Middle East / North Africa and the Millennium Development Goals ...

3.7 Ensuring environmental sustainability (MDG7)
80
Markus Loewe
MDG7 has three targets that are only very loosely interconnected and that
may, in some areas, even result in goal conflicts. The focal point here is
Target 9, i.e. to “integrate the principles of sustainable development into
country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources.”
Target 10 sets out to “halve, by 2015, the proportion of people
without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation.” Target
11, finally, provides for efforts to achieve a significant improvement in
the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers worldwide.
Environmental protection
Target 9 is one of the few points on the MDG agenda that has not been
quantified as such. In order to be able to measure progress in the implementation
of the target, six indicators were chosen which were thought to
be able to model the broadest possible spectrum of environmental policy.
The first indicator – proportion of land area covered by forests – is not particularly
relevant for the countries of the MENA region. With the exceptions
of Sudan, Morocco, and Lebanon, none of these countries has had
any major forest cover since the period of classical antiquity. Nor is it
likely that the region’s forest cover will grow appreciably in the future.
However, one alarming fact is that, according to World Bank data (World
Bank 2004e), Sudan’s forest cover declined from 30 % to roughly 26 % of
the country’s overall land area between 1990 and 2001.
On the other hand, the MDG agenda lacks an indicator designed to measure
soil degradation. Soil degradation poses a major environmental threat
precisely for the MENA countries, one that will entail serious problems for
the region’s future social and economic development.
However, the other five indicators included in the MDG agenda show that
the MENA countries will have to undertake substantial efforts if they are
to implement MDG7 by 2015 (ESCWA 2005).
The percentage of land set aside as conservation areas in the MENA region
has grown since 1990 from roughly 2 to over 10 %. The main reason
for this, though, is that during the 1990s Saudi Arabia set aside 38 % of its
land area as a nature reserve. Only Oman and Saudi Arabia have placed
more than 10 % of their land area under protection (see Table A9, Annex).
German Development Institute