Africa's Deforestation Twice World Rate - UN Atlas

Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 11 Jun 08;

OSLO - Africa is suffering deforestation at twice the world rate and the continent's few glaciers are shrinking fast, according to a UN atlas on Tuesday.

Satellite pictures, often taken three decades apart, showed expanding cities, pollution, deforestation and climate change were damaging the African environment despite glimmers of improvement in some areas.

"Africa is losing more than 4 million hectares (9.9 million acres) of forest every year -- twice the world's average deforestation rate," according to a statement by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) about the 400-page atlas, prepared for a meeting of African environment ministers in Johannesburg.

Four million hectares is roughly the size of Switzerland or slightly bigger than the US state of Maryland.

Photographs showed recent scars in forests in countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Nigeria and Rwanda. It said forest loss was a major concern in 35 countries in Africa.

And it showed that environmental change extended beyond the well-known shrinking of the snows on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa's highest peak at 5,895 metres (19,340 ft), or the drying up of Lake Chad.

On the Ugandan border with Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, glaciers on the Rwenzori Mountains where the highest peak is 5,109 metres shrank by half between 1987 and 2003, it said.


DARFUR

Trees and shrubs had been cut from the Jebel Marra foothills in Sudan, partly because of an influx of refugees from the conflict in Darfur.

"The Atlas ... clearly demonstrates the vulnerability of people in the region to forces often outside their control, including the shrinking of glaciers in Uganda and Tanzania and impacts on water supplies linked with climate change," UNEP head Achim Steiner said in a statement.

The atlas said 300 million people faced water scarcity and that areas in sub-Saharan Africa experiencing shortages were expected to increase by almost a third by 2050.

"Climate change is emerging as a driving force behind many of these problems," it said.

Almost 200 governments have agreed to work out a new UN treaty by the end of 2009 to slow climate change, blamed mainly on emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

But the atlas said there were signs of hope.

"There are many places across Africa where people have taken action -- where there are more trees than 30 years ago, where wetlands have sprung back and where land degradation has been countered," Steiner said.

Among examples, the report showed that action to prevent over-grazing had helped a national park in south-eastern Tunisia. A project to expand wetlands in Mauritania was also helping to control flooding and improve livelihoods. For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/ (Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Atlas shows vanishing landscape
Martin Plaut, BBC News 10 Jun 08;

A new atlas published by the UN charts Africa's rapidly changing environmental landscape from disappearing glaciers in Uganda to a vanishing lake in Mali.

Comparing photographs from the present day and 30 years ago, it shows how economic development, climate change and conflict have all taken their toll.

The atlas from the UN Environment Programme surveys every African nation.

There are also examples of things changing for the better, like in Niger where trees are being replanted.

Yellow spider webs

In nearly 400 pages of glossy colour photographs the atlas documents the degradation of a once pristine continent.

Before and after images chart the devastating impact humans have had on their environment.

Roads driven through the Democratic Republic of Congo's rainforests spread a yellow spider webs across the landscape, as trees are hacked down.

The UN estimates Africa is losing four million hectares of forest a year - twice the global average.

Rising populations mean that almost every environment is now under pressure.

But much of the environmental damage in Africa is being brought about by global climate change.

Africa only produces 4% of the world's carbon dioxide.

Yet Marion Cheatle of the UN Environment Programme says Africa will suffer disproportionately from the results of climate change.

"They are bearing the brunt of this change, which is a very unfair situation, if you think about it."

Across all of Africa the impact of human activity is clear - whether in the newly irrigated areas created by the waters of the Nile, turning huge areas of the desert around Egypt's lake Nasser green, or the urban sprawl of Dakar, across the Cap Vert peninsula in Senegal.

But there also are in examples of change being reversed as in Niger's Tahouah province. Trees - once cut down at will - are now nurtured and cared for by local people.

The photographs clearly show an arid region being slowly brought back to life, over a period of 30 years.

For Ms Cheatle it is proof that degradation can be reversed.

"Gradually that tree population has gone up 10 to 20 times.

"It shows that good management and careful management of resources there can turn around the situation in a relatively short period of time."