BASIC KNOWLEDGE AND TECHNOLOGIES FOR NATURAL RESOURCE CONSERVATION

About Course

European Green Deal highlights the importance of a healthy natural capital for the social and economic development in Europe. In the African continent, which social and economic development is crucial for the achievement of the UN SDGs, a wise management of the natural capital is the essential pre-requisite for any perspective of development. Africa is a hotspot of biodiversity, hosting some of the most endangered animal species and ecosystems types. Therefore, preserving and wisely manage natural resources, both the abiotic and biotic ones, is a major priority and challenge, facing with the increasing anthropogenic and climate change pressures on biodiversity, ecosystem functions, services and natural capital. Increasing awareness of young African generation on the importance of the natural capital as an opportunity for social and economic development and introducing them to the basic knowledge on natural capital conservation, as both abiotic and biotic natural resources, is essential to boost sustainable development of the African continent.

The proposed course aims at connecting young students to the ecology and environmental science, making them citizen scientists and advocate of natural resource conservation and wise management and exploitation in their respective countries. The course is organized giving to the students an introduction on natural resources, i.e., the natural capital, which services are made available by ecosystems to the local populations, and the basic knowledge on ecosystems’ structure, internal dynamics, functioning, service delivering and their responses to natural and anthropogenic perturbations. The course is also introducing students to the technologies for monitoring ecosystems and natural capital dynamics and supporting their conservation, protection and recovery, when both required and feasible in a long-time perspective. The course is close with the discussion of a few study cases, showing to the student the strength and weakness points of a few practical applications of the principle of biological and ecological conservation to natural capital in different typology of ecosystems.