Agriculture, a major cause of deforestation in Africa

The new United Nations report on the state of the world's forests, released on the occasion of the International Day for Biological Diversity on May 22, describes an alarming situation.[1]Since 1990, the planet has lost 178 million hectares of forest (420 million hectares deforested, partially offset by afforestation and reforestation). Although deforestation has slowed overall over time, it still contributes to biodiversity loss and climate change and, as the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed, promotes the emergence of animal diseases that can be transmitted to humans.[2]The case of Africa is particularly worrying: over the period 2010-2020, it saw a net loss of 3.94 million hectares of forest each year, on average, a figure that is up from previous decades and much higher than that of South America (2.60 million hectares). The case of the Amazon is dramatic, but it too often overshadows the ongoing ecological catastrophe on the African continent in the news.

Detailed studies based on satellite data highlight the major responsibility of agriculture in deforestation in Africa. According to an atlas produced by CILSS (Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel) with the support of USAID (United States Agency for International Development).[3], the doubling of cultivated areas in West Africa between 1975 and 2013 (approximately + 60 million hectares) was not only to the detriment of forests and mangroves (- 15 million hectares) but also and above all of savannahs (- 48 million hectares). The areas covered by dwellings have more than doubled, but their increase (+ 2 million hectares) only accounts for a minor part of the decline of forests (table).

Another study, conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland in the United States, sheds a harsh light on the situation in the Congo Basin, which is home to the world's second largest forest massif, after the Amazon.[4]This basin is spread across six countries: Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, and Democratic Republic of Congo. In the space of fifteen years (2000-2014), it lost 16.5 million hectares of forest, an area larger than Bangladesh. This decline is attributable to small farmers who harvest wood for energy purposes and, above all, clear small plots with machetes to produce food, thus exhausting the soil and then continuing their shifting cultivation: practices whose root causes are population growth and extreme poverty, against a backdrop of ethnic tensions and armed conflict. Another factor in deforestation is illegal logging, made possible by massive government corruption.[5]. Mechanical clearing by agro-industry to create plantations and pastures for livestock is responsible, over the period studied, for only 1,% of forest loss, but it is accelerating. Overall, if current trends are not significantly reversed, the Congo Basin, where the population is expected to increase fivefold by 2100, could be completely deforested by the end of the century.

Faced with the impending disaster, there is no miracle cure. Solutions can only come from the combined actions of public authorities and stakeholders in the sectors, including consumers. The prospective study recently carried out by INRAe, at the request of Pluriagri, warns of foreseeable land tensions in sub-Saharan Africa by 2050, despite the available arable land, and of the resulting environmental risks, even in the event of a substantial increase in crop yields, the conditions for which are not currently met.[6]In this context, the European Union has a special role to play: it must promote a reduction in "imported deforestation", for example through the demand for cocoa; help alleviate the need to expand cultivated areas in other importing regions, by positioning itself as a reliable supplier of foodstuffs; and finally, support, in Africa, the development of efficient and sustainable value chains, integrating small producers who form the vast majority of the agricultural population. While it is primarily up to Africans to choose their future, the stakes are such that they require the involvement of the entire international community.

[1] FAO and UNEP, 2020. The State of the World's Forests 2020. Forests, biodiversity and people.

[2] According to the Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB), "science is increasingly highlighting correlations between global environmental changes, loss of biodiversity and associated regulatory services and the emergence, or increase, in the prevalence of infectious diseases (...). Zoonotic risk can be increased by the erosion of biodiversity via ecological, epidemiological, adaptive and evolutionary and anthropogenic factors. There is thus a strong consensus in favor of a link between deforestation, in its various dimensions, and the increase in zoonoses, in Asia, Africa and South America" (source: "Mobilization of the FRB by the French public authorities on the links between Covid-19 and biodiversity", May 15, 2020).

[3] CILSS (2016). The landscapes of West Africa. A window on a changing world.

[4] Tyukavina, A. et al. (2018). “Congo Basin forest loss dominated by increasing smallholder clearing”, Sci. Adv. 4, eaat2993.

[5] “The DRC, second front of global deforestation”, Le Monde, April 27, 2019.

[6] See the FARM blog article “2050 Outlook: High Pressure on Land in Africa,” February 24, 2020, https://fondation-farm.org/prospective-2050-forte-pression-sur-les-terres-en-afrique/