Across Africa, numerous ecosystems are under pressures degrading their ecological, economic and cultural value. The Niger Delta in the continent’s west and Mount Elgon in the east are two examples of regions facing deforestation, unsustainable farming practices, and the growing impacts of climate change. During the Global Landscape Forum Africa, which gathered 10,000 participants from 130 countries in a hybrid meeting in Nairobi and online on Sept. 17, one session examined a proposal to “creating a common vision for future landscapes.” “Nigeria lost a staggering 178,000 hectares of primary forest and 1.33 million hectares of tree cover between 2001 and 2023,” or 440,000 and 3.29 million acres respectively, according to Nifesimi Ogunkua, climate change and Global Environment Fund (GEF) portfolio support specialist with the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization in Nigeria. This deforestation spree, he told people attending the session, released 724 million tons of CO₂ emissions and contributed significantly to global warming. The ongoing deforestation is driven by overlapping factors, including smallholders expanding to cultivate both cash crops such as cacao and clearing new plots to grow food for their own use, and the expansion of industrial plantations of oil palm. In the Niger Delta, known for its rich biodiversity, commercial plantations, subsistence agriculture and logging of timber for construction, as well as extensive damage caused by the oil industry, have ravaged rainforests and mangroves, leading to the loss of vital habitats and threatening the livelihoods of millions. “We are witnessing the erosion of ecosystems, the extinction of species,…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Article by:
This story first appeared on Mongabay
South Africa Today – Environment
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Mongabay, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
