Despite 2020, the ‘Super Year for Nature’, being disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, it still provides a unique opportunity for Africa to embrace a new ‘post-2020’ vision. Africa is already severely negatively impacted by ecosystem degradation – without transformative change this will accelerate, to the detriment of Africa’s people. To change this trajectory the continent rapidly needs to implement development policies that recognise its natural capital and the life-supporting biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES) this provides as being integral to delivering the broadest range of crucial socio-economic benefits. Such policies will underpin a recognition of the importance of the environment to Africa’s development, as described in the AU’s Agenda 2063. Maintaining and enhancing the BES contribution to human well-being requires implementing transformative policies that incorporate national full-cost accounting of natural capital; incentivise investment in restoration of degraded ecosystems and ecological infrastructure; and invest in the means for measuring this new policy effectiveness. The economic stimulus packages required during and after the COVID-19 pandemic provide a unique opportunity for an innovative ‘green stimulus’ approach to enable this.
