Deforestation and Poverty: in Sub-Saharan Africa

Deforestation is an important form of environmental degradation, which involves permanent loss of species, soil degradation, and impact of climate change. The worlds forests provide a great services and benefits to our ecosystems. Deforestation appears to be a local problem but has consequences, which are global. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) (2006) found the African continent to lead in terms of the highest rate of deforestation. Forests are crucial for the well-being of human In sub Saharan Africa (SSA), the number of people living in poverty increased from 184 million in 1985 to 216 million in 1990. It is projected to rise to 300 million by the year 2000. SSA is the only region in the world where poverty is expected to increase.

Primarily, the reason attributed to the growth in poverty is due to continued reliance of people of sub Saharan Africa on subsistence farming as their means for survival. They cut the forests in order to expand their farming land to feed their growing families. The problem of deforestation for using the land for agricultural purposes is an acute problem. The continued growth of population necessitates that better use of technologies along with the practice of efficient agricultural practices could possibly stem continued deforestation. However, the countries in Sub Saharan Africa do not have the resources both financial and human capital to adopt better farming practices. The continued reliance on deforestation as a means to improve the quantity of agricultural outputs with little qualitative improvements is indeed an area of concern for SSA. In addition, the quantitative improvements in the agriculture have little impact on food security of the population, as bulk of food is lost to pests and rodents. The farmers in the regions of sub Saharan Africa do not have a way of protecting their crops after their crops are put into storage. The crops they do harvest then become susceptible to more pests and rodents in the storage facilities they use for crop storage. Because of this high crop loss they do not harvest enough crops to sell any as cash crops, all the food they produce goes straight to their family for sustenance. If they produce enough crops they will still have enough of food after losing the majority to pests and rodents.

Deforestation is further aggravated in Sub Saharan Africa due to illegal logging by large companies. Overall weakness and corruption of the governments in Sub-Saharan Africa further provides the grounds for unscrupulous and unregulated mining and logging by the large companies, which earn hefty profits.  Big companies can get away with the practice of illegal logging and mining because of the state of sub Saharan Africa's government. In an all but lawless area big companies take advantage of the situation and come out making a hefty profit.

As evident from the previous discussions, deforestation and poverty have a very strong link among them. Many critics argue over whether poverty causes deforestation or if deforestation causes poverty. Either way both are extremely relevant, important related problems that need to be addressed.  One of the common reasons for deforestation is the continued stress of ever expansion of agricultural land for meeting the need of growing population. This increase in population causes added stress to the agricultural resources to meet the needs of population. However, continued deforestation then leads to poverty due to varied environment impacts such as displacement???

Deforestation is aggravated in sub Saharan Africa by an increase in population. There are many arguments as to whether poverty causes deforestation or if deforestation causes poverty. In most aspects they both show good points but either way trying to do more to control one will be beneficial to the other.

The sub Saharan Government applied the PRS (Poverty Reduction Strategies) approach, which aimed to enhance the poverty focus. The PRS was developed in response to a number of other concerns, including the poor record of poverty reduction in the 1990s and a new focus on poverty-reduction results. PRS described the country’s macroeconomic, social and structural policies and programmes to promote and reduce poverty over a three-year time horizon, as well as with associated external financing requirements. PRSs were prepared by governments in consultation with their civil societies, and lay out their development priorities. At the time of the last major review forty-nine countries had prepared PRSs. Of these, just over half were in SSA, with ‘second generation’ PRSs being developed in Burkina Faso and Tanzania. Uganda, the first country to use the PRSP approach, was already developing its third strategy. The first PRS in Uganda made valuable progress in three areas: it contributed to a much stronger poverty-reduction focus inside government; engaged civil society in poverty-reduction policy debates at an unprecedented level; and focused attention of donor harmonization and alignment at both the international and country level.

The conventional solution aims to target and fix poverty, which they consider to be the cause of deforestation. The government, together with various organisations, sees development as the main key to cure. Ironically, industrialisation and further industrial developments are also one of the causes of deforestation. More people moving into the cities also meant clearing more land. This happened to be the reason why the government has been struggling with issues presented by the solutions that they tried to provide. This frustration and never ending circle leave many wondering if there is a way to solve the problem of deforestation, other than letting the ways of nature and the economy run its course. Programs that help start farmers in planting trees for cash crops and for many other benefits may help this problem greatly.

Nupur Dass

20153044