When we talk about erosion control in the United States,
we’re often talking about construction sites or NPDES regulations. Although the
water-quality problems and sedimentation we’re trying to prevent are serious,
most of us are not dealing on a large scale with problems like deforestation and
the associated erosion, loss of soil fertility and biodiversity, and,
potentially, desertification. When we think about such things, they often seem
to be too far removed for us to do much about them.
A recent article
in Nigeria’s Business Day brings the problem a little closer to home. It
first presents some depressing statistics about the phenomenon in sub-Saharan
Africa: Although Africa has about one-fifth of the world’s forest and woodland,
the deforestation rate there is four times the world’s average. We often think
of the Amazonian rain forest as the hot spot, so to speak, of deforestation, but
Africa’s tropical forests are disappearing even faster. The writer of the
article, Godwin Nnanna, cites several reasons, including “poor enforcement of
regulations, lack of incentives… to local communities and the private sector,
ill-defined property rights, and the treatment of forest resources as public
goods.”
The article mentions several possible courses of action. One is to
strengthen the land rights of local communities, which at least nine African
countries are now doing.
Another promising solution involves action not just within the countries
whose forests are disappearing, but, necessarily, outside them. Until about 20
years ago, much of the loss of forest was caused by subsistence farming, but now
the majority is driven by industrial forestry operations. Up to 60% of the
logging activity in Ghana, for example, is done illegally, and more than half
the timber harvested in Ghana is sold in Europe. Ghana’s government and the
European Union recently entered an agreement that all Ghanaian timber sold in
Europe must be certified as having been legally logged; the EU will take steps
to prevent unlicensed wood from being imported and sold, while Ghana continues
to combat the problem internally.
Much as the voluntary international agreement CITES (Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species) has helped to curb trade in products
from endangered plants and animals, agreements like this one between Ghana and
the EU could rein in deforestation—and make more of the people who benefit from
it responsible for the solution.