OVERVIEW OF THE FOREST SITUATION IN AFRICA
by William Appiah
March 1999

Africa's rainforests represent 18 percent of the world's total, roughly 700,000 square miles of forest. The forest spread over two regions: the coast of West Africa, through nations of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d'ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria; and the basin of the Congo river through Cameroun, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi.

The forests have been abused and degraded since the onset of direct colonial rule in about 1850, and particularly since the end of World war II. One - quarter of the forests standing in 1950 has been felled. The West African soil has been hardest hit, and are nearly destroyed.

An estimated 70 per cent of all Africans are subsistence farmers, and clearing for small farms, followed by degradation and erosion of the soil, accounts for a sizeable proportion of the continent's annual rainforest loss. Logging accounts for much of the rest of the loss. Thus Africa's situation differs somewhat from that of South and Central America where cattle grazing, hydroelectric projects among others play major roles in deforestation.

Timber is an important moneymaker for a number of West African countries, providing foreign exchange as well as a considerable amount of employment. For countries with few other natural resources and low manufacturing capabilities, timber exports have become essential to their development strategies. Often, only a small proportion of the tree species are commercially valuable, so that large areas can be disturbed or destroyed for relatively small results.

Liberia, for example, obtained about $ 84 million from wood exports in 1980, just over 11% of its total exports earnings. About 80,000 hectares of forests were being logged per year out of its remaining 900,000 hectares of primary forest - a rate which would completely remove the nations forest in 11 years.

Cameroun, by contrast, where logging of primary forest was also about 80,000 per year in 1980, has less than six million hectares of forest, so this rate could be maintained for nearly 80 years. But logging has doubled since then. Cote d'ivoire which was the biggest timber exporter in the 1980's has had her forest area declined drastically and is on the verge of being a net importer of hardwood within the next few years when its remaining forests are gone.

In Nigeria, most of the exploitable forests have already been logged. Once a major timber exporter, Nigeria has banned the exports of the country's forest resources and has become a net wood importer to meet its own needs. In Ghana, too, the country's forest resources, outside the relatively small area of reserved forests, are rapidly reaching a state where they can only provide a minimal output of commercial timber. Ghana has imposed heavy restrictions on logging after loosing about 80% of her forests.

Ghana and Cote d'ivoire has banned the export of some 14 endangered species. And Ghana has also specifically banned the export of round unprocessed logs.

Gabon's exports have continued to increase. Gabon, whose timber exports earns her more than $90 million per year in the 1990's is still richly endowed with primary forest that current logging rates have started having some impact. The same appears to be in the Democratic Republic of Congo - which alone has 10 per cent of the world's remaining rainforests - where logging for exports has now become a big-scale enterprise.

As a result of over-exploitation, the Center of the African logging industry is shifting from the Guinean rainforest ( the forest from Guinea to Nigeria, along the coast of the Bight of Benin) to the Congolese rainforest ( covering the basin of the Congo river). Gambia, Senegal, Togo and Benin have already been virtually denuded. Of those countries that have a piece of the Guinean rainforest, only Liberia and Sierra Leone have extensive tracts available for logging.

Deforestation, including the cutting of woodlands and scattered trees, occurs because somebody finds it profitable. The individuals, communities, and corporations responsible for deforestation, and their primary motives for cutting trees, vary widely across regions and forest types.

According to A World Bank Policy Paper on the Forest Sector, Incentives to cut trees have grown in recent years for four main reasons:

a.. The pressure of population on the natural resource base has grown sharply in many countries
b.. Income opportunities in settled agricultural regions have deteriorated in some countries, leading to increased migration and encroachment on forested land.
c.. Access to the forest frontier has increased dramatically in some areas because of infrastructural development, especially road building
d.. In a number of countries subsidies for alternative land uses and logging have been deliberately introduced to encourage frontier settlement. But what the Policy paper failed to talk about was the fact that because of globalization, the aggressive extraction of primary resources from our lands and the massive conversion of indigenous lands into logging and mining areas have worsened. Globalisation and trade liberalisation has pushed African governments to provide best incentives for foreign investments to come in. This means that even the few existing laws in a few countries that recognise local people's land rights are being weakened or repealed.

Logging corporations are increasingly moving into Africa in search of larger forest reserves and less costly labour and environmental regulations. The WTO is preparing to introduce a broad agenda to protect such foreign investments. Among the ideas being advanced is that of national treatment, which would require nations to treat foreign investors on the same terms as domestic ones. The WTO investment rules would institutionalise "cut-and-run" logging around the world and especially in Africa where the laws are weak, and governments from favouring local entities which may tend to be more accountable to the land and its inhabitants.

Many African countries hard pressed for revenues and weighed down by debt have been quite prepared to respond to this globalisation agenda set by WTO and other multilateral agencies.

Available data shows that there has hardly been progress overall in the forest situation since UNCED. Where logging is concerned, as the area of loggable forests decline in many countries, timber activities have opened up in several new regions and countries, and there are also further plans t provide logging concessionsover vast tracts of tropical forests.

Currently in Africa one of the main causes of deforestation is mining. The mining sector, specifically the mining of gold for export has received renewed emphasis. As a result of the desire to attract investment into this sector, most countries in the continent have introduced mining codes, clearly defining the rights and obligations of foreign investors. African countries permit full profit repatriation, and have removed exchanged controls, provide tax and other incentives as well as removing all the obstacles in the way of total foreign ownership of concern in the countries and have also extensively privatised state owned enterprises to aid the process.

In their bid to revive mining, investments have been deregulated, imports liberalised, currency controls have been removed, while in addition to this, the direct role of the state has been drastically reduced. As Africa is rich in mineral resources, more than half of the FDI has traditionally been oriented towards resource-based activities, to a much greater degree than FDI in other developing countries.

In some countries such as Ghana, the very attractive incentives include tax breaks, flexible labour policy, unregulated repatriation of profits and cheap asset transfers. These have attracted over US$1 billion in investment, including funds from the World Bank and led to a quadrupling of gold production over the last six years.

All these have led to a big increase in exploration for new deposits and a substantial increase in investment. At present, the activity is particularly heavy in West Africa, the horn of Africa, and Southern Africa where many countries have very good gold potential. Exploration in West Africa doubled between 1993 and 1995 and new mines are being opened all the time.

As technology advances, and the more accessible deposits are exploited, mining companies are penetrating more remote areas. These are usually remaining forests, watersheds and mountainous regions. Most of these mining companies use surface mining and heap leaching processing methods and therefore cause more devastating environmental damage. Most of these areas are also indigenous peoples' lands, recognised or claimed.

TNCs from Australia, Canada and the US which are the main actors involved in this deforestation process in Africa are extending their spread more aggressively. South African based companies are also moving across the continent.

In Conclusion,

Since Rio, the condition of the World's forests continue to deteriorate at a rapid rate, indicating a failure so far to check the overall situation, let alone reverse the deforestation process. The African situation is bound to worsen because of the liberalisation of the forest sector and the globalisation of commercial timber and other economic activities such as mining which will lead to further high rates of deforestation.