It's not windy

The difficulty of protecting forests in Africa

Audio 48:30

For the environmental NGO, rubber and oil palm plantations threaten many forests in Africa.

Getty Images/Peter Arnold/Martin Harvey

By: Igor Strauss

2 mins

1/ Report on the fence of the Parc du Banco in Abidjan by François Hume Ferketadji.

- 2/ Focus on forest protection with Alain Karsenty, researcher at CIRAD.

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Part 1: Report in Ivory Coast

The country has only 3 million hectares of forest left, compared to 16 million in the 1960s, due to the massive deforestation caused by the cultivation of cocoa.

So to restore its image and try to preserve what remains of the country's forests, the authorities have just launched the construction of a 10 kilometer long wall around the Banco National Park, a tropical forest located in the heart of the economic capital Abidjan.

Objective: to put an end to uncontrolled urbanization while preserving the green lung of the city.

Here is the report on the fence of the Parc du Banco in Abidjan, from our reporter

Part 2: Focus on the difficult protection of African forests

They are at the heart of the planet's climate issues and the 3rd part of the IPCC report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has reminded us of this once again.

Tropical forests store carbon, harbor abundant biodiversity, enrich the soil, feed waterways and filter the air.

In short, they are essential.

And yet, we happily continue to pollute and cut trees at the risk of violently upsetting this ecosystem on which we depend.

Demographic explosion, search for new agricultural land, cutting of firewood, deforestation has multiple causes.

Therefore, how to preserve these forests in a sustainable way, while meeting the demands and needs of farmers and local populations?

Because it is not a question of preserving for the sake of preserving, but of reconciling agricultural production, energy production and the preservation and restoration of forest ecosystems.

A difficult equation, but not impossible far from it. 

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