About the African International Peace Institute

In general, the human rights situation in Africa is poor and, according to UN and NGO observers, is viewed with concern. The legal aspect of human rights is still relatively new in Africa. The United Nations system, international law and the African Union played a role in establishing the human rights system on the continent, which was reflected positively and by the urgent necessity towards improving human rights and justice. However, some of the promises made about these rights remained a dead letter, despite global, continental, regional and national bodies guaranteeing these rights. It is noted that the number of democratic governments is increasing, but it is still a minority. Many African countries nominally recognize the maintenance and provision of human rights for all their citizens, but in practice, when taken into account, these rights are not always recognized. Human rights violations continue to occur on a massive scale in many parts of Africa, often under the watchful eyes of the state. Most of these breaches are attributed to political unrest, which is often a “side effect” of civil war. Among the most prominent African countries that have committed major violations are Ivory Coast, Sudan and others. There are reports of summary executions, mutilation and rape. Reproductive rights are limited in many countries on the continent due to the lack of family planning resources and limited access to birth control. The United Nations, international law and the African Union contribute to the establishment of the human rights system in Africa, which has positively affected the improvement of the human rights situation on the continent. However, significant human rights violations still existed in many parts of the continent. Most violations may be attributed to political instability (as a result of civil war), racial discrimination, corruption, post-colonialism, economic scarcity, ignorance, disease, religious intolerance, debt and financial mismanagement, monopoly of power, lack or absence of independence of the judiciary and press, and border disputes. . Many provisions in regional, national, continental and global agreements remain unfinished.

The key to Africa’s political and economic transformation in the next decade is found in this aspiration. Indeed, as former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, “Good governance is perhaps the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and promoting development.”

Progress on good governance has been encouraging, but challenges remain.
African countries continue to build on the governance gains that they have achieved since the early 1990s. According to the African Development Bank, good governance should be built on a foundation of effective states, mobilized civil societies, and an efficient private sector. The key elements of good governance, then are accountability, transparency, combating corruption, citizen participation, and an enabling legal/judicial framework.

Since then, many African countries have undertaken institutional reforms that have significantly changed their governance architectures and put in place a new set of leaders. Since the early 1990s, for example, Ghana has diligently undertaken governance reforms, including the design and adoption of new democratic constitution, which places emphasis on the separation of powers with checks and balances to transform its political system. Ghana subsequently became a role model in the institutionalization of democratic rule, as illustrated by the quick acceptance of defeat by incumbent President John D. Mahama during the 2016 elections.

More broadly, over the past decade, Kenya, Morocco, and Côte d’Ivoire have led the way. The Ibrahim Index of African Governance indicates that between 2008 and 2017, these countries experienced significant improvements, particularly in overall governance. Specifically, Côte d’Ivoire registered the greatest improvement in overall governance during the period 2008–2017 (+12.7 points), followed by Morocco (+7.3 points) and Kenya (+6.1 points).

Fighting poverty and improving human development in Africa must begin with the creation of wealth, a process that requires the existence of a robust entrepreneurial class.

But Africa has a long way to go. Too many countries have not yet achieved the type of reforms that can prevent dictatorship, corruption, and economic decline. Due to continued sectarian violence, weak and ineffective leadership, and lack of political will, countries like the Central African Republic, Eritrea, Somalia, and South Sudan remain saddled by poor-functioning governance structures.
The absence of good governance in many African countries has been extremely damaging to the government’s corrective intervention role, particularly in the maintenance of peace and security, as well as the promotion of economic growth and the creation of the wealth needed to confront poverty and improve human development.

Without good and inclusive governance, Africa will not achieve its social and economic targets
It is imperative that countries entrench mechanisms that promote constitutionalism, accountability, democracy, and good governance if Africa is to achieve its development goals.
For example, although there has been a substantial decline in the share or proportion of Africans living in extreme poverty—from 54 percent in 1990 to 41 percent in 2015—the number of Africans living in poverty has actually increased from 278 million in 1990 to 413 million in 2015. Unless effective anti-poverty and pro-poor policies are implemented in African countries; global poverty will become increasingly. Indeed, the least developed countries in the world (as determined by the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development index are also countries with relatively weak, dysfunctional, or ineffective governance structures (as determined by the Ibrahim Index of African Governance). These include the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Libya, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan.

Africa has stagnated since the mid-2000s
Fighting poverty and improving human development in Africa must begin with the creation of wealth, a process that requires the existence of a robust entrepreneurial class. In order to achieve these goals, there must be peace and security—especially the peaceful coexistence of the various ethnocultural groups that inhabit each African country. Unfortunately, weak and dysfunctional governance structures continue to prevent many African countries from creating and sustaining the necessary enabling environment for peaceful coexistence, entrepreneurship, and wealth creation. In fact, in countries such as Cameroon, the DRC, and South Sudan, the absence of governance structures undergirded by the rule of law has failed to halt ethnic-induced violence. That violence stunts entrepreneurship and economic growth in these countries. Peace and security, which are a sine qua non for entrepreneurial activities and the creation of wealth, are unlikely to return to these countries without the provision of participatory and inclusive governance structures.

Weak governance manifests itself in other ways as well: Too often dysfunctional governance processes persist, creating environments where civil servants and political elites act with impunity, embezzling scarce public resources that could be used for education, healthcare, infrastructure, water treatment plants, electricity, farm-to-market roads, or technology. Elites are usually not incentivized to implement pro-poor economic programs that enhance the ability of the poor to participate productively and gainfully in economic growth, such as public investments in primary and secondary education, clean water, basic health care, and child nutrition.
Bolstering good and inclusive governance through 2030 and beyond
The type of governance structure that each African country should strive for over the next decade is one that should address peaceful coexistence and economic development, inequality, the effects of climate change, health pandemics, and enhanced regional cooperation, as well as ensure the full and effective participation in both the economic and political systems of groups that have historically been marginalized (e.g., women, youth, and ethnic and religious minorities).
Each country must reflect upon its own governance challenges and engage in robust national dialogue on institutional reforms to enable an effective and inclusive governance system.
First, countries in or recovering from crises must engage in process-driven constitution-making to produce an agreed-upon governing process characterized by the separation of powers, with effective checks and balances, including a robust and politically active civil society; an independent judiciary; and a viable, free, and independent press. The process through which the constitution is designed and adopted must be participatory and inclusive enough to allow for all relevant stakeholder groups to participate—from the development of constitutional principles to the actual design and ratification of the constitution. It is especially important that historically marginalized groups be empowered to participate fully and effectively in the constitution-
making process. Each country must also produce a set of constitutional principles to inform, guide, and constrain the drafters. Such principles should ensure that the constitution safeguards against abuses of power. Importantly, each constitution should have a robust amendment process, one that can effectively prevent the manipulation of the constitution by opportunistic executives to remain in power indefinitely, as we are currently experiencing in several countries.

The type of governance structure that each African country should strive for over the next decade is one that should address peaceful coexistence and economic development, inequality, the effects of climate change, health pandemics, and enhanced regional cooperation.
Second, the countries that have progressive and inclusive constitutions undergirded by the separation of powers, including Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa, should engage in national dialogues to help their citizens understand and better appreciate the importance of the constitution to governance generally and the protection of human rights in particular. Through this process, citizens can determine how to strengthen their national constitutions.
Third, all African countries, with the aid of civil society, should develop and implement education programs to help citizens understand and appreciate the constitution and its provisions, and recognize the law as a tool that they can use to organize their private lives and resolve their conflicts, including those arising from trade and other forms of exchange. Programs for empowering youth and women could be particularly fruitful.
Fourth, each African country should engage in regular dialogue, where necessary, to revisit such important governance issues as the centrality of human rights in the structure of the country’s constitution, as well as a strong and independent judiciary. Countries should also ensure that governance is inclusive of women and youth, who have historically been marginalized, as well as cultivate transformative leadership at all levels of government.
Finally, each country’s citizens, especially its legal and constitutional scholars, including those in the diaspora, should play an important role in shaping the institutional and legal environment for the transformation of Africa’s governance architecture during the next decade.
It is unlikely that the continent will be able to successfully and effectively implement and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in 2030 or Agenda 2063 unless institutions are reformed to enforce good governance undergirded by the rule of law. The policies outlined will help the region accelerate good governance and support its economic transformation.

Poaching is one of the obstacles facing sustainable development in Africa as well as the problem of the conservation.
The article below outline the real impact of poaching on the sustainable development in Africa.
Poaching and the problem with conservation in Africa.
Poaching is a complex topic that cannot be solved by myopic, top-down enforcement approaches. Crime syndicates may be fuelling the poaching of elephant and rhino but they are not the source of the problem. Rather than treat the symptoms by spending millions on weapons and anti-poaching forces, which experience has repeatedly shown does not stop poaching, there is a need to understand the underlying causes of the poaching problem if it is to be solved.
Across Africa, state-led anti-poaching forces, no matter how well funded and equipped, have been unable to curtail the high levels of poaching currently observed.
Devolving power and benefits to local communities will enable local communities to acquire full responsibility for anti-poaching operations, which they are much better positioned to do than external agencies who do not have the social networks and local knowledge needed to effectively perform oversight functions in the local area. As witnessed in the Luangwa Valley and Namibian conservancies, there is every likelihood that there will be a significant decline in poaching once community conservation is properly implemented.
Poaching is threatening wildlife conservation in Africa. Elephant (Loxodonta africana) and rhino (Ceratotherium simum and Diceros bicornis) populations have been devastated and the bush meat trade is severely impacting wildlife populations.
Who is to blame? Will international funding of anti-poaching forces help to solve the problem?
Crime syndicates may be fuelling the poaching of elephant and rhino but they are not the source of the problem. Rather than treat the symptoms by spending millions on weapons and anti-poaching forces, which experience has repeatedly shown does not stop poaching, there is a need to understand the underlying causes of the poaching problem if it is to be solved.
Kruger National Park in South Africa, which spends over $13.5 million annually on anti-poaching, has the most highly-trained and dedicated anti-poaching force in Africa, including dividing the park into 22 sections, each with its own section ranger and a team of field rangers, use of dog tracker packs, helicopter support, and the South African defense force to offer assistance. Yet with all this money spent and all the manpower effort, 504, 421 and 327 rhino were poached in Kruger in 2017, 2018 and 2019, respectively. Although the number of poached rhinos is going down each year, it is partly because there are fewer and fewer rhinos left to poach, with their numbers having declined exponentially in Kruger since 2011. This underscores our point that if all the money spent on the massive, highly coordinated anti-poaching effort in Kruger cannot prevent the poaching of rhino, how much more difficult will it be to save elephant and rhino populations in other African countries that do not have access to this sort of funding?
For example, in spite of all the efforts of national defence forces and wildlife departments, elephant numbers are in a catastrophic decline. The main mandate of the Botswana Defence Force is anti-poaching. Yet, they have been unable to curb rhino and bush meat poaching in Botswana.
So why is poaching such a problem?
poaching (as a form of resistance) metamorphoses into a form of class conflict between the local, rural disenfranchised class and the external, affluent class. We need to first understand that, local people across Africa were moved out to create protected areas (PAs). Today, international tourism companies and national governments make millions from the resources (wildlife and scenery) within these PAs while local communities are pushed to the periphery and do not benefit from them. The disenfranchisement of the Maasai in both Kenya and Tanzania is a case in point and well known.
Evidence of local communities’ displacement abound. For instance, the book Conservation and Mobile Indigenous Peoples: Displacement, Forced Settlement, and Sustainable Development provides many case studies, highlighting the devastating effects of displacement by PAs on peoples’ livelihoods through the ensuing loss of access to traditional resources and adaptive strategies, such as key forage resources for livestock in wetlands during drought years.
To make things worse, not only do local communities not benefit from conservation, but they are confronted with a serious challenge of having to contend with conflict with wildlife. Marauding elephants damage farmers’ crops and kill people. Lions and other carnivores kill people and their livestock, while wildlife-related diseases, such as foot and mouth disease, only translate to receiving a pittance for the sale of livestock as compared to regions where wildlife is absent. Thus, local communities are carrying a very heavy burden of conservation while elites carry very little of the burden, resulting in the cost-benefit ratio of conservation being strongly skewed in favor of tourism companies, national governments, and the international conservation community.
While this situation is not ethically and morally acceptable, it is also not in any way sustainable.
A recent article lamented the fact that outside people and elites are getting rich from the Okavango Delta while the local people are kept in poverty. This is true across Africa. Recently, the governor of Kajiado County in Kenya, Joseph ole Lenku, threatened to order his people to start killing wildlife unless they are given much better benefits from wildlife conservation. As local people continue to be disenfranchised by conservation policies and practice, they are angry because they see others benefiting from their resources, while they receive very little or nothing therefrom; they only witness the damage caused by wildlife on their livelihoods.
Zebra and cattle on the Okavango Floodplains provide critical habitat for wildlife and for people’s livelihoods, but people are often displaced for conservation purposes.
People have been displaced from most of the Okavango Delta, as well as many other wetland systems such as the Usango floodplains, Ruaha National Park, Amboseli Swamps, Amboseli National Park and Silale Swamps, Tarangire National Park.

To do so affirms the fact that class conflict is, first and foremost, a struggle over the appropriation of work, property, production, and taxes. Consumption, from this perspective, is both the goal and the outcome of resistance and counter-
resistance.
Petty thefts of grain or pilfering on the threshing floor may seem like trivial ‘coping’ mechanisms from one vantage point; but from a broader view of class relations, how the harvest is actually divided belongs at the center.

The problems of enforcement, however, are not entirely attributable to geography and demography; they are due at least as much to tacit complicity, and, occasionally active cooperation among the population from which the poachers come. Consider the difficulties that poachers would face if local residents were actively hostile to them and willing to give evidence in court. Poaching as a systematic pattern of reappropriation is simply unimaginable without a normative consensus that encourages it or, at a minimum, tolerates it. Otherwise it would be a simple matter to apprehend offenders. The forms such coordination and cooperation might take are extremely difficult to bring to light.
Given that local people are probably poaching mainly for socioeconomic benefits (selling of bush meat, ivory, or rhino horn), such acts would be extremely difficult to sustain without cooperation and complicity among the population from which the poachers come. This demonstrates that resistance of authorities is a key element sustaining the viability of poaching. Poaching, as an act of resistance, is achieved through informal rural social networks; they hide and even encourage poachers and the middlemen to hunt game and buy meat, ivory, and rhino horn.

Herein lies the answer to the poaching problem:-
Local communities, who are born and bred in the area, know the landscapes intimately, have well-developed local social networks in these areas, and, as such, are ultimately able to outwit government conservation agencies who don’t know the area and don’t have the local social networks and sufficient funding or manpower to operate at every local situation. Thus, the level of legal authority is mismatched with the level of management requirements (a scale mismatch). Local communities, with their social networks and local support, hide the middlemen buying the meat, ivory, and rhino horn. They have information through their networks on where government patrols are, and by that means find it easy to avoid them. If caught, they have the local police on their side, who are their own people and who sympathize with them, hence poachers, in many cases, are let off the hook and their weapons returned to them. Consequently, government conservation agencies are rarely able to effectively control poaching, as witnessed in the incessant rhino, elephant, and bush meat poaching occurring across Africa.

These same factors that enable local communities to outwit government conservation agencies also make them much more effective conservators, because they are better matched to the local scale than centralized, state-led institutions. For instance, the greater knowledge of local communities about their local landscapes, combined with the practicalities of living on site, resulted in wildlife scouts from a community wildlife management area (WMA) in the Luangwa Valley of Zambia to clock more working hours and arrest more poachers than government scouts. These local communities were given ownership rights and decision-making power over wildlife in their area and derived benefits from wildlife conservation through tourism, trophy hunting, and meat from hunted animals. Soon the chief ordered his people to no longer poach and to report the presence of poachers. With their strong social networks, it became impossible for external poachers to remain undetected. This resulted in a tenfold reduction of rhino and elephant poaching. Similarly, Namibian conservancies, where local communities have been given ownership over wildlife, have seen a great reduction in poaching of rhino, with some having not lost a single rhino in the last two years.

The significance of the positive outcomes in these community conservation projects becomes clearly apparent when contrasted with the indelible flood of rhino poaching in Botswana and South Africa, where local communities neither have ownership and decision-making powers over wildlife nor derive any benefit from wildlife. Another example is the Rovuma elephant project, which is a community project in Tanzania. Here local communities are involved in decision-making and their village members engage in anti-poaching activities. While elephants are being devastated by poaching all around their area in the government-controlled PAs of the Selous Game Reserve, elephant poaching in their immediate local area has dropped dramatically.
The reasons for conservation problems in Africa are not far-fetched. The problems are inextricably linked to government control of conservation and the associated moral and ethical problems of displacement and disenfranchisement of local communities by PAs while elites benefit from their resources — a colonial conservation mindset that is no longer acceptable.
Thus, it is time to give local communities’ lands back to them and allow them to conserve and derive benefits from wildlife conservation in their local areas, where they have the decision-making rights over wildlife management. True and valid devolution of decision-making rights to local communities means that they, not governments, decide on who they will partner with in tourism and they, not consultants, decide on how they will manage their areas.
This also means that local communities must decide whether they want to have trophy hunting in their area. It is a direct violation of decision-making rights of local communities for governments to implement nation-wide hunting bans, as this greatly undermines the former’s ability to demonstrate ownership of and derive value from wildlife. The hunting ban in Botswana caused loss of access to game meat and collapsed income flows from wildlife to local communities, causing resentment of external control of conservation, implemented from the top down, against their wishes, which has resulted in increased poaching.
Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) thrives when full decision-making rights and benefits from wildlife are devolved to local communities. Theory and factual evidence show that this is the only solution to ensuring that wildlife conservation is sustainable. Science-based frameworks, such as the social-ecological systems framework (SESF), clearly articulate the governance principles for sustainable conservation, highlighting the importance of devolving autonomy of decision-making rights and benefits from wildlife to local communities. So successful has this framework been for community conservation worldwide that Elinor Ostrom, one of its key proponents, was awarded a Nobel Prize. Similarly, decades of research on CBNRM in Africa have confirmed the importance of local people’s decision-making rights and benefits from wildlife for promoting successful local community conservation projects. Ostrom and Nagendra reached similar conclusions in south Asia from studies of forest use by local communities under different governance regimes. They note that
If the formal rules limiting access and harvest levels are not known or considered legitimate by local resource users, substantial investment in fences and official guards to patrol boundaries are needed to prevent ‘illegal’ harvesting. Without these expensive inputs, government-owned, ‘protected’ forests may not be protected in practice… when the users themselves have a role in making local rules, or at least consider the rules to be legitimate, they are frequently willing to engage themselves in monitoring and sanctioning of uses considered illegal, even of public property.

By contrast, if these principles are overridden and centralized by government agencies, then local communities are likely to resist conservation objectives, even causing a collapse of conservation efforts.
Across Africa, national governments refuse to devolve decision-making power and benefits from wildlife to local communities. Thus, poaching is unsurprisingly out of control. African governments have, therefore, reaped, and are still reaping, the harvest of their bad policy decisions.
So far, only the Namibian government has been brave enough to bring in proper science-based policies that devolve ownership, decision-making rights, and benefits from wildlife to local communities. The Namibian government now reaps the benefits as witnessed in very low poaching rates and growing rhino populations in their country. Wise and proper policies bring good results!
Indeed, it is now time to give local communities large concession areas in and around PAs, over which they have autonomy of decision-making rights, managed through their local institutions, and through which they could benefit from tourism, trophy hunting, fishing, collection of veldt products such as thatching grass, reeds, and wild food plants, and, importantly, access to key traditional grazing resources for their livestock.

It must be emphasized that the role of national governments in conservation is not eclipsed by these community-centered approaches to conservation, but rather re-aligned from managing local scale problems, such as anti-poaching patrols, to playing overseeing, coordinating, and supporting roles at national scales. This could involve coordinating cross-scale conservation networks that include various government departments, parastatals, local and international NGOs, researchers, and private sector interests that support and promote the success of community conservation projects.
Tourist companies are not threatened by such an arrangement either. Instead of partnering with governments and paying government concession fees, they can now partner with local communities and pay them directly. This ensures that local communities get much better financial benefit from conservation — a critical ingredient for sustainability. The proof of concept for giving back lands to local communities within PAs can be seen in the Makuleke example, where the Makuleke community were given back the northern section of Kruger from which they had been displaced. They have successfully run this section of Kruger in partnership with South African National Parks, with support from conservation NGOs. Giving local communities land within PAs can also play a key role in negotiating for conserving important land for wildlife, such as migration corridors, in community areas outside PAs, which was observed when the Makuleke community added some of their land outside Kruger to their repatriated land within Kruger.
Devolving power and benefits to local communities will enable local communities to acquire full responsibility for anti-poaching operations, which they are much better positioned to do than external agencies who do not have the social networks and local knowledge needed to effectively perform oversight functions in the local area. As witnessed in the Luangwa Valley and Namibian conservancies, there is every likelihood that there will be a significant decline in poaching once community conservation is properly implemented.
Ultimately, the solution to significantly reduce poaching across Africa is not going to be about increasing state-led anti-poaching forces and their automatic weapons. As witnessed in Kruger, the cost of relying on government-
controlled anti-poaching forces is immense and ineffective. These unnecessary costs could have been avoided under community conservation and the money more effectively invested into developing community conservation programs

conflicts in Africa? “Of the 41 conflicts going on so far in the world; 23 of them are taking place in Africa, which represents 56% of the world’s conflicts » That continent, which was the beginning of civilizations and rich in rare resources such as diamonds, uranium, gold and other minerals, has today become a source of tribal and religious conflicts, military coups and armed conflicts over diamonds, land, water and various resources, and a hotbed of external interventions that drew the administrative borders of African countries without regard to tribal or religious distributions. Africa has become the continent with the largest number of ongoing conflicts in the world so far. Boko Haram rebellion in Nigeria: It was founded in 2002 and its original name was “Jamaat Ahl al-Sunnah for Preaching and Fighting” as a reformist group of clerics and local leaders, but it was known more broadly as a rebel group that practices atrocities starting in 2009. The group is mainly active in northeastern Nigeria, but it carried out acts of violence in Chad, Niger and Cameroon and began to attract global attention after several brutal killings, most notably the kidnapping of 230 schoolgirls in April 2014. Boko Haram was declared a terrorist group according to the United Nations after that incident. Countries affected by the terrorist operations of the organization (Nigeria – Cameroon – Chad – Niger – Benin) by forming an African force and coordinating between them to confront the organization and besiege it, in addition to the French intervention coordinated and assisting the African force in the war against Boko Haram, as the French government sent a limited military force to fight the Islamists in a way A year in the Urgent Coast region in 2014 called “Barkhane” located in the Chadian capital Anjamia, and the terrorist acts of Bokram left more than 21,000 people dead, including more than 11,000 in 2015.​

Poverty in Africa is the failure to meet basic human needs for some people in Africa. African countries are usually at the bottom of any list that measures small-scale economic activities, such as per capita income or GDP per capita, despite their wealth of natural resources. In 2009, 22 out of 24 countries were identified as having “low human development” on the United Nations Human Development Index for sub-Saharan Africa. Of the 50 countries on the United Nations’ list of least developed countries in 2006, 34 were located in Africa. Many countries have a per capita GDP of less than $5,200 per year, with the vast majority of the population living on much less (according to World Bank data, the Seychelles were the only African country with a per capita GDP above about $10,000 annually by 2016). In addition, Africa’s share of income has been steadily declining over the past century by every metric. In 1820, the average European worker earned about three times as much as the average African. Now the average European earns twenty times what the average African earns. And although Africa’s per capita income per capita GDP is growing steadily, metrics are still much better in other parts of the world.​

governance is the decision-making process and the process of determining which policies will be implemented and not implemented.
1. Participation
There is an opportunity for everyone to voice their opinions through institutions or representations.
2. Rule of law
To implement good governance, the legal framework in the country must be enforced impartially, especially concerning human rights law.
3. Transparency
Every policy taken and implemented by the government is carried out under regulations where any information related to the policy can be accessed by everyone, especially those who are directly affected by the policy.
4. Responsiveness
Good governance needs institutions and processes to attempt to serve all stakeholders within a reasonable time.
5. Consensus oriented
When the decision-making process cannot accommodate everyone’s wishes, then at a minimum, the decision must be accepted by everyone and does not harm anyone.
6. Equity and inclusiveness
Everyone has the same opportunity to maintain and improve their welfare.
7. Effectiveness and efficiency
Every decision-making process and its institutions are able to produce decisions that meet every community need.
8. Accountability
All institutions involved in good governance have full responsibility to the public for the sake of improving the quality of society.
Sustainable development
It is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.