25 



Testimony of 



Ambassador Robert M. Pringle 



Director, Office of Ecology and Terrestrial Conservation 



Department of State 

 Before the House Subcommittees on Africa 

 and on Economic Policy, Trade and Environment 



November 6, 1993 



Mr . Cha i rman : 



Thank you for inviting me to testify on the 

 Administration's environmental policies in sub-Saharan Africa. 

 Let me begin by emphasizing our awareness that a serious global 

 environmental policy would be impossible without a major 

 African component. The African continent is too vast, and its 

 proportion of the world's population, area, and biological 

 resources too great, for it to be left in the margins of our 

 environmental concerns. 



But there is another and even more compelling reason for 

 keeping environmental issues front and center in our Africa 

 policy. Perhaps nowhere else is there such an immediate and 

 compelling overlap between environmental progress and economic 

 development . 



Better management and sustainable development of land and 

 forests will lead directly to improved living conditions for 

 Africa's often impoverished rural majority. The conservation 

 ot African wildlife is already a major source of ecotourism 

 income for countries such as Kenya and Botswana, and has great 

 potential elsewhere. To cite some other examples: 



Protecting forests and forest elephants in northern 

 Congo, as AID is doing, will help the Republic of Congo 

 develop a new tourist industry and avoid the rapid 

 depletion of an irreplaceable timber resource; 



Helping Malian villagers manage their forests and 

 practice family planning will, by reducing pressure on 

 fragile soils, help arrest desertification; 



Stopping soil erosion in Madagascar will improve rural 

 income by preventing the permanent loss of farmland at the 

 same time that it stops the destruction of coral reefs 

 of f shore . 



Thus our priority in Africa is, wherever possible, to 

 piomote sound environmental practices which are also 

 ').'-.•(' lopment a 1 ly sound. This is practical policy because, as I 

 h.T.'<-> indicated, what is environmentally sound coincides with 

 what i r. productive over the long term. 



