This is the second comprehensive report on the state of Africa's environment, produced in collaboration with the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN). This report highlights the central position Africa's environment continues to play in sustainable development, as well as its potential to achieve progress in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals. The report profiles Africa's environmental resources as an asset for the continent's development. It highlights the opportunities presented by the region's natural resource base to support the continent's development. It also underscores the concept of sustainable livelihoods, and the importance of the environmental initiatives in supporting them.

This first edition of the Africa Environment Outlook (AEO) report is a significant milestone in the collaboration between UNEP and the African Ministerial Conference on the Enviornment (AMCEN). Africa faces a number of critical challenges, including the deterioration of the environment; increasing social and economic inequality; and worldwide globalization, which is leaving Africa behind. The AEO is a unique tool. It provides an analysis of the state of the environment over the past 30 years, looks at the driving force behind environmental change, and reviews the consequences for social and economic development. It concludes with recommendations about the road that Africa should take to preserve its great natural riches, biodiversity and vast unspoiled landscapes.

This report differs somewhat from it’s predecessors, in the sense that instead of adopting a scenarios-based approach, the thinking developed around the future environmental state has been crystallized using an ’’impact mapping’’ tool within the trends in environmental data and socio-economical policy directions, that have emerged since the advent of democracy in South Africa in 1994. The aim of this approach is to highlight critical areas, where debates and interventions need to occur and which require understanding, co-ordination and co-operation across the different sectors and decision-making levels of society, from the individual and community level to the corporate and government level.

The Africa Environment Outlook or Youth (AEO) is the youth version of the AEO report and has resulted from the combined efforts of young people from all over Africa. It is a report of Africa’s environment through the eyes of Africa’s youth. Apart from drawing extensively from the first Africa Environment Outlook: Past, Present and Future Perspectives Report, this book also contains new and unique contributions from Africa’s young people. These contributions have been captured through articles, poems, proverbs, drawings and paintings. At the heart of this powerful youth voice is a desire to steer Africa towards an environmentally, socially and economically vibrant future.