Africa looks to vast forests for carbon credits
Efforts to combat illegal logging are making gains, but agriculture
looms as another threat.
July 27, 2010
Reporting from Banco, Ivory Coast �
By Tim Cocks, Reuters
They inhabit a polluted part of Ivory Coast's main city with few jobs
and a swelling population, but residents of Abidjan's slums have a
rare respite: a stretch of pristine rainforest.
From their wooden shacks and unpainted concrete houses beside
motorways on the edge of Banco National Park, the millions who live in
north Abidjan need no lesson on its worth.
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"This forest is a great thing," textile worker Sebastien Coulibaly,
35, said of the sky-scraping green mass of vines and broccoli-shaped
trees.
"It helps us to breathe better; we live at ease because of it.
Sometimes we walk our children there. We must protect it, because our
planet will be nothing without forests."
Logging, farming and armed conflict still threaten Africa's jungles,
which include the Congo Basin, the world's second largest after the
Amazon. But analysts are hopeful.
A new global study released this month by London's Chatham House think-
tank found that since 2002 illegal logging had decreased by about 50%
in Cameroon, once one of the biggest sources of illicit timber, a
decline of twice the global average.
The European Union this year signed deals with Ghana, Cameroon and the
Republic of Congo to tighten restrictions on logging. An EU ban on
illegally harvested timber was passed this month and is to take effect
in 2012.
"We've dared to sanction firms, from withdrawing permits to big
fines," said Cameroon Forest Minister Elvis Ngolle.
Logging bans don't directly address forest loss from other threats,
such as agriculture, but officials are hoping that a potential money
spinner � carbon offsets � will.
A United Nations plan (called REDD) to reduce emissions from
deforestation or degradation has enabled Indonesia, which has the
world's third-largest forest but is being deforested by palm oil and
timber firms, to get $1 billion from Norway in May to revoke those
firms' forestry licenses.
Deforestation makes up a fifth of global CO2 emissions and the REDD
fund is worth $4 billion so far.
Unlike Asia, African states have been slow to capitalize on climate
aid; they account for 2% of developing nation carbon projects. But
many hope to change that.
An African Development Bank fund was established in 2008 for the Congo
Basin, a forest of half a billion acres spanning nine countries and
storing, the bank says, 25- to 30-billion tons of carbon, which
currently trades at $18 per ton in Europe.
The fund aims to harmonize forest tax, share ecological data,
cooperate on policing and sponsor community projects that encourage
forest protection, such as honey-production.
"Expectations are extremely high that this will allow us to preserve
the forest, restore what's been degraded and pay these countries for
their ecological services," Patrice Wadja, the fund's operations
officer, told Reuters.
Gabon's President Ali Bongo seeks to be first in line. He has banned
raw wood exports and in May set up a climate council that must come up
with a REDD plan for the 80% of its original forest that remains
before December's climate talks in Cancun.
Despite the challenges, experts think Africa's forests have at least
as good a chance as Brazil or Indonesia.
The rate of forest destruction is generally slower: 0.16% a year in
the Congo Basin, compared with 11% in Indonesia, Wadja said, because
Central Africa has been largely spared large-scale clearing for
agriculture.
West Africa's deforestation is much higher, driven by logging and
clearing to plant cash crops, especially cocoa, a topic so sensitive
that Reuters could not get permission to visit some forests in Ivory
Coast, the top grower.
"At independence, we had 16 million hectares of forest. We today have
6 million. The lost area is now all farms," said Ivorian forest and
water technician Yamani Soro.
Improving yields with fertilizer and pesticides is key, although
reforms have been blocked by Ivory Coast's post-civil war political
crisis.
Drier nations in the semi-desert Sahel belt with scant forest land are
meanwhile planning to plant trees. Presidents from Senegal to Djibouti
agreed in Chad last month to build a "green wall" thousands of miles
long with IMF funds.
But even as Africa curbs illicit logging and plants trees, another
threat looms: Asian palm oil companies are eying Africa's forests to
feed their growing populations. Liberia has signed deals with two and
China this month proposed a vast project in the Democratic Republic of
Congo.
"The big unknown are the Chinese," said conservationist Terese Hart
who has worked in the DRC for decades. "They are looking at the
interior for exploitation, including palm."
Tansa Musa and Fonka Mutta in Yaounde, Christian Tsoumou in
Brazzaville and Betel Miarom in N'Djamena contributed to this report.
Copyright � 2010, The Los Angeles Times
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