Objectives:

• Strengthen Africa’s scientific institutions and networks for the sustainable use and management of natural resources;
• Increase resilience to disasters and to enhance preparedness through the development of early warning systems;
• Improve Member States’ governance in environmental management for better access and benefit-sharing of natural resources;
• Create an enabling environment to develop green and blue economies and move up the natural resources processing value chain.

Main actions

• Upgrade scientific institutions, in the fields of the environmental, earth, ocean and climate system sciences, through strengthening universities and research centres and mobilizing international science cooperation;
• Train a critical mass of natural resources and disaster risk managers (young skilled people and resourceful scientists and engineers) with the perspective of employability;
• Support the development of tools for disaster risk reduction (DRR);
• Promote and support UNESCO-designated sites to be recognized and used as laboratories and learning platforms for sustainable development at the national and regional level.