Biodiversity, Wildlife and the Land Question in Africa

The concerns of environmental scientists, environmental non-governmental organisations, government agencies and international bodies with biodiversity are aptly captured with observations in the United Nations Secretary-General's Report on Progress towards Sustainable Development Goals released on 11 May 2017. The Report notes the increase in biodiversity loss, declining land productivity and the increase in the poaching of wildlife, among other challenges. While these problems are real, there is a need to comprehend how their solutions intersect with other national policies or development agendas in Africa. Literature shows that trading off Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or the failure to draw synergy among them undermines their universal aim of ending poverty, protecting the planet and ensuring prosperity for all. This chapter adds to this literature by showing that some of the efforts toward curbing biodiversity loss ironically create conditions that work against the protection of biodiversity while also deepening existing socio-economic problems. The chapter demonstrates this irony by referring to SDG 15 and its relations to inequitable land distribution in African contexts. It argues that efforts to reduce biodiversity loss by expanding protected areas and by excising land in the battle to curb rampant poaching compound the very challenges as they lead to a situation, where land alienation and poaching are entangled in a vicious and unabating cycle.