Nature can provide all our basic needs.

I speak as an African who has experienced rural life in Africa.

I grew up in a small village in Ghana. Life was what you would describe as ‘totally self-sufficient’ – nature provided all our basic needs. Men hunted and women fished, wild animals and freshwater fish provided protein, snails and mushrooms added variety to our diet, forest fruits were delicacies, we gathered non-timber forest products for the house and also for sale to supplement farm income, streams on the outskirts of the village provided clear water all year round.

One could argue that we were not poor because the soil was rich, the stream water was clear, the forest was extensive and abundant with wildlife and the rivers teemed with fish.

Today, the forest is gone, the streams have dried up, and no alternative sources of water have been provided; all big and medium-sized game have disappeared, the land is badly degraded, agricultural productivity is low, leaving the village people much poorer today than when I was a child!

This situation is not unique.

In the name of development, natural resources and environment are destroyed and rural communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America who already were poor, are driven into abject poverty.

The Millennium Development Goals, which aim to eradicate poverty, are therefore an excellent and most welcome initiative. But we conservationists know that poverty and environment are inescapably linked – you cannot fix poverty in the long term unless you have a healthy environment.

The MDG process does not adequately reflect the importance of healthy ecosystems – Goal 7 (‘Ensure environmental sustainability’) is the only goal which directly links to environmental issues, and, shamefully, it is the goal where governments of the world, collectively, are not measuring up and are in fact getting worse.

The MDGs are interconnected and can neither be achieved in isolation, nor sequentially. Failure to invest adequately in Goal 7 will accelerate degradation of the essential ecosystem services upon which the other goals depend, and will undermine our ability to achieve them.

In conclusion, my experience tells me that environmental degradation can and will jeopardize the livelihoods and well-being of the rich and poor alike. But the rich have the means to cushion the impacts, while the poor have to bear the full brunt, and either perish or subsist in miserable conditions, with woefully inadequate basic necessities of life.

The MDG process must strengthen and restore the environment and natural resources for the benefit of all... particularly the world’s poor.
Yaa Ntiamoa-Baidu, WWF’s Africa and Madagascar Regional Programme Director, 2005