Page 7 - AfrElec Week 38 2021

AfrElec SUSTAINABILITY AfrElec

Africa’s endangered forests risk

losing carbon sink potential

AFRICA TROPICAL forests in mountainous areas of Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
Africa are more concentrated stores of carbon In addition to everything else they are and
than the Amazon, a new study in the journal provide, forests are reserves of carbon. They are
Nature has suggested. carbon sinks when they grow in area or accu-
The research on these “montane” forests was mulate biomass and can become carbon sources
carried out by more than a hundred scientists when they burn or are disturbed by human
and shows that their carbon stocks are about actions or natural phenomena.
two-thirds higher than estimates used by the Old-growth or “primary” rainforests are rela-
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tively untouched by human pressures. They have
(IPCC), Carbon Brief reported. a full canopy that allows very little light to get in,
The study also shows that these African resulting in a forest floor that is largely clear of
“cloud” forests are being felled at a higher rate dense vegetation.
than previously thought, with more than 0.8m Secondary forests, on the other hand, have
hectares lost since the turn of the century. been altered by human or natural disturbances.
If current levels of deforestation continue, Canopies are often not as tall, trees are shorter,
the authors estimate that another half a million floor vegetation is more dense with fewer species.
hectares – an area roughly twice the size of Lux- Tropical rainforests cover very little of the
embourg – could be lost by 2030. planet, but store a lot of carbon: nearly 40-50%
“We were quite surprised. We expected [their of terrestrial vegetative carbon is locked away in
carbon stocks] to be higher than the literature, their biomass.
but not as high as we found,” study lead author Although they are often thought of as a uni-
Dr Aida Cuni-Sanchez told Carbon Brief. She form, single entity, there are large differences
adds: “There’s not a lot of these forests left and between tropical rainforests across countries,
they never get a lot of attention.” regions and landscapes, explains study co-au-
Sonam P Wangdi, chair of the Least Devel- thor Dr Martin Sullivan from Manchester Met-
oped Countries (LDC), told Carbon Brief that ropolitan University.
countries should be rewarded for protecting Lowland forests in Africa tend to have a low
these carbon stores and says the Article 6 mech- density of trees, but a high density of tall trees
anism under the Paris Agreement should allow that store lots of carbon, he told Carbon Brief:
trading to support this. “We found that this distinctive character is
Tropical montane rainforests are humid, bio- also found in Africa’s montane forests. There are
diverse ecosystems found in the mountainous just as many big trees in montane forests as in
regions of Africa, Asia, the Americas and equa- lowland forests.”
torial Oceania. They typically occur at elevations To establish if montane forests are a carbon
between 1,000 metres and 3,500 metres above source or a sink will need repeated measure-
sea level, defined by their dependence on cloud ments, co-author Prof Simon Lewis from the
cover that keeps tree crowns immersed in mist. University of Leeds and University College Lon-
Montane forests make up most if not all of don told Carbon Brief.
the evergreen old-growth forests in 10 African The results were startling even for the scien-
nations, the paper says. tists involved in the research, they say, given the
The new research, led by the University of challenging conditions that distinguish mon-
York’s Dr Aida Cuni-Sanchez, spans a dataset tane forests, which might have been expected
of intact old-growth forests in 44 montane rain- to limit tree growth, including high altitudes,
forest areas – shown in purple below – across 12 strong winds, steep slopes, lower tempera-
African countries: Burundi, Cameroon, Demo- tures, long periods of cloud immersion and soil
cratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, waterlogging.™
Guinea, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda,

Week 38 23•September•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P7