3rd IFLA AFRICA SYMPOSIUM
Abuja, Nigeria
Monday 14th to Friday 18th, October 2013
PEOPLE AND LANDSCAPES
African Landscape Convention
INTRODUCTION
United Nations Economic and Social Council Economic Commission for Africa/ African Union Commission [UNESCECA/AUC] (2011) joint submission reiterated the fact that “sustainability will remain elusive if we do not design ways to live within the means of one planet and if there is no hope for all for a better life on that one planet”. It is a call for ecological sensibility that biocentrically sees humanity as part of a wider community of life and as basis for true sustainability that heals degraded landscape.
Green economy is a response to the multiple crises confronting humanity in recent decades especially resource depletion, economic crises, climate change anomalies and food insecurity. The later is particularly true of Sub Saharan Africa with twenty one of the thirty poorest nations of the World and highest number of people that are unable to feed adequately. The twin issues of poverty and glaring food shortage is traceable to land degradation that threatens environmental performance of both rural and urban landscapes. Indiscriminate logging, overgrazing, reliance on fire wood, peasant farming, bush burning, uncoordinated mining, oil spillage and sprawling urbanization continue to strip the landscape of its vegetative cover.
This is in view of unpredictable and extreme weather events that propel massive flooding, gully erosion, destructive ocean surges and desertification. There is an urgent need to examine our value system and identify more productive landscape developmental alternatives. Green economy as a local developmental strategy must then address land and water management in all their ramifications. This symposium recognises cultural differences in landscape perception and aims at generating people oriented strategies, policies and agenda for social, environmental and economic sustainability through discussions of all stakeholders and environmental professionals at continental level. You are invited.
Call for abstracts
Landscape architects, architects, environmental designers, planners and individuals in extant disciplines interested in productive local developmental strategies are invited to submit research and / or practice oriented abstracts which address the 2nd International IFLA-Africa Symposium theme or sub themes.
Local Organising Committee will group relevant abstracts for presentation into detail symposium themes and sub themes. These categories will form focused sessions directed by specialists to create conducive environment that will generate solution oriented ideas, policies and implementation strategies.
Abstract Submission Deadline: February 28, 2013
http://www.iflaafrica2013.com/abstracts.html