The first decade of the 21st century could determine the future of biodiversity in West Africa. Principal threats to biodiversity and their root causes present a formidable challenge in a region that has lagged behind other parts of the world in terms of conservation investment and opportunity. The CEPF's funding strategy includes support for initiatives that address threats to conservation progress in the region. Alliances of conservationists with other resource sectors, and partnerships among complementary organizations, will be needed in order to resolve threats, eliminate barriers to conservation, and halt or reverse the processes that have created the region's biodiversity crisis.
The Effects of Poverty
The vision statement of the African Development Bank (2000) declares, "poverty alleviation is not just a noble goal and a worthy cause, but it is central to the achievement of long term sustainable development of the continent." Indeed, all of the region's threats to conservation are inextricably linked to poverty, which drives urgent short-term needs that eliminate long-term opportunities. Much of the livelihood of the region's population is closely dependent on, or not far removed from, the natural resource base and the variety of goods and services that healthy, productive ecosystems can provide. Unemployment and weak development of human capital stimulates social unrest, human migration, ethnic tension, and land tenure conflicts, frequently near forested lands. Timber and mineral resources become currency for the purchase of arms, which are then used to foment civil conflict, eroding the rule of law, sound governance, and social capital. Lack of access to health care reduces work force productivity and promotes the spread of HIV and AIDS. Infrastructure for education, communication, and commerce is limited and inadequately maintained. This lack of public investment and personal opportunity, reflected in a widespread lack of institutional capacity in government agencies, NGOs, and communities, all combine with a low level of environmental awareness to create a challenging landscape for conservation success.
The "plight of Guinea" began before the colonial period with widespread cultivation by the indigenous human population, which was then exacerbated during colonial times when the region was opened up to commercial plantations and large-scale logging. The effects of these policies were felt most severely in the British colonies of Sierra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria. In Sierra Leone, for example, forest exploitation began in the 1840s and reduced the overall forest cover from 70% to 6%in less than a century. The history of deforestation in Ghana and Nigeria has not been much better. Even in Liberia, which contains the largest remaining forest blocks in the Upper Guinea region, applications for concessions and the recent arrival of foreign logging companies constitute a clear and present threat to biodiversity conservation efforts in one of this hotspot's highest-priority areas.
Commercial logging in West Africa has historically been followed by slash-and-burn agriculture, which has exacted the greatest toll on the region's forests. The widespread practice of clearing, cultivating and then letting land lay fallow provides the major source of livelihood for the largely rural poor population of the forest region. Under low population pressures, slash-and-burn agriculture can be sustainable because fallow periods are often long enough to allow adequate reconstitution of soil fertility and restoration of the land's productivity. However, with populations now swelling throughout West Africa, fallow periods are becoming shorter and the demand for more "pristine" forested land, including that in parks and reserves, is increasing. The situation is aggravated by an influx of farmers from arid northern Africa. If the reliance on agricultural production remains prominent in this region, as is likely, this threat must be countered by measures that lessen the negative impact on biodiversity caused by traditional land management and growing methods.
Today, rapidly increasing population pressure is the most crucial factor in deforestation and land degradation in this region. For example, Nigeria is already the continent's most populous nation with more than 110 million people. With some of the world's highest annual growth rates, the populations of other West African countries are likely to double in size in the next two decades. Although this increase will not necessarily be concentrated in the remaining tropical forest ecosystems, the resulting demand for forested land will increase dramatically, and the pressure on existing protected areas will be even more severe than it already is. This will, no doubt, lead to over-exploitation of forest resources and the potential extinction of threatened species, especially some of the larger mammals. The threat, therefore, is twofold: (1) critical tropical rainforest land not yet included in the national systems of protected areas of the Guinean Forest region are likely to be irreparably altered before appropriate levels of protection can be established and (2) lands that are currently under official protection will continue to be depleted of forest cover and their overall biodiversity because current levels of protection and enforcement may not be sufficient to mitigate growing population pressure. Efforts to counter this pervasive threat to biodiversity are probably best focused at the community level in the areas surrounding existing and proposed protected areas, where it is important that people understand and appreciate the contribution that these areas can make to environmental stability, human health and local economies.
Both small-scale and industrial mining pose serious threats to the remaining tropical rainforests of the Guinean Hotspots, most of which are located on substrates rich in iron ore, diamonds, gold and bauxite. Large-scale mining is a particular concern in mountainous areas, such as Mount Nimba, where deposits of iron ore and bauxite are common and can severely affect freshwater systems and regional watersheds. Small-scale extraction of diamonds and gold poses threats to biodiversity through forest clearance and associated bushmeat hunting.
The hunting tradition is very strong in the Guinean forest countries, and bushmeat consumption has historically represented a significant source of protein for the rural population. The most commonly hunted game species are the larger birds and medium-sized mammals such as forest antelopes (duikers) and diurnal monkeys. Bushmeat hunting, like slash-and-burn agriculture, will not necessarily cause significant negative ecological impacts when practiced at subsistence levels in areas of low human population density. However, levels of bushmeat hunting in Central and West Africa have soared in recent years, especially as a function of logging. New logging roads provide easier access to formerly remote areas and allow hunters to move deeper into the forests. In addition to animals killed to meet subsistence needs, hunters are now being paid to shoot significantly more game to feed the growing number of logging crews, and they are not discouraged from shooting even more animals for sale in city markets. In fact, the logging companies that subsidize hunting to provide meat for logging crews also transport large quantities of bushmeat to major population centers. As a result, bushmeat hunting has now reached epidemic levels in the Guinean Forest region and is rightly blamed for the "empty forest syndrome" (the absence of wild animals in otherwise intact forest). It is also largely responsible for driving several of West Africa's primate species to the brink of extinction -or maybe even beyond, as suggested by reports that no evidence of Miss Waldron's red colobus can be found in its former range in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire despite several intensive surveys over the last few years. This threat will be difficult to combat without the cooperation of foreign logging companies that now subsidize the over-exploitation of native wildlife. It will also need to be attacked at the market level due to consumers' willingness to pay much higher prices for bushmeat. Bushmeat hunting is a large-scale problem that will require a comprehensive strategy to address. CEPF resources will help mitigate bushmeat trade, but CI's Center for Applied Biodiversity Sciences will take a more active leadership role in addressing this issue.
Coastal zones are also under intense pressures, including pollution, habitat degradation, erosion, overexploitation, and degradation of marine resources. Urbanization along coasts is high, and human population growth rates range from 3-5%. Fish, mollusks, and crayfish serve as principal protein sources for coastal populations, and they are increasingly transported upcountry to interior markets. Sea turtles and their eggs are over harvested. Mangrove forests are intensively used by communities and are under threat of clearing for aquaculture. Local interests in coastal resources face competition from multinational companies for fisheries as well as mining of oil and minerals -which creates additional ecosystem pressures.
Local capacity to carry out conservation work in this region appears to be lower than in any other top-priority hotspot, except perhaps Indo-Burma. Recent survey data do not exist for many key species or for the most important protected areas, and many of the region's national parks, nature reserves and wildlife sanctuaries are inadequately funded and staffed. There are very few trained specialists in environmental conservation, wildlife management or restoration ecology, and overall there is a low level of international involvement in conservation. NGOs are few and have yet to play a significant role in conservation. Similarly, the links between conservation and the West African academic community, in the form of research assistance and as repositories of information, are limited. When the low capacities in these areas are combined with the historic lack of regional planning and integration needed in order to foster international dialogue, it is easy to understand the lack of an effective conservation plan for the ecoregion as a whole. Clearly, a great investment must be made in the training of biologists and resource managers, in combination with basic surveys of biodiversity in the existing protected area networks and beyond. Conservationists need to know, more accurately and in greater detail, to what extent biodiversity is distributed throughout this hotspot, to what degree it is presently protected, and where the broadest gaps in protection are.
The cultural diversity of the Guinean Forest Hotspot is reflected in the vast number of languages spoken by different ethnic groups in each of the countries. Many of these are split across national borders, so that their political reality is shaped by the drastically different legacies of the Dutch, German, French, British, Spanish, Portuguese and freed slaves in Liberia and Sierra Leone. In the period since independence, nation-building has been prioritized over regional cooperation. As a result, the hotspot is fragmented not only in terms of forest cover, but also of language, infrastructure, and legal and financial systems. Cross-border tension limit international collaboration. At national levels, weak accountability and quests for power lead to corruption, which can neutralize good policy where it does exist.
The continuum of conflict, ranging from tension to warfare to post-conflict recovery, presents challenges to conservation at every point. Protected areas in Côte d'Ivoire face encroachment and unrest from migrant farmers searching for settlement lands and agricultural sites. Refugees from Liberia and Sierra Leone flee into forests in adjacent countries, settle, and survive by hunting already-reduced populations of wildlife. War is waged over the control of diamond and timber resources. The 600,000 or more refugees who have settled in Guinea exceed the capacity of that country's forests to provide fuelwood, building materials, and other products.
The threat to biodiversity conservation posed by national and regional conflict must be met with conservation efforts rooted at the local level and fully supported by the people in charge of implementation. This should help reinforce the commitment of institutions that can provide large-scale support and that must remain confident that essential programs will continue even during times of civil unrest, corruption and uncertain governance.
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