A Future for Africa’s Tropical Forests

Abstract

Africa’s rain forests are the product of a history of extreme climatic variation and of human influences dating back thousands of years. The conservation movement today tends to focus on the dramatic impact of industrial logging or the pervasive degradation caused by shifting cultivation, but these must be seen in the context of much more fundamental problems, both within Africa and in the world at large, which have far-reaching impacts upon the continent’s forests. Nature conservation in Africa is not just be a question of restricting the activities of poor peasants or defending the boundaries of isolated national parks against incursions by loggers. Conservation must be part of a broader process of managing the whole landscape. A balance must be achieved between the production of the goods and services needed to improve people’s material well-being and the protection of the forests and soils and their wealth of biological diversity so that the welfare of future generations is assured (Poore and Sayer, 1991).