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Burkina Faso Losing Thousands of Hectares of Forests Each Year
By Brahima Ouédraogo
OUAGADOUGOU, Jul 19, 2011 (IPS) – The Burkina Faso authorities have sounded the alarm over the increased rate of degradation of forests in this Sahelian country.
According to a study by the Ministry for the Environment and Sustainable Development, some 110,550 hectares of forest are destroyed each year, just over four percent of the country’s total wooded area – around three-quarters of this annual loss linked to farming. The data covers forest loss between 1992 and 2002, but the trend continues, according the ministry.
The environment ministry’s study shows that in the eastern region of Kompienga, the destruction of wooded areas avearaged 1,600 square kilometres over each of the past 15 years. In Poni and Noumbiel, in the south-west, savannah forests have lost 60 percent of their area, giving way to scrublands.
“The contributing factors are decreased rainfall, bush fires, the demand for wood and non-wood products, and clearing of forest in order to have larger harvests,” said Soumaila Bancé, the country coordinator for the Convention on Biodiversity at the National Council for the Environment and Sustainable Development.
“We have an increase in demand which exceeds supply. The population is growing and the resources are no longer sufficient to feed it. The area that we have restored is not enough to cover the demand,” said Bancé. The growth rate of the Burkinabé population is 3.1 percent, according the most recent census, in 2006.
But poverty is also a factor, pushing unemployed youth to go after resources which do not belong to anyone/public-common resources. They cut green wood without waiting for it to reach maturity, said Bancé.
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