Building capacity for environmental management

Developing countries suffer from underinvestment in institutional capacity and infrastructure for environmental management. The problem is one of underinvestment, in that the averted damages and costs would generously repay the needed expenditures. It is often implicitly overlooked that the costs of environmental degradation, in terms of increased sickness or reduced productivity, are real costs to the economy, although they may not be adequately captured by market valuations.

Although many African countries are implementing new national and multilateral environmental policies, their effectiveness is often low due to lack of adequate staff, expertise, funds and equipment for implementation and enforcement.