East Africa

Biodiversity within inland water ecosystems in Eastern Africa is highly diverse and of great importance to livelihoods and economies, however, development activities are not always compatible with the conservation of this diversity and it is poorly represented in the development planning process. One of the main reasons is the lack of readily available information on the status and distribution of inland water taxa.

There is growing recognition that centralized forest regimes, which exclude local knowledge and customary practices, have not achieved sustainable forest management. Most countries of Eastern and Southern Africa are reviewing and revising policies and laws and restructuring their agencies to accommodate emerging forest management imperatives.

The regions of Eastern and Southern Africa, embracing the countries of Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia(land), Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Lesotho, Swaziland and South Africa display a great richness and diversity of cultures and peoples, geographical features and biodiversity. This complexity has created great diversity in resource use and management by rural people.

The dugong (Dugong dugon) is the only herbivorous mammal that is strictly marine. It has a range spanning some 37 countries, including tropical and subtropical coastal and island waters. This plan presents a global overview of the status of the dugong and its management throughout its range.

The theme of the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Session of the GBF was “Using Biodiversity to Strengthen Livelihoods”. The Forum explored ways and means of integrating poverty alleviation considerations into local, national and regional actions aimed at conserving, using sustainably and sharing equitably the benefits of biodiversity.