AFRICA LOSING ONE PERCENT OF ITS FORESTS EACH YEAR

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ABO EBAM, NIGERIA - From Brazil to central Africa to once-lush islands
in Asia's archipelagos, human encroachment is shrinking the world's rain
forests. The alarm was sounded decades ago by environmentalists - and
was little heeded. The picture, meanwhile, has changed: Africa is now a
leader in destructiveness. The numbers have changed: U.N. specialists
estimate 60 acres of tropical forest are felled worldwide every minute,
up from 50 a generation back. And the fears have changed.

Experts still warn of extinction of animal and plant life, of the loss
of forest peoples' livelihoods, of soil erosion and other damage. But
scientists today worry urgently about something else: the fateful
feedback link of trees and climate. Global warming is expected to dry up
and kill off vast tracts of rain forest, and dying forests will feed
global warming.

"If we lose forests, we lose the fight against climate change," declared
more than 300 scientists, conservation groups, religious leaders and
others in an appeal for action at December's climate conference in Bali,
Indonesia. . .

Although South America loses slightly more acreage than Africa, the rate
of loss is higher here - almost 1 percent of African forests gone each
year. In 2000-2005, the continent lost 10 million acres a year,
including big chunks of forest in Sudan, Zambia and Tanzania, up from 9
million a decade earlier, the FAO reports.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/03/6818/

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