Nigeria Loses its Forests

WEDNESDAY, 21 SEPTEMBER 2011 00:00 ANONYMOUS

A recent report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) that states that Nigeria is a country that has the world's highest deforestation rate of primary forests is disturbing.

FAO records show that between 2000 and 2005, the country lost 55.7 percent of its primary forests, defined as forests with no visible signs of past or present human activities. Logging, subsistence agriculture, and the collection of fuelwood are cited as leading causes of forest clearing in Nigeria.

The FAO report shows that primary forests are being replaced by less biodiverse plantations and secondary forests. It argues that due to a significant increase in plantation forests, forest cover has generally been expanding in North America, Europe and China while diminishing in the tropics. Industrial logging, conversion for agriculture (commercial and subsistence), fuelwood collection by rural poor, and forest fires, often purposely set by people, are responsible for the bulk of global deforestation today, the report says.

Deforestation is a process where vegetation is cut down without any simultaneous replanting for economic or social reasons. It has negative implications on the environment in terms of soil erosion, loss of biodiversity ecosystems, loss of wildlife and increased desertification among many other reasons.

Deforestation also has impacts on social aspects of the country, specifically regarding economic issues, agriculture, conflict and a lot of damage has been done to Nigeria's land through the processes of deforestation, notably contributing to the overwhelming trend of desertification.

A study conducted from 1901 to 2005 gathered that there was a temperature increase in Nigeria of 1.1°C, while the global mean temperature increase was only 0.74°C. The same study also found in the same period of time that the amount of rainfall in the country decreased by 81mm. It was noticed that both of these trends simultaneously had sharp changes in the 1970s. From 1990 to 2010, Nigeria nearly halved its amount of forest cover, moving from 17,234 to 9041 hectares. The combination of extremely high deforestation rates, increased temperatures and decreasing rainfall are all contributing to the desertification of the country.

Records show that, the carbon emissions from deforestation is also said to account for 87 percent of total carbon emissions of the country and that Nigeria's wide biodiversity of 899 species of birds, 274 mammals, 154 reptiles, 53 amphibians and 4,715 species of higher plants will also be strongly affected by the negative impacts of deforestation.

Available data also show that the numbers of the rare Cross River gorilla have decreased to around 300 individuals because of poaching by locals and mass habitat destruction. Although much of the motivation of deforestation stems from economic reasons, it has also led to a lot of economic problems in an already unstable country. Along with economic issues, deforestation has made it so that the land is incapable of as much agricultural production which is part of many people's survival.

No doubt, the government department in charge of forestry should be held culpable for its failure to implement any forest management policies in efforts to curb deforestation since the 1970s. Very few steps have been taken to try to lower the deforestation rates and stop illegal logging.

How do we make amends? Any solution to the problem of deforestation in Nigeria must be an approach that incorporates and aggressively targets all aspects that are related to the problem. We must start thinking of areas of energy alternatives, improved technology, forestry management, economic production, agriculture and security of the locals that are dependent on the land.

One aspect that is very crucial is the need to vigorously engage in replanting of trees that have been cut down. Not to do this is to sing the death knell of our forests.

Source: Business Daily Online