Chapter 2: State and Trends
Analysis at sub-regional level indicates a trend of decreasing forest cover throughout North, West, Central, East and Southern Africa between 1990 and 2015 (FAO 2015). Net annual forest change between 2010 and 2015 has been recorded at -2.8 per cent. Figure 2.2.5 shows Africa’s extent of forest cover by sub-region in relation to the rest of the world.
Forest cover is projected to continue shrinking, declining to less than 600 million hectares by 2050 due to increasing conversion of forests to agriculture to support the rising population and growing demand for firewood. Changes are expected to vary from country to country. For example, while Mali indicated that significant loss is expected by 2030, Tanzania is expecting losses observed in the past to be reversed into gains over the same period (FAO 2015).
As forests act as sinks for carbon dioxide, a drop in coverage reduces the carbon stock. The highest densities of carbon stock in Africa are in West and Central Africa, although these have been reduced significantly, declining from 46 to 43 billion tonnes between 1990 and 2005. The decline is mainly as a result of the expansion in agricultural land and unsustainable logging.
Most of Africa’s forests are found in the Congo Basin and in mountainous areas. Mountain forests make up approximately 20 per cent of the region’s landmass (UNEP 2014). Mountain forests are under threat from agricultural encroachment, deforestation, mining and dam construction.
Urbanization is another key demographic trend affecting land in Africa. Overall, the continent is undergoing rapid urban change. Recent studies show that the proportion of the population living in urban zones increased from 15 per
cent in 1960 to 40 per cent in 2010, and is expected to grow to 53 per cent by 2035 and 60 per cent by 2050 (FAO and UNIDO 2010; UN-Habitat 2010). Between 2010 and 2040, Africa is expected to have more than 450 million additional urban dwellers (Freire 2013). UN-Habitat (2010) reports that 20 African cities will be among the largest 100 cities in the world by 2050. For example, Kinshasa is expected to grow to 35 million inhabitants while Lagos will grow to 33 million. Furthermore, 50 cities including the large metropolises of Cairo, Lagos, Kinshasa and Dar-es-Salaam, as well as Luanda, Niamey and Blantyre, will have reached 10 or more million by then. Land is critical for urban expansion and transformation, but urbanization has significant impacts on land. For example, coffee production in Kenya has fallen by more than 50 per cent due to the conversion of coffee plantations to real estate developments (Nyambura-Mwaura 2010) (More...8).
Significant land-use change has also occurred in Africa as a result of mining activities. Besides the clearance and digging up of large tracts of land, mining also attracts labour, whose needs for biomass energy and food often result in deforestation and conversion of forests and woodlands into pieces of land for agriculture (Figure 2.2.6). Besides land-use change, mining also results in waste management challenges. In Africa approximately 80 million tonnes of mining waste is dumped each year (Lloyd 2002) (More...9).
Located in the Mara region of Tanzania, Nyamongo Gold Mine is a combined open pit and underground operation, with capacity to process 8 000 tonnes of ore per day. During the period prior to June 1984, the Nyamongo area had no large-scale mining activity, but by June 2015, two major pits and a wastewater pond had been created, resulting in a large-scale change to the landscape (LVBC 2016).
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