Accord to combat illegal logging
Forest protection agencies in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique and Madagascar will step up joint efforts to combat the rapidly expanding trade in illegal timber under a new deal.
The Zanzibar Declaration on Illegal Logging, signed yesterday at a global gathering on forests in South Africa, aims to improve communication between customs authorities and collaboration among forest officials from the east and southeast Africa.
If properly managed, forests can provide jobs for workers and homes for wildlife. They also act as a filter pulling planet-warming carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
Between 2000 and 2012, forest cover in Tanzania shrank by 2 million hectares – an area the size of Wales – and by 2.2 million hectares in Mozambique, a WWF analysis showed.
DURBAN: China is paying millions of farmers to convert huge chunks of cropland back to forests to reduce soil erosion and flood disasters.
Preliminary results, presented at the World Forestry Congress in Durban this week, suggest the 15-year-old project is starting to stabilise the soil and partly slow down the migration of rural families into the big cities.
However, researchers say the jury is still out on how the project has affected social dynamics, food security and the environment.
Known as the Conversion of Cropland to Forest Programme, the Chinese government pays farmers subsidies worth up to 20 percent of normal monthly income to convert rice paddies, crop fields and other degraded land into forestry land.
Lucas Rodriguez, a researcher at the Centre for International Forestry Research in Indonesia, said the Chinese forestry project was the largest scheme in the world where people were paid to pro- tect their local ecosystems. One of the main aims was to stabilise the soil and reduce erosion caused by intensive farm ploughing, and also reduce mudslides and flood disasters next to major rivers.
Rodriquez said research in Gansu province suggested there had been a 38 percent reduction in soil erosion because of the tree-planting project – but in Hainan province the project had led to the expansion of biologically-sterile timber plantations of a single species.
Dr Kun Zhang, from the China National Forestry research centre, said more than 27 million hectares of cropland and degraded land had been converted to forested land so far, at a cost of $42 billion (R588bn).
The scheme was implemented in provinces across the country and involved nearly 32 million households.
Forestry subsidies had improved income and job levels, especially among elderly rural residents, but more research was needed to assess the impact on food production and food security.
John Zinda, of Brown University in the US, said in some regions, forest cover had increased by almost 25 percent, while in other provinces only by 1 percent.
In at least two areas, forestry land had expanded significantly even though farmers did not take part in the scheme – suggesting that as rural people moved to cities their abandoned croplands reverted to forested areas naturally.
Most people in Guizhou province believed the scheme had changed their lives for the better.