UN urges Africa to reverse effects of pollution, poor sanitation

UN environmentalists on Thursday called on African governments to step up efforts in reversing environmental threats which they say are rapidly intensifying in many parts of the continent.

Clever Mafuta, the program leader of Transboundary Waters, a UN inter-agency body, said land degradation, air pollution, poor sanitation and unsafe drinking water were among the major environmental problems in Africa.

The UN expert said that Africa's reliance on the use of biomass for cooking, lighting and heating means that 90 percent of the continent's population was exposed to health threats as a result of air pollution that is responsible for 600,000 premature deaths every year in Africa.

"The solution to air pollution is not expensive and can be solved by use of solar and geothermal development," Mafuta said on Thursday.

He said that low carbon, climate-resilient choices could help the continent accelerate industrialization, increase energy and food production, and promote sustainable natural resource governance.

"The continent has an opportunity to use its large young population to drive its growth to help reverse the current trend," he said during the launch of the 6th Global Environment Outlook report in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

The UN and Environment Program (UNEP) Executive Director, Achim Steiner, said the report unveils the latest evidence on the state of the world's environment and provides tools that can be applied to avoid damage to the earth.

"If current trends continue and the world fails to enact solutions that improve current patterns of production and consumption and use of natural resources sustainably, then the state of the world's environment will continue to decline," he said.

Jacqueline McGlade, UNEP's Chief Scientist, said that Africa should make use of the discoveries of green energy in the continent.

McGlade said that the geothermal development contributes immensely to the use of clean energy away from the use of firewood that has been associated with diseases in the continent.

The report says the proportion of the population served with clean water is increasing in Africa but only grew from 64 percent in 2005 to 68 percent in 2012 and absolute numbers of people without safe drinking water remain high.

It says more than half of the population in sub-Saharan Africa still do not have any access to improved sanitation, compared to 90 percent coverage in North Africa, with a vast difference between urban and rural areas. Endit