DISTURBED by the continued loss of continent’s hectares of forests, the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB), has called on African governments, and policy makers to formulate effective policies that support ecological sustainability of equatorial forests, and prevent long-term impoverishment of countries.

  The group via its Africa Section of the global professional body dedicated to promoting scientific study of the maintenance, loss, and restoration of biological diversity,  in a position statement on threats to society and the environment from the expansion of palm oil production in Africa and elsewhere, highlighted the threat to biodiversity posed by expansion of industrial oil palm production in equatorial Africa.

   The group’s President in Africa, Mr. Stephen Mufutau Awoyemi, stated that out of 675 million hectares Africa’s forests, or roughly 17 percent of the world total, it is estimated that the continent lost 3.4 million hectares of her forests between 2000 and 2010, of which 572,000 hectares were primary forest, noting that the decline has resulted mainly from the rising demand for agricultural lands, commercial harvesting of timber, urbanization, and industrialization.

   According to the group, forests and their biodiversity, being an inextricable part of earth’s life support systems provides irreplaceable ecosystem services ranging from clean air, water purification, to wildlife habitat, and pollination services, and they help support resilience to climate change. “Even with efforts to stem forest loss, deforestation still continues unabated. The global deforestation rate for 2000-2010 averaged 13 million hectares annually, although this is somewhat less than previous decades”.

   It noted that recent significant investments in African agriculture in the oil palm industry are likely to lead to biodiversity losses similar to those in Southeast Asia, citing the case with Indonesia that is projected to lose most of its natural rainforest by 2022. 

Besides, SCB noted that oil palm production not only causes natural forest cover loss, but can also lead to direct mortality of endangered species, such as the world’s forest primates including orangutans in Southeast Asia. 

“Oil palm has become one of the most rapidly expanding equatorial crops in the world. The global extent of oil palm cultivation increased from 3.6 million in 1961 to 13.2 million in 2006. 

“Although oil palm is a native species in Africa where it is mixed with other subsistence crops, new frontiers for its cultivation are opening up in West Africa and the Congo Basin. Given the implications of this expansion for primates, at the Great Apes Summit in September 2013 in Wyoming, USA, delegates committed to the conservation of apes and their habitats and articulated a six-action point statement on oil palm expansion, that include environmental degradation, human health and well-being.