Page 19 - Issue 9

Environment

Congo Basin

rainforest may

be gone by 2100

Overhead Canopy, Congo Forest

frica’s Congo Basin is home to the CAR, has a human development index The study also reveals that the majority
Asecond-largest rainforest on the in the bottom 10 percent, meaning that – 60 percent – of Congo deforestation
planet. But according to a study, this lifespans, education levels and per capita between 2000 and 2014 happened in
may soon not be the case. It finds that GDP there are among the lowest in the primary forests and woodlands, and in
at current rates of deforestation, all world. mature secondary forests.
primary forest will be gone by the end With few livelihood options, most people The United Nations projects that there
of the century. survive by carving farmland out of the will be a fivefold increase in human
The study was conducted by researchers forest. These plots are farmed until the population in the Congo Basin by the
at the University of Maryland (UMD) soil runs dry of nutrients, whereupon a end of the century. The researchers
in the U.S. who analyzed satellite data new plot is cleared and planted. found that if current trends hold, this
collected between 2000 and 2014, and Before now, it wasn’t exactly understood means that there will be no primary
whose results were published in 2018 how much this type of smallholder Congo rainforest left by 2100.
in Science Advances, a publication farming called “shifting cultivation” and The researchers also warn of “a new wave”
of the American Association for the other forms of small-scale agriculture of large-scale clearing for industrial
Advancement of Sciences. It reveals that were contributing to overall Congo agriculture. While contributing a
the Congo Basin lost around 165,000 deforestation. So UMD researchers comparatively scant 1 percent of Congo
square kilometers of forest during their looked for patterns signaling different deforestation during the study period,
study period. types of deforestation in regional tree it appears to be trending upward,
In other words, one of the world’s largest cover loss data captured by satellites. particularly in coastal countries.
rainforests lost an area of forest bigger According to study coauthor Alexandra “Land use planning that minimizes the
than Bangladesh in the span of 15 years. Tyukavina, “it was important for us conversion of natural forest cover for
According to the study, the dominant to explicitly quantify proportions of agro-industry will serve to mitigate this
force behind rising Congo deforestation, different drivers, to demonstrate just nascent and growing threat to primary
driving more than 80 percent of the how dominant the small-scale clearing forests,” says the study.
region’s total forest loss, is actually small- of forests for shifting cultivation is The Congo Basin is home to the second-
scale clearing for subsistence agriculture. within the region, and to show that largest equatorial rainforest after the
The researchers write that most of it is it’s not only re-clearing of secondary Amazon. A vital carbon sink, it also
done by hand with simple axes. forests, but also expansion into primary supports endangered wildlife like

According to the authors, the forests.” Tyukavina is a post-doctoral gorillas and forest elephants - as well
preponderance of small-scale associate at UMD’s Department of as 75 million people, who rely on it for
deforestation of Congo rainforest is Geographical Sciences. survival.
due largely to poverty stemming from Tyukavina and her colleagues found
political instability and conflict in the that small-scale forest clearing for
region. The Congo Basin rainforest is agriculture contributed to around 84
shared by six countries: Cameroon, percent of Congo Basin deforestation
the Central African Republic (CAR), between 2000 and 2014. When zooming
the Democratic Republic of the Congo in on the portions contained only in the
(DRC), Equatorial Guinea, the Republic DRC and CAR, that number goes up to
of the Congo (RoC) and Gabon. Of more than 90 percent. The only country
these, the DRC holds the largest share where small-scale agriculture isn’t the
of Congo forest – 60 percent – and is driving force of deforestation is Gabon,
home to more people than the other where industrial selective logging is the
five combined. The DRC, along with biggest single cause of forest loss.

The Nile Explorer 006 | 23 The Nile Explorer 009 | 19