BANGUI, 2 March (IRIN) - Abundant rain, a seemingly endless canopy of dense vegetation and full rivers give the impression that there is no threat of deforestation in the Central African Republic (CAR).

Yet the country loses up to one million hectares of forest a year to loggers and firewood collectors. Trees are also being felled to produce charcoal, officials said. Areas that have lost forest cover are giving way to cassava and groundnut farms.

Twenty years ago, 60 percent of the country was forest, according to Florent Zowoya, former national director of natural resource management. That figure has shrunk to only 15 percent, prompting the government to turn to the country's youth – more than 50 percent are younger than 20 – to help preserve this resource.

The loss of forest cover has been accompanied by degradation of the savannas, extinction of some animal species, impoverished soil and drainage of water catchments, more bush fires, increased flooding and local climate changes, said Jean-Claude Bomba, director in the Ministry of the Environment.

The consequences are likely to be food shortages, which successive governments have tried to avert at one level through better land-management practices.

Government action

Pressure on the cash-strapped government to act has been growing. However, it was the drought of 1983 that jolted the state into action, compelling it to launch the first of many agro-forestry projects.

The project, according to Zowoya, had a simple objective - to stop people from cutting down trees unnecessarily. It also sought to give the soil time to recover, experiment with strategies for sustainable forest use and develop tree species that could be useful to rural dwellers.

About 50,000 hectares of land near Bangui, the capital, were zoned off as a pilot project, and 4,000 residents from 33 villages were involved - not counting many of Bangui's poor who work on small-holdings nearby.

"The success of this project will be interesting for the youth," Zowoya said. "More than 50 percent are younger than 20 years old. We could easily get them to pass on the message at school because it will be the students of today who tomorrow will have to manage what they inherit."

More recently, a national tree-planting day has been set aside to draw public attention to the vital importance of safeguarding trees. It was also intended to demonstrate the possibility, if people failed to safeguard trees, that the tropical rainforest could eventually turn into desert.

The first tree-planting day was marked on 22 July 2006, with the government launching a mass tree-planting experiment in the village of Imohoro, 50km north of Bangui.

"Reforestation of Imohoro will also serve as a lesson to pupils who will learn how to protect the trees for the future," President François Bozize said at the time. The village was chosen because of advanced degradation of vegetation around schools in the area after bush fires.

The government believes the tree-planting idea can gain popularity and be replicated elsewhere, but the CAR faces the dilemma of how to preserve forests yet continue exploitation, because the forests constitute one of the state's principle money-earners.

According to Forestry and Water Resources Minister, Emmanuel Bizot, each person who cuts a tree must plant and care for another. But the challenge is getting the public to respond to and sustain this effort; the same rural poor who slash down trees complain about the increasingly short rainy seasons and aridity of the land.

"There is no question of us being stopped or reproached for cutting wood," said Zimao Gabriel, a 30-year-old unemployed high-school dropout. "Also, we render enormous service to the households. We alone offer firewood and charcoal as a source of energy in the country."

People like him, Zimao added, would only stop if the government provided alternative work. However, it is difficult to see how the government, which owes civil servants more than a year's salary, could provide work for the army of unemployed.

Tree taxes

CAR earns about 8.3 billion CFA francs (US$16,645,840) each year from forestry taxes. In addition, the sector employs 4,000 regular staff and several thousand seasonal workers, according to the Ministry of Water Resources and Fisheries.

The forests are also a source of food and medicine for many rural dwellers. Increasingly, urban dwellers may turn to the forest for these items as incomes diminish at least among the civil servants, who often also have to care for extended families.

Despite this, senior citizens in some parts of the country have periodically resisted attempts at sustainable forest management. This is because they have been expelled from their ancestral lands during 50 years of arbitrary logging by large timber firms, and have had their land titles revoked by the state.

It is perhaps for this reason that the government has decided to put more emphasis on the youth to protect the vital resource.

Experts also point out that to have a greater impact, it is necessary to involve citizens of neighbouring countries that together make up the Congo River Basin - the world's second-largest forest land mass after South America's Amazon.

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