SUSTAINABLE USE OF WEST AFRICAN MOIST FOREST LANDS

This article examines reasons for the continuing degradation of forests and land in the moist forest zone of West Africa, where land is predominantly used for crop agriculture and forest production. Crop production is primarily limited by problems of soil management. The predominant soils, kaolinitic days, being dominated by low activity, retain little nutrients or water. Their fertility depends largely on their organic matter content, but this latter breaks down rapidly under cultivation. Continuous cultivation combined with shortened fallow periods, forced by increased demand from burgeoning human populations, leads to rapid degradation of soils, while so-called modem alternative practices are ecologically unsustainable. Forest production is constrained mainly by the high diversity of trees and the complexity of forest processes, which must be understood for successful management. Lack of such understanding, and the consequent inability to manage the natural forest to meet rising wood demands, has shifted emphasis to plantation production. This together with pressure from other land uses accounts for increasing natural forest degradation. Agroforestry practices, revival of narural forest management based on better understanding of forest regeneration dynamics, and fuller utilization of forest sites by managing plantations also for their undergrowth species, all within the framework of integrated land use policies, are underlined as promising approaches to sustainable use of land in the region.