African Forests Threatened by Global Commodity Crop Demand

International demand for commodity crops like cocoa is putting increasing pressure on tropical forests in sub-Saharan Africa, according to new research.

The study – the first comprehensive empirical assessment of land-use change impacts of commodity crop expansion in sub-Saharan Africa, and their effects on tropical deforestation – published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

Using a mixed methods approach, the researchers from Stanford University in California carried out analyses at the global, regional, and local scales. They found cocoa was the fastest expanding export-oriented crop in sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for 57 per cent of global cocoa expansion from 2000 to 2013, at a rate of 132,000 hectares a year.

Lead author Elsa Ordway said: "The expansion of export-oriented commodity crops has become the dominant driver of deforestation in the humid tropics, and is often associated with conversion to industrial-scale plantations growing a single crop. Sub-Saharan Africa is widely considered the next frontier for expansion, yet the influence of international markets on deforestation in the region has been largely unexplored.

https://phys.org/news/2017-04-african-forests-threatened-global-demand.html

Ollivier Girard/CIFOR

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