Forests in southern Africa and their importance

Southern Africa is prestigious for its rich biodiversity and endemism. Its landscape has changed, varying from rainforests to deserts.

A large number of woodland biological systems are home to an abundance of fauna and vegetation. As the ‘green lungs’ of our planet, woodlands or forests are imperative to our wellbeing and endurance.

They perform multiple tasks as natural environments, providers of basic materials, livelihoods sources, spots of entertainment, and provide protection against the adverse impacts of climate change.

Dryland forests common in Southern African countries are primarily found in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Zambia, South Africa, Namibia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Malawi, Angola, south-eastern DRC and Botswana.

Southern Africa is home to Africa’s Miombo forests – the broadest dryland woodland development on the continent of Africa, and among the main five ecozones believed to be principal to biodiversity conservation. Miombo forests are embodied by trees from the genera of the Julbernardia, Isoberlinia, Brachystegia and Ceasalpinoideae sub-family.

The southern African region is very susceptible to a fluctuating climate and climate change as a whole.

This susceptibility is fuelled by low adaptation capacity and the interaction of environmental, economic and social impact factors with climate.

Forests and rangeland biological systems in the subcontinent have huge support for living standards and public economic duties.

Their broad weakness to climate change has genuine negative ramifications for the economies that rely upon them.

Nonetheless, woodlands and rangelands likewise offer remarkable adaptation capacity to various flora and fauna species in the region.

The common vegetation zones are the African rainforest, desert, dry savannah and open woodlands.

Forest types in southern Africa include inter alia wet evergreen forests, sclerophyllous forests, dense deciduous forests, xerophilous thickets, riparian forests and humanmade forests.

Socio-economic benefits

Forests help people in making all the more profoundly esteemed private residential spaces. In developed nations, tree-rich regions attract those who wouldn’t otherwise be there. Forests have wider economic values beyond timber production, but most are dependent on entrepreneurial vision and the marketing skills of the owner of the forest. The social functions of woodlands or forests are frequently harder to measure and can shift among nations, contingent upon their degree of advancement and customs. For instance, the advantages of woods might be generally significant, while in agricultural nations, the area of woodlands accessible for various activities might be a superior sign of their social worth.

Management issues

Management issues in southern African forests consist of the following structural constraints and limitations: Outdated Forest Laws and regulations; shortage of qualified personnel or staff members in the management chain; underprivileged responsiveness of services in terms of forest inspection; shortage of key forestry statistics; unsustainable wood logging and deforestation as a result of subsistence farming, burning and charcoal production businesses. Other issues challenging management efforts of forests in southern Africa also entail highintensity bushfires, illegal logging and inadequate law-enforcement personnel.

Threats

There is undeniably a more assorted scope of dangers to forests from landscape change, like natural habitat fragmentation and logging, to undeniably more slippery and inadequately comprehended dangers like forest fires and microbes. Generally, the threats towards forests include climate change that brings dynamic changes of multiple variables, therefore impacting the entire constellation of forests, alien invasive species that outcompete the indigenous species in terms of resource use, pests’ outbreak, which can lead to certain species dying out, land use and rapid exploitation that entails urbanisation and clearing for agricultural activities.

Resilience or remedial actions to threats. There is no single solution that fits all challenges. Therefore, remedial steps have to be done in a systematic and holistic approach. Remedial steps are primarily concentrated in adaptation, but climate regulation and afforestation can be grouped as mitigation factors. Stringent regulatory laws and regulations should be established to closely monitor logging activities and other unsustainable utilisations.

Forestry institutions should be capacitated to have responsive abilities to natural threats, as this will immensely help to prevent damage to forests and death to all resident living organisms, ranging from microbes, mammals, insects and other fauna species. We only have one earth, we have to save it!