African Savannah Ecosystem

How do we save Africa's forests?

Africa’s forests are fast diminishing to the detriment of climate, biodiversity, and millions of people of dependent on forest resources for their well-being. But is the full conservation of Africa's forests necessary to mitigate global climate change and ensure environmental stability in Africa? A new report by The Forest Philanthropy Action Network (FPAN), a non-profit that provides research-based advice on funding forest conservation, argues that only the full conservation of African forests will successfully protect carbon stocks in Africa.

Focusing on the role of African forests in helping mitigate climate change, the report, Protecting and restoring forest carbon in tropical Africa: A guide for donors and funders is the first to explore methods to protect and restore Africa’s forests. African forests store more carbon that those of Southeast Asia and are at greater risk than the tropical forests of both Asia and Latin America, according to the report. In fact, forests in Africa are being cleared at a rate nearly three times the world average: the continent lost 3.7 million hectares of tropical forest each year between 2000 and 2005. Because carbon is released when trees are burned or felled, deforestation accounts for 10-15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

“[There seems to be a] belief that Africa’s tropical forests are much less dense than those in Latin America and Asia. The reality is very different – the forests of Sub-Saharan Africa store 171 gigatons of carbon, 35 per cent more than Asia and only a quarter less than Latin America. In part this is because the total forest area is vast – half a billion hectares, out of a total global forest area of four billion hectares. If all of Africa’s tropical forests were to be deforested, that would release around 627Gt of CO2, about 15 years worth of global annual emissions,” explains Bernard Mercer, co-founder of FPAN, in an interview with mongabay.com.

Unlike deforestation in Southeast Asia and South America, the primary difficulty of forest conservation in Africa stems from the people’s desperate need to utilize forest and land resources to survive, acknowledges the report. Over 80 percent of wood harvested from forests in sub-Saharan Africa is used directly for fuel, and small-scale agriculture is a contributing cause in over 80 percent of deforestation cases in Africa.

Filmmakers Dereck & Beverly Joubert discuss 'The Last Lions' | San ...

Working with National Geographic and living as residents of Botswana for the last 28 years, filmmakers Dereck and Beverly Joubert have had their fair share of close calls while shooting wildlife footage in the African savannah.

“The more knowledge we have and the more we are able read an animal’s body language, the safer we are,” said Beverly during a phone interview with me from her and Dereck’s home in Southern Africa. “But it doesn’t always work out that way. Things happen.”

On one occasion, Dereck and Beverly stared death square in the face while scouting African elephants for a new film project. Before they knew it, one of the massive mammals broke through the thick reed where they had parked to survey the herd and charged their vehicle.

“She came full force and hit us,” Beverly said. “Her head was on the hood of our vehicle and we were eyeballing each other.”

The amount of danger the Joubert’s have experienced has never deterred them from doing the work they love. In their most recent film, The Last Lions

During our interview, Dereck and Beverly talked to me about the impact the extinction of lions would have on Africa, why they chose not to completely disconnect themselves from their subjects on an emotional level, and whether they think lions are able to convey grief when something traumatic happens to them.

The statistics are startling when you read about the lion population. In the last 50 years, the number of lions on earth has decreased from 450,000 to 20,000. How did we end up at this point?

Dereck Joubert : There has always been a perception that someone is taking care of the lions. Lions are the most iconic predator in the world. As such, I think the general perception is that Africa is full of lions. Once we started looking at the numbers as a research group, we started to find out how bad it really was. To see those numbers is traumatic. These animals will be extinct in the next 10 or 15 years.

If lions become extinct in the next decade, what kinds of changes in the African ecosystem are we likely to see?

DJ : There is a whole range of things that will happen. All of these African savannah ecosystems in particular are driven by the predators. Imagine how migration works. A lot of animals move around because they can’t stay in one place very long because the predator concentration will move them out. Without that, migration would stop. Also, as these African communities have less and less of these predators, they become more and more divorced from those predators and healthy ecosystems. That impacts them in a spiritual way and in a connective way to Africa. People will become more and more separated from everything that Africa represents in nature.