental Information Systems which meet priority demands of resources users, planners, and decision makers for a better renewable resources management.

3. With the financial and technical support of the Norwegian Funds, GTZ, USAID, WRI, the World Bank, UNEP, etc. the Program organized regularly annual meetings and workshops to enable exchange of ideas on scientific, technical and policy matters with regard to the management of environmental information and capacity building therein, in support of NEAP’s development in Africa. Thus, the Program retained a set of indicators for EIS development and developed guidelines for best practices in EIS. It served as an international forum of experts and stakeholders who work to:

  • develop common principles and practices for EIS development and application;
  • facilitate the co-ordination of national and international EIS programs;
  • document and share “best practices” in EIS development and application;
  • provide a forum for sharing information on EIS;
  • reinforce and create synergy among complementary initiatives.
4. Over time, the Program developed into a network of institutions and individuals active in developing EIS’s on the continent. The decision was taken in 1994 to move Its Secretariat from Washington DC to Pretoria in South Africa. The impact of the EIS Program is visible in most of those Sub-Saharan countries where environmental information management is of good quality today. The achievements of the Program include
  • the emergence of awareness about the need for stakeholders to work together within and among countries and share common data architecture and information resources;
  • the creation of a cadre of some 2000 information managers, trainers, decision makers, and other professionals, as well as institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa, which produce or use environmental information for a variety of purposes.
5. These achievements and the expansion of the Program lead to the need thereof to move from its informal status to that of a legally registered entity. This need was felt since 1997. The partners taking part in the Program also thought at the time that it was necessary for Africans to play a leading role in the management thereof. To this end, a Task Force was set up to review the structure of the Program and to propose the type of organization that could best suit its goal. As a result, in March 1998, the Chairman of the Advisory Committee was selected from African partners (the Vice-Chairman and the Coordinator were already from Africa); and a new Coordinator, also from Africa, was appointed on a competitive basis since October 1998. Consequently the process for incorporating the EIS program as an international not-for-profit organization, based in South Africa (where the Program secretariat is being hosted by the CSIR since its transfer on the African continent) started in 1999 and ended in July 2000. The resulting new organisation is EIS-Africa (SIE-Afrique in French).

6. This document explains the strategy proposed by the Chairman of the EIS Program's Advisory Committee for EIS-Africa . It is a discussion paper on the agenda of the first General Meeting of EIS-Africa.

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