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Climate change is a global crisis now and for the foreseeable future. Africa is impacted disproportionately and this situation will only deteriorate without immediate and comprehensive solutions. Figure 1 illustrates some of the key elements of climate change, including deforestation, desertification and coastal erosion. In addition, the average temperature rise in Africa is estimated to double the global average over the next 70 years.1 This alone will have catastrophic consequences for the people of Africa, impacting negatively on crop yields, biodiversity, water availability, land degradation and health outcomes. Another estimate predicts that over 180 million people in sub-Saharan Africa could die of diseases directly linked to climate change by the end of the century.2 The fuse to these ecological time-bombs is carbon dioxide emissions. Industrialized and industrializing nations are principally responsible for these emissions.
Figure 1: Climate change vulnerability in Africa3 
Carbon Dioxide Emissions
CO2 emissions are generally regarded as a central element of climate change because of their role in global warming. Yet for the most part the contribution of Africa’s population pales in comparison to the peoples of the developed world. For example, the state of Texas, with a population of 23 million, emits more CO2 than all 720 million residents of sub-Saharan Africa.4
The responses and solutions favoured by governments, however, show how self-interested and profit-driven the leaders of the current world are. For example, with regard to cuts in carbon emissions by developed countries, the recent G8 summit in Japan saw a consensus between the USA, Canada and Japan blocking meaningful action on developing short-term carbon emission targets based on the framework established at the Bali summit in 2007.5 Instead, the G8 declared a 50% reduction by 2050. This mentality of ‘rearranging the deckchairs’ is clearly insufficient, especially compared to most who have called for 90% cuts by 20506 and even others insisting that 120% reductions by 2020 are necessary.7
Without immediate action, global warming is currently predicted to cause average temperatures to rise from 2.4º up to 5.4º C over the following decades. However, in Africa, the same estimates predict the rise in temperature could be almost double the global average, ranging between 7º and 8ºC.8 Significant changes in rainfall patterns will be keenly felt across the continent. The droughts of the 1980s in Ethiopia were a result of climate change, and Oxfam estimate that 25 million people will be affected by the latest drought there.9 Across Africa this pattern will be repeated in various ways.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Africa bears the brunt of the approximate 150,000 deaths per year that occur globally because of climate change. These figures will more than likely double by 2030. The disproportion between those who contribute to global warming and those that suffer from it is stark. Figure 2 illustrates this disparity.
Figure 2: WHO - Estimated mortality attributable to climate change10 
The politics of this disparity is reflected in the nature of deforestation. While deforestation is but one of several major problems linked to climate change, other problems such as increases in disease and impacts on farming will be examined in other articles of this ezine volume. The role of deforestation as a key driver of climate change is explored here. In doing so, it is possible to examine the systemic failure to address the challenge and the future possibilities that exist.
Nightmare Scenario – Deforestation
The roles of tropical rainforests are many. They are central to maintaining soil fertility through storing and transpiration of water for precipitation. They are the natural habitats of a multitude of animal and plant species, not to mention the many indigenous peoples and local communities who depend on the forests for their subsistence needs. More broadly, tropical rainforests play a vital role in carbon sequestration, acting as the Earth’s natural storage facilities for CO2.11 Global deforestation is a leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). The IPCC estimate that 1.6 billion tonnes of CO2 are released into the atmosphere every year through deforestation activities.12 Annually, approximately 25% of GHGs are directly attributable to the cutting and burning of tropical rainforests.13 For example:
[I]n the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York… [T]he destruction of those forests will in the next four years alone… pump more CO2 into the atmosphere than every flight in the history of aviation to at least 2025.14
African forests make up 17% of the world’s forests,15 covering over 630 million hectares,16 or about one fifth of the continent’s land area.17 The forests are principally located in the tropical zones. (See here and here for visual representations of forest cover in Africa.) The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) contains the world’s second largest tropical rainforest.18
| Country | Hectares (1000s) | % of Land Cover | Country | Hectares (1000s) | % of Land Cover |
| 1) DRC | 133,610 | 58.9 | 6) Central African Republic | 22,755 | 36.5 |
| 2) Sudan | 67,546 | 28.4 | 7) Congo-Brazzaville | 22,471 | 65.8 |
| 3) Angola | 59,104 | 47.4 | 8) Gabon | 21,775 | 84.5 |
| 4) Zambia | 42,452 | 57.1 | 9) Cameroon | 21,245 | 45.6 |
| 5) Tanzania | 35,257 | 39.9 | 10) Mozambique | 19,262 | 24.6 |
Africa has lost a higher percentage of tropical rainforests than any other region. In its comprehensive report, ‘Africa- Atlas of Our Changing Environment’, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) states:
Africa is losing more than 4 million hectares (9.9 million acres) of forest every year — twice the world's average deforestation rate.20
This is approximately the size of Switzerland.21 According to UNEP, the primary causes of deforestation are commercial activities of logging, converting forest for agricultural purposes or grazing livestock and expanding human settlements. Although local activities such as harvesting firewood and charcoal have an impact, the problem is mainly driven by the unquenchable thirst of industrialized and industrializing countries for natural resources in return for some form of ‘assistance’. According to the World Rainforest Movement and a prominent environmentalist respectively,
…deforestation is the inevitable result of the current social and economic policies being carried out in the name development.22
The roots of the problem of deforestation and waste of resources are located in the industrialized countries, where most of our resources, such as tropical timber, end up. The rich nations with one quarter of the world's population consume four fifths of the world's resources.23
Whatever the label—be it some misguided notion of ‘development’, debt burden or consumerism–the bottom line is that developing countries are forced to trade in their resources, destroying their environment (and the world’s) for meager short term returns. It is evident that the current situation is detrimental to both industrialized and developing countries in the long term.
The statistics on logging and the commercial export of raw tropical logs alone reinforces this grim picture. More than 3.5 million cubic meters of raw tropical logs were exported from Africa in 2006, much of it illegally. Spurred on by regulations that are both inadequate and shoddily enforced, China and other Asian countries have taken over from the European Union as the main destination in recent years.24
A fairly standard scenario would be as follows. Industrial logging concessions are parceled out to commercial loggers, sometimes with the blessing of the host government. The building of roads or railways to access the area will sometimes be facilitated by funds designated as ‘development aid’. They may temporarily hire the labor force in local communities, on menial wages, to carry out the logging process. After the timber has been logged and other non-timber forest products have been exploited to their maximum potential, the firms will move onto their next concession. The previously employed labor force is left to fend for itself. Despite the virtual destruction of their homeland, local communities are highly unlikely to see any meaningful or lasting benefits from the profits derived from logging, processing timber or producing value-added goods such as furniture. More likely they will be left with little choice but to resort to subsistence agricultural practices, usually involving the slashing and burning of additional forest, thereby exacerbating land degradation.25 In addition, there are also the stresses of commercial logging on forest-dependent indigenous communities, such as the Pygmy populations in the Congo Basin. Such is the pattern which might lie ahead for Gabon.
Deforestation in Gabon
Within the Congo Basin, Gabon makes for an interesting case study with regard to deforestation. It is located on the west coast of Africa, with Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea as neighbors to the north and Congo-Brazzaville on its eastern and southern borders. It ranks 8th in the list of countries with the most forested area (see Table 1); and in terms of forest cover as a percentage of total land, it ranks 2nd with 84.5%.26 The forests contain 8,000 plant species, of which 20% are endemic to Gabon, nearly 200 mammals and over 670 species of birds. The forests are also home to several indigenous groups, namely, the Baka, Bakoya and Babongo Pygmies.27
Gabon is often held as a shining star of conservation practices. In 2002, the government declared its intent to create a national park system consisting of 13 parks and reserves. This initiative, enacted in 2003, designated 10% of the country as protected areas.28 More recently, Gabon was one of 14 developing countries to become a member of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF). This international financing mechanism is part of the larger Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) strategy to fight tropical deforestation and climate change.29 Moreover, between 1990 and 2000 Gabon’s annual deforestation rate averaged an impressively low 0.05%, or a total of 152,000 hectares.30 There are few spots in the world where primary tropical rainforest stretches to the beaches of the ocean, but Gabon is one of them.
However, despite this encouraging picture, Gabon’s forests face serious challenges. The lack of extensive commercial logging can be largely attributed to Gabon’s off-shore oil deposits. Yet, heavy reliance on oil exposes the Gabonese government to fluctuating oil prices—and the current drop in prices. Relying on the granting of large-scale commercial logging concessions, under the banner of diversifying the economy, does not seem a good response. However, that seems to be the pattern for Gabon even to the point of threatened its non-timber forest products (NTFPs)31 which are currently protected by Gabon’s Forestry Code.
Despite the Forestry Code legislated by the Gabon government being regarded as adequate,32 it is also regarded as being favorable for commercial logging and the industrialization of the forests, principally at the behest of the World Bank and the IMF.33 Although adopted in the spirit of increasing sustainable forest management and improving the development of their timber processing industry, the legislation does not tackle the supremacy of foreign capital controlling its logging concessions, nor does it deal with issues of poverty. This is evidenced by the fact that there are virtually no mechanisms to protect or educate the affected local communities about their rights. In other words,
[O]nce again, "development" schemes generally fostered from outside and replicated along southern countries rich in natural resources, bring money to national and international elites but not to the people.34
The stresses on, and challenges for Gabon’s forests, its accompanying ecosystems and local populations are plain to see. Yet, Gabon is thought of as lucky, and its forests are considered to be relatively ‘untouched’ when compared to forests in other African countries that experience the same issues at an exacerbated level, or are further damaged by other issues like civil unrest. This suggests significant failings in planning for the future. Without adequate long-term strategies that integrate all local communities, can anyone expect these circumstances and, by inference, the broader climate change issues to improve? What more holistic mitigation strategies are available to address deforestation issues in Gabon, or anywhere else in Africa? Necessarily this requires that broader climate change initiatives be examined.
Climate Change Mitigation
Mitigation refers to the act of lessening the severity of the effects of climate change. In recent years the international community has given much attention to mitigating climate change. The most prominent response to the dangers of climate change is carbon trading, brought into being by the Kyoto Protocol in 2005. The basic principals of carbon trading are rooted firmly in free market economics. It is a profitable business. The World Bank estimated that the carbon market was worth nearly US$65 billion in 2007 alone.35
With GHG reductions in mind, carbon trading established a market aimed at countries and companies to meet reduction targets. To achieve these targets, this mechanism gives countries the option of reducing their own emissions or the option of buying emissions credits from other countries and companies who have reduced their GHGs farther than their pre-determined levels. Also, polluters may purchase emissions credits by investing in sustainable development projects that demonstrate additional reductions in emissions. This is known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).36
Carbon trading and the CDM have far greater complexity than can be fully described here. However, some important flaws are worth noting. First, carbon trading is based on a ‘historical allocation of pollution rights’,37 which favours industrialized nations. Fundamentally, the pollution rights of industrialized nations were established off the back of exploiting the developing world. Therefore, grand-fathering in a system steeped in inequity is not the basis of any progressive solution. Countries distribute their allocation of credits to their national industries for the CDM in much the same way. In other words, the biggest polluters have the most credits. Second, while billions of dollars are invested in emissions trading schemes, there are few resources being directed towards the regulation or accountability of the markets or the CDM.38 This opens up the probability that the system will be exploited by the unscrupulous who can defraud the system by claiming non-existent reductions.39 Third, the CDM’s most controversial flaw is its concept of ‘additionality’. That is to say, a proposed project must establish that it would reduce emissions more than would have occurred if it did not happen. Not only is this extremely difficult to establish but it allows polluters to present alternative scenarios with greater carbon emissions.40 Fourth, many initiatives are unable to redress the balance of previous carbon emissions.41 In part, because there is little evidence that developing new carbon sinks equalizes previously used fossil fuels. Also, some projects like the planting of trees will not be given the time to act as carbon sinks before the trees themselves are cut down.
Overall, carbon trading and CDM schemes allow polluters to unload the cost of their pollution to someone else. There seem to be no real incentives for the largest polluters to reduce their own emissions. Yet it does not stop terms like ‘carbon-neutral’ and ‘carbon-offset’ being thrown about as measures of success within the system. Meanwhile, resources are still being drained from the developing world. Little or no attention is being paid to the people who are affected the most and polluters keep polluting, albeit at a price. However, it is a small price compared to their overall profits. The primacy of economic self-interest over genuine environmental protection within this current system is implacable.
Approaches to Mitigating Deforestation
Macro-strategies will not work and will only make things worse in the case of Africa because it can only pay lip service to the micro-elements at best. Conspicuous by their absence in carbon trading and CDM initiatives are the necessary tools for sustainable management which has to incorporate local communities:
…for climate change in Africa, the dichotomy between environment and economic development is particularly false. There is and will be no durable economic development unless it is based on sustainable management of Africa’s land, soils, forests and water.42
Initiatives set up through the current system largely ignore the rights and the needs of local populations. For example, evicting people from their homes to plant trees is neither an equitable nor sustainable strategy, as in the case of Mount Elgon National Park in Uganda, which resulted in the trees being cut down and growing hostility between farmers and local authorities.43
Situations like the above are commonplace and benefit no-one in the long term. To be successful, climate change strategies must engage and enable local communities not just on an ad hoc basis but in an institutionalized way throughout the decision-making process. However, this is far from actually happening at the moment. The World Bank’s REDD strategy is a case in point. Currently REDD is widely criticized for excluding local communities and indigenous populations from being participants in negotiations and not addressing the broader social justice needs of these communities. This exclusion is evidenced in recent negotiations involving REDD to formalize the participation of the world’s rainforests in carbon markets.44
Adopting a holistic approach will greatly improve the chance of successful forest conservation policies because all the players will have a vested interested in the outcome. Sustainable forest management strategies to reduce deforestation rates should include natural regeneration of local species, community-based natural resource management and improved local technologies. This requires that decision-making and revenue allocation and authority is decentralized and placed in the hands of local communities. According to Friends of the Earth International and others, this can happen when greater emphasis is placed on the following issues:
- Strengthening land rights – “The recognition and enforcement of customary and territorial land rights of Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities must be the basis of any forest policy”.45
- Equitable funding for stopping deforestation – “Funding to stop deforestation should be invested in national programs and infrastructure that directly provide support to alternative, rights-based community-driven forms of forest conservation, sustainable management and ecosystem restoration”.46
- Education and advocacy – Informing and empowering local communities helps to strengthen the grass-roots level to address deforestation issues. Local knowledge and experience can be shared with others facing the same concerns. This will also help local communities to create linkages with other organizations, groups and coalitions and ultimately give the collective with a stronger voice.
- Innovation and developing technology – Developed countries should be more willing to align with local actors for knowledge transfer. Researching and investing in innovative methods or development technologies will lead to more efficient practices. These could be centred on improving any number of elements, for instance: creating less harmful logging practices, adaptive agricultural strategies, more cohesive resource management or improved cooking and heating equipment.
These components help to fill in the gaps that are currently visible in broader efforts, thereby making them more comprehensive strategies in addressing climate change issues. Continued pressure from a ‘bottom-up’ perspective can have the ability of steeling a government’s resolution to consider alternative futures for their forests.
Unless such pressure is applied, it will be the population of sub-Saharan Africa who will be most vulnerable to, and suffer the most from, the effects of climate change in the decades to come. They will continue to pay a terrible price because both domestic and international governments along with institutions are failing to address key issues coherently and adequately while largely neglecting grassroots strategies. That is to say, broader mitigation strategies employed by international actors, will ultimately fail unless there is greater recognition of the knowledge and capacities to respond to climate change inherent at the local level. Not only should local knowledge be incorporated into macro-economic, technological and political policies but these policies should be significantly derived from this knowledge. Without a holistic approach to climate change, Africa will be a continent further ravaged, awash with environmental refugees.
1. Valleley, P. “Climate change will be catastrophe for Africa”. The Independent, 16th May, 2006; http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change-will-be-catastrophe-for-africa-478375.html.
2. Christian Aid, “Facts and Figures”. 2007; http://www.christianaid.org.uk/issues/climatechange/facts/index.aspx.
3. Climate change vulnerability in Africa. (2002, updated 2004, 2005). In UNEP/GRID-Arendal Maps and Graphics Library. Retrieved 19:20, October 26, 2008 from http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/climate_change_vulnerability_in_africa.
4. Data.org, “Climate Change in Africa”. 24th January, 2008; http://www.data.org/issues/climate_change_and_africa_012408.html.
5. Click here to see ad published in the Financial Times, 8th July, 2008 by www.avaaz.org.
6. Monbiot, G. “This crisis demands a reappraisal of who we are and what progress means”. The Guardian, 4th December, 2007; http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/dec/04/comment.politics.
7. Stockholm Environment Institute, “Sweden’s leadership in a climate constrained world”. October, 2008; http://www.sei.se/editable/pages/news/Sweden%20GDRs%20Final.pdf.
8. Valleley, P. “Climate change will be catastrophe for Africa”. The Independent, 16th May, 2006; http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change-will-be-catastrophe-for-africa-478375.html.
9. Jowit, J., “Drought land will be abandonded”. 2nd November, 2008; http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/02/climate-change-desertification-water-drought.
10. Patz, J., et al. “Impact of regional climate change on human health”. Nature, 17th November, 2005; http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7066/abs/nature04188.html.
11. Desanker, P.V. and Magadza, C. et al. “Africa. Chapter 10 of the IPCC Working Group II, Third Assessment Report”, p. 509, 2001; http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg2/index.htm.
12. IPCC cited in: Forestsforever.org, “Forests and climate change”. http://www.forestsforever.org/climate2.html.
13. Howden, D. “Deforestation: The hidden cause of global warming”. The Independent, 14th May, 2007; http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/deforestation-the-hidden-cause-of-global-warming-448734.html.
14. Ibid.
15. Hennig, R. “Forests and deforestation in Africa”. Afrol News. http://www.afrol.com/features/10278.
16. Food and Agriculture Organization (UN), Global Forest Resources Assessment, 2005.
17. UNEP “Africa: Atlas of our Changing Environment”. Chapter 1, p.18, 2008. http://www.unep.org/dewa/africa/AfricaAtlas/PDF/en/Chapter1.pdf.
18. FAO, Global Forest Resources Assessment, 2005.
19. Ibid.
20. UNEP cited in: Environmental News Network, “Africa's deforestation twice world rate, says atlas”. 11th June, 2008; http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/37370.
21. Ibid.
22. The World Rainforest Movement (WRM) cited in: Rainforestinfo.org, “The Causes of Rainforest Destruction”. http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/background/causes.htm.
23. Harrison Ngau cited in: Ibid.
24. Globaltimber.org.uk, “Exports by, and imports from, Africa”, http://www.globaltimber.org.uk/africa.htm. Individual country data is available here: http://www.globaltimber.org.uk/info.htm.
25. Mongabay.com, “Afrotropical realm”.
26. FAO, Global Forest Resources Assessment, 2005. Despite much smaller areas of forest, Seychelles is 1st with 88.9% forest cover and Guinea-Bissau is 3rd with 73.7% forest cover.
27. Rainforestfoundationuk.org, “Gabon”. http://www.rainforestfoundationuk.org/Gabon.
28. Mongabay.com, “Country profile – Gabon”. http://rainforests.mongabay.com/20gabon.htm.
29. Trangonews.com, “Gabon among fourteen states chosen for anti-deforestation scheme”. 30th July, 2008; http://www.trangonews.com/n/Gabon_among_fourteen_states_chosen...
30. Mongabay.com, “Country profile – Gabon”.
31. NTFPs are important commodities for local population groups as a food or fuel source and in making medicines, tools and building materials. NTFPs include: bark, tubers, leaves, flowers, seeds, fruits, resins, honey, fungi and animal products.
32. WRM, “The problems faced by Gabon’s forests and the communities that depend on them: a menu of logging, dams, oil, mining, parks, railways, roads, ports”. WRM bulletin #133, August 2008; http://wrmbulletin.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/the-problems-faced-by-gabons-forests-and-the-communities-that-depend-on-them-a-menu-of-logging-dams-oil-mining-parks-railways-roads-ports/.
33. WRM bulletin #52.
34. Ibid.
35. World Bank Carbon Finance Unit, “State and Trends of the Carbon Market, 2008”. p.7, May 2008; http://siteresources.worldbank.org/NEWS/Resources/...
36. Bond, P., Dada, R., and Erion, G., eds., “Introduction- Climate change, carbon trading and civil society”. Chapter 1, p. 5, 2007. The initial GHGs emissions reduction targets were 5% from 1990 levels, to be achieved by 2012.
37. Ibid.
38. Bachram, H., “Climate fraud and carbon colonialism”. Chapter 6, p.110, 2007. (In Bond, P., et al.)
39. Vidal, J., “Billions wasted on UN climate programme”. The Guardian, 26th May, 2008; http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/26/climatechange.greenpolitics.
40. Bachram, H., Ibid.
41. Friends of the Earth International (FoEI), “Forests are more than just Carbon”, August 2008; http://www.redd-monitor.org/2008/10/29/foei-forests-are-more-than-carbon/.
42. Toulmin, C., “Africa make climate change history”. Open Democracy, 16th May, 2005; http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-africa_democracy/article_2513.jsp.
43. Faris, S., “The other side of carbon trading”. Mongabay.com, 29th August, 2007; http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0829-fortune.html.
44. FoEI, Ibid.
45. FoEI, Ibid.
46. Ibid.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer(s) and not do necessarily reflect the views of the AfricaFiles' editors and network members. They are included in our material as a reflection of a diversity of views and a variety of issues. Material written specifically for AfricaFiles may be edited for length, clarity or inaccuracies.
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