| Facts about deforestation and biodiversity loss |
|
|
|
|
According to the Partnership for the Tropical Forest Margins, a significant part of the deforestation in Southeast Asia and the Amazon can be attributed to large-scale agricultural operations. However, in the Congo Basin most deforestation is the result of smallholder farmers using extensive slash-and-burn techniques, out of necessity. The roots of the problem It is important to note that deforestation has no single cause but is the outcome of a web of factors whose mix varies greatly in time and space. Understanding which factors are at work in a given situation is a crucial first step to intervene successfully to curb deforestation. There is a tendency amongst researchers and the public to simplify the view on what causes tropical deforestation. Single factors, such as population growth, are often suggested as ‘the explanation’. This is misleading but understandable. Attempts to gain a more comprehensive picture by evaluating and comparing evidence from a large set of locations have been rare. And there has been no logical way of classifying the causes for the purposes of analysis. But recent studies have gone a long way towards overcoming these limitations. On the basis of a review of the factors at work in 152 cases of tropical deforestation in Africa, Asia and Latin America, researchers were able to design an analytical framework that allows examination of the drivers of deforestation.
The framework makes a distinction between the proximate causes of deforestation — human activities on the ground at local level such as slash-and-burn activities — and the larger underlying causes or 'driving forces' that explain these activities. This is an advance on previous thinking because it recognises that the people in the front line of deforestation do not make their decisions in a vacuum but are strongly influenced by macroeconomic and social factors operating at the regional, national or global level over which they have little control. Using this distinction, researchers have proposed an analytical framework in which four broad clusters of proximate causes — agricultural expansion, wood extraction, infrastructure development and ‘other’—are linked to five clusters of underlying causes — demographic, economic, technological, policy and institutional, and cultural. In each case, the clusters are subdivided to be more specific. For example, their agricultural expansion cluster is divided into permanent cultivation, shifting cultivation (slash-and-burn), cattle ranching or colonisation. A mix of causes is normally at work when deforestation occurs. With these clusters it becomes possible to identify ‘causal synergies’ — associations of proximate and underlying causes that help to explain complex processes of deforestation more accurately than previous ‘single-factor’ explanations. It is on the basis of this matrix of causes that the Biochar Fund identifies its sites for intervention. The schematic above outlines the factors that mark situations in which our actions make most sense.
Slash and burn farming Most (large and small scale) farmers at the forest margins in the Congo Basin countries use extensive controlled burning of forests to make land available. The extent of the problem can easily be observed from space. Whereas large fires can be spotted by remote sensing instruments, their number pales in comparison with the number of smaller fires.
Literature and case studies on deforestation in the Congo Basin Altieri, A. M. and Koohafkan, P. Globally Important Ingenious Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS): extent, significance, and implications for development , FAO, Rome, Rural Development Division Sustainable Development Department: Globally Important Ingenious Agricultural Heritage Systems, background paper, s.d. Auzel, P., 2001. "Les villes en forêt: impact de l’exploitation forestière sur la gestion coutumière des ressources naturelles." In: Delvingt, W. (éd.). La forêt des Hommes: Terroirs villageois en forêt tropicale africaine, 235-251. Les Presses Agronomiques de Gembloux, Gembloux. Central African Regional Program for the Environment (2007). The Forests of the Congo Basin: State of the Forest 2006 , 257 pages, [13.4Mb]. FAO (2007). State of the World’s Forests. Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations, Rome. FAO. (2006). Fire in the agriculture–forestry interface . Paper presented at the Twenty-fourth Session, FAO Regional Conference for Africa (ARC 24), Bamako, Mali, 30 January–3 February 2006. Hoare, A.L. (2007) Clouds on the horizon: The Congo Basin’s forests and climate change . The Rainforest Foundation. Maniatis, D. Ecosystem services of the Congo Basin forest, Including a case study of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Produced for the Global Canopy Programme, May 25, 2007. Maniatis, D. (2006) Intensification of slash-and-burn agriculture in the rural village of Pokola (Republic of Congo): socio-economic context and ecological implications. 3rd GBIF Science Symposium, Tropical Biodiversity: Science, Data, Conservation. Brussels, Belgium, April 2005. Starts at page 107 of Proceedings. Partnership for the Tropical Forest Margins, "Forces Driving Deforestation" , Policy Briefs 6, November 2003. Sunderlin W.D., Ndoye O., Bikié H., Laporte N., Mertens B, Pokam (2000) "Economic crisis, small-scale agriculture, and forest cover change in southern Cameroon" , Environmental Conservation 27 (3): 284–290.
|
||||
Deforestation in the tropics is one of the great problems of our time. It leads to massive biodiversity loss, the destruction of invaluable ecosystem services and contributes significantly to global carbon emissions.
