Update from the Africa Natural Capital Accounting Community of Practice

The Africa Natural Capital Accounting Community of Practice (NCA-CoP) has been very active and several events took place since the last update on the NCA-CoP in our newsletter of October 2020. Members of the NCA-CoP committed to organizing a monthly webinar, which proved very engaging for the wide community.

The November webinar was conducted by Ugandan national agencies on Building a Comprehensive Landscape for NCA and Policy Application, the December webinar was also a country case study presented by South Africa on The Shifting Nature of South Africa's Landscape: A 24 Year Snapshot of Land and Ecosystem Change. In January Conservation International (CI) and UN Statistics Division (UNSD) joined forces to talk about the scoping of natural capital accounting in countries in Africa for the webinar entitled Towards a National Plan for Advancing Environmental-Economic Accounting. The last two webinars were also country led examples from Botswana on Using NCA data to inform sectoral policies/strategies and monitor SDGs in February and from Liberia on Leveraging Earth Observations for Ecosystem Accounting: A NASA-CI Effort to Pilot Ecosystem Mapping in Liberia in March. These webinars were very widely attended and generated lively discussions. All the webinars have also been recorded and are available on the NCA-CoP YouTube page

A Steering Committee for the NCA-CoP was established in January 2021 with representatives from key institutions and governments. It consists of representatives from seven African countries (Botswana, Kenya, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda) and six partner organizations (African Union Commission, GDSA, UNECA, UNSD, AfDB and World Bank). The Committee will provide leadership, take decisions for the direction of the NCA-CoP, and lead the development of the work plan for the NCA-CoP. The Steering Committee will meet virtually every quarter to review progress on the CoP and resources needed to support the work. The first meeting took place on 20 January 2021.

For the latest developments and upcoming events, please see the NCA-CoP website or the dedicated UNSD website.