Reimagining protected and conserved areas in Africa: Perspectives from the first Africa Protected Areas Congress

To protect nature, African parks must contribute to human well‐being, overcome threats, and secure reliable funding sources. The first Africa Protected Areas Congress (APAC) held in Kigali, Rwanda from July 18 to 23, 2022 has reaffirmed the need to re‐imagine the role of protected and conserved areas (PCAs) in safeguarding wildlife and biodiversity on the continent. Conservation strategies in Africa must be driven by the urgency to make PCAs people centered, advance integrated approaches to tackle drivers of biodiversity loss, and to promote sustainable and innovative financing for PCAs. This paper discusses how African countries can address these needs to harness the full potential of PCAs and ensure their long‐term sustainability.

woefully inadequate (Obura et al., 2021). At the same time, recent studies have pointed toward a growing trend for the downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement of protected areas across Africa due to industrial activities, local land pressures, and land claims (Golden Kroner et al., 2019). In regions such as West and Central Africa, these stressors have been linked to conflict risks stemming from increases in the movement of populations within countries and across borders, growing inequalities and regional disparities inside countries, expansion of agricultural commodities, and illegal exploitation of natural resources (Marc et al., 2015). The COVID-19 pandemic has also exposed the fragile nature of wildlife and biodiversity conservation on the continent and the vulnerability of PCAs to such systemic shocks (Lindsey et al., 2020).
It is in this context of opportunities and challenges for biodiversity conservation that the first International Union for Conservation of Nature Africa Protected Areas Congress (APAC) was held in Kigali, Rwanda, from July 18 to 23, 2022. The congress was held under the theme "For People and Nature" to reflect the growing need to manage Africa's PCAs in a just, equitable, and fair manner, including by involving indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs). After the week of deliberations involving more than 2400 participants, the congress issued the Kigali Call for Action (https://apacongress.africa/download/english-version-ofapac-kigali-call-to-action/) .
In this paper, I share perspectives on how the APAC and the Kigali Call for Action could potentially influence a paradigm shift in biodiversity and wildlife conservation in Africa. I focus on three key areas that will drive such a shift and that are consistent with goals of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF) as agreed by the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (https://www.cbd. int/article/cop15-cbd-press-release-final-19dec2022). The key areas are as follows: (a) making PCAs people centered, (b) advancing integrated approaches to tackling the drivers of threats to biodiversity, and (c) sustainable and innovative financing for PCAs.

MAKING PCAs PEOPLE CENTERED
As a continent, Africa plays a key role in safeguarding life on the planet. The APAC reaffirmed that PCAs must remain at the core of this agenda, and all African countries have a critical role to play in this regard. Biodiversity is not the same everywhere, nor does it have the same degree of importance across the continent. Nevertheless, as countries step up efforts toward the aspirational GBF goal to protect at least 30% of the planet by 2030 ("30 × 30"), the focus must be on maximizing the representation of biodiversity and not solely on the expansion of PCAs. Thus, African countries may need to shift away from conservation triage (Wiedenfeld et al., 2021) toward a zero-extinction biodiversity strategy. Knowledge about biodiversity distribution and status has helped to inform and guide priority-setting and decision-making for effective conservation and targeted investments in Africa (e.g., da Fonseca et al., 2000). However, securing what is important to safeguard biodiversity calls for conservation actions that connect local livelihoods to global aspirations such as the 30 × 30 goal. This implies the need for open and transparent processes in decision-making, with full involvement by local communities whose livelihoods and well-being depend on nature.
The APAC reaffirmed the need for a people-centered approach (Naughton-Treves et al., 2005) to conservation in Africa as this is the only way countries can harness the value of nature in all its many dimensions. This approach recognizes the importance of nature to human well-being and the critical role played by local communities in safeguarding wildlife and biodiversity. This is akin to the idea of a shared Earth that links people and biodiversity (Obura et al., 2021), which is considered a priority in the post-2020 GBF. Across Africa, protection, restoration, and management must go together as nature-based solutions that create synergies and avoid negative trade-offs between environmental sustainability and human well-being.
This people-centered approach to conservation is a far cry from the 1980s integrated conservation and development projects (Alpert, 1996;Newmark & Hough, 2000), which merely sought to link PCAs with the development of better living conditions in adjacent communities. Instead, this new approach calls for the governance and stewardship of PCAs to be driven by models (Abukari & Mwalyosi, 2020; Armitage et al., 2020) that promote equity, embrace indigenous and traditional knowledge, and uphold the rights of IPLCs. Such models should also give due consideration to the role of women and youth as agents of change. Protected area managers and park rangers are also important in promoting people-centered conservation both as agents of change and as beneficiaries (Woodside & Vasseleu, 2021). As de facto frontline workers for PCAs, managers and rangers need soft skills and expertise to engage with various stakeholders and to build healthy relations with communities in in the vicinity of PCAs (Woodside & Vasseleu, 2021).

ADVANCING INTEGRATED APPROACHES TO TACKLE DRIVERS
Despite the progress and achievements made in safeguarding nature, drivers of threats to biodiversity are becoming increasingly serious across Africa and are essentially outpacing conservation actions in scale and magnitude. Africa has been described as a continent that is rising (The Economist, December 2, 2011 [https://www.economist. com]), and there is a risk that this will come at the expense of natural heritage in most countries. Habitat loss and fragmentation (Powers & Jetz, 2019) are bringing people ever closer to wildlife (Bloomfield et al., 2020), leading to human-wildlife conflicts (Di Minin et al., 2021) and increasing the risk of zoonotic diseases (Rulli et al., 2017;Wilkinson et al., 2018)). Africa is already experiencing the impacts of climate change (Adelekan et al., 2022), which are projected to get worse and exacerbate threats to people, wildlife, and biodiversity.
The implications of these challenges for the future of PCAs were a major focus of the APAC, at which there was an emphasis on infrastructure development, climate change, the illegal wildlife trade, and conflict. The African Development Bank recently announced that it has invested over $44 billion in infrastructure in just the last 7 years.
Given the myriad of infrastructure development projects (Laurance et al., 2015) underway, threats to nature and PCAs are likely to be unavoidable in the coming decade. These challenges are serious in their own right but do not occur in isolation across Africa. Transportation and energy infrastructure projects will open up critical habitats and exacerbate the illegal wildlife trade. At the same time, the impacts of climate change already being felt across the continent will be exacerbated by environmental degradation.
Conservation strategies in Africa have tended to focus on solutions to specific problems or on parts of systems rather than consider the system as whole. Therefore, anthropogenic drivers and threats will continue to have profound effects on wildlife and biodiversity. Looking ahead, integrated approaches are needed to ensure that solutions will drive a much-needed systemic transformation or shift toward sustainability and resilience (Reed et al., 2020). Integration across both the horizontal (landscape) and vertical (institutions and policies) dimensions is key to achieving lasting outcomes for people and nature (Leadley et al., 2022). Thus, multiscale platforms can serve to build trust among stakeholders (government, private sector, IPLCs, and civil society), align interests across sectors, and promote collaborative actions at scale.
Integration is also key to ensuring that the management of PCAs will increasingly address the projected trends in climate change impacts on wildlife and biodiversity (Chapman et al., 2022). The management of PCAs in the face of climate change must consider the options for the persistence and resistance of biodiversity as well as the adaptation of biodiversity to projected changes (Brito & Naia, 2020). Furthermore, integrating the management of PCAs with that of adjacent landscapes can facilitate the establishment of corridors to increase habitat connectivity and accommodate potential shifts in species ranges. Consequently, such landscapes-scale actions will create opportunities for natural climate solutions (Griscom et al., 2017) that are people centered and locally driven (Fleischman et al., 2020) and attract climate finance for carbon mitigation.

PROMOTING SUSTAINABLE AND INNOVATIVE FINANCING FOR PCAs
Managing PCAs as tools for safeguarding nature is expensive, and financial shortfalls in management costs are pervasive in Africa. A 2018 study showed that the management of just the protected areas in Africa where lions are found requires an estimated US$1.2 to US$2.4 billion annually (Lindsey et al., 2018). According to the study, these areas, however, receive just US$381 million per year, resulting in a deficit of up to US$2.1 billion. As PCAs are a cornerstone of conservation efforts, such funding shortfalls are a major factor undermining their effective management (Maxwell et al., 2020). The funding gap not only affects the capacity of protected area agencies and resources needed for monitoring and enforcement but also diminishes the overall importance of PCAs to safeguarding the natural resources on which the economies of most countries depend.
Official Development Assistance (ODA) funds, including those channeled through multilateral entities such as the Global Environment Facility, have traditionally been relied upon to close the funding gap referred to above, and these must continue to play a significant role in this effort (Lindsey et al., 2018). However, it is increasingly recognized that, although they can reduce the size of the funding gap, global funds may never be sufficient to completely close it. Moreover, such funds are not fairly distributed across the continent and, in some cases, are difficult to access for most countries . Therefore, beyond traditional ODA funds, various private and public sources of funding need to be mobilized. While increasing nature-related funding is the most obvious solution to narrowing the funding gap, it is accepted that perverse domestic incentives related to nature conservation, if left unchecked, can serve to widen it. Perverse incentives can arise when well-intended proconservation incentives lead to natural resource depletion (Reed et al., 2019).
The APAC considered a wide range of options for the sustainable financing of PCAs, including the urgent need to increase the flow of funds from both public and private sources. However, equally important is the need to reduce costs by increasing efficiency in the use of domestic resources and by developing innovative financing mechanisms such as payments for ecosystem services (PES) and wildlife conservation bonds. Although PES has a long history in conservation financing globally (Salzman et al., 2018), its application across Africa has been limited (Ferraro, 2009). On the other hand, wildlife conservation bonds are just being introduced as a new financial instrument for mobilizing private capital to achieve specific conservation outcomes, such as protection of a threatened species. Such a fund was recently launched for conservation of Rhinos in South Africa (https://treasury.worldbank.org/en/about/unit/treasury/ ibrd/wildlife-conservation-bond). Private capital can also be mobilized through biodiversity credits, which are also financial instruments that enable businesses to invest in conservation and restoration (https://www3.weforum. org/docs/WEF_Biodiversity_Credit_Market_2022.pdf).
The national governments of most African countries account for a major share of the financing of PCAs, but misaligned domestic policies, such as supporting agricultural expansion in protected forested landscapes (Acheampong et al., 2019), often serve to undermine the effectiveness of this funding. Hence, the role of national governments remains crucial to creating regulatory environments that address harmful practices and attract private investment. Such enabling environments should help to promote the value and importance of PCAs and potentially facilitate opportunities to attract financing through collaborative management between government agencies and civil society organizations (Lindsey et al., 2021).
The APAC also explored previously tested and proven tools for financing PCAs, such as the use of conservation trust funds (CTFs). A recent study reported that CTFs around the world, including many in Africa, disbursed or allocated more than US$2 billion to support conservation projects and programs during the period 2009-2018 (Doinjashvili et al., 2021). The same study found that at the beginning of 2020, CTFs collectively managed assets worth approximately US$1.9 billion. Countries such as Madagascar have led the way in pioneering CTFs as sources of financing for PCAs, and with a capital of nearly US$140 million, the Fondation pour les Aires Protégées et la Biodiversité is the largest in Africa (https://www.fapbm.org/ en/home/). Drawing on the country-level experiences of such funds, a Pan-African Conservation Trust (A-Pact; https://apact.africa/) was launched at the APAC with the aim of mobilizing resources to complement government budget allocations for effectively and sustainably managing PCAs. A-Pact is founded on the goodwill and support of key African leaders, but it remains to be seen whether the focus on a continental-level trust fund will secure buy-in from countries and the African Union.

CONCLUSION
Despite the challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the APAC turned out to be a timely opportunity for reimagining PCAs on the African continent. The 5 days of discussions and deliberations by participants addressed many issues of crucial importance in this regard. The inclusive and participatory format allowed all stakeholders to express their views, including government, development agencies, financial institutions, IPLCs, private entities, civil society organizations, and youth groups. Although other important issues such as the pervasive risk from agricultural commodity expansion (Ordway et al., 2017) and natural resource extraction (e.g., mining; Ahmed et al., 2021) across the continent were not addressed, the APAC set the stage for a robust approach to PCAs in Africa. The Kigali Call for Action is not perfect, but it does underpin a future for PCAs that is people centered, effective at tackling biodiversity loss and climate change, and adequately resourced. The challenge now is to deliver on these commitments at all levels for an African ecological future that is sustainable and resilient (Archer et al., 2021;Scheren et al., 2021), thereby ensuring that African countries play their part in the ambitious post-2020 GBF agreed by parties to the CBD. The focus on PCAs will enable countries to pursue a more inclusive and participatory approach toward implementing the GBF and deliver on the 2030 targets. National-level frameworks are needed to inform and guide the integration of spatial targets for safeguarding biodiversity (e.g., Bakarr & Abu-Bakarr, 2022). In addition to empowering communities and creating enabling environment for innovative financing, African countries are in position to effectively align biodiversity conservation goals with development aspirations, including nature-positive policies across all sectors (Lindsey et al., 2022). As a result, there is considerable potential to leverage domestic financing and mobilize private capital for sustainable financing of PCAs.

A U T H O R C O N T R I B U T I O N S
Mohamed I. Bakarr conceptualized the idea of this study and wrote the manuscript.

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
This paper is dedicated to the memory of Gustavo A. B. da Fonseca. I thank Claude Gascon for comments and suggestions on an earlier draft. Although I participated in the APAC as a member of the GEF staff, the views expressed in this paper are solely mine and do not in any way reflect those of the GEF or Njala University.

F U N D I N G I N F O R M AT I O N
Author participation in the APAC was funded by the GEF.

C O N F L I C T O F I N T E R E S T S TAT E M E N T
The author declares no conflicts of interest.