IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jlands/v8y2019i5p80-d229465.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What Happened to the Forests of Sierra Leone?

Author

Listed:
  • Richard A. Wadsworth

    (Department of Biological Sciences, Njala University, Njala, Sierra Leone)

  • Aiah R. Lebbie

    (National Herbarium of Sierra Leone, Department of Biological Sciences, Njala University, Njala, Sierra Leone)

Abstract

The last National Forest Inventory of Sierra Leone took place more than four decades ago in 1975. There appears to be no legal definition of “forest” in Sierra Leone and it is sometimes unclear whether reports are referring to the forest as a “land use” or a “land cover”. Estimates of forest loss in the Global Forest Resource Assessment Country Reports are based on the estimated rate during the period 1975 to 1986, and this has not been adjusted for the effects of the civil war, economic booms and busts, and the human population doubling (from about three million in 1975 to over seven million in 2018). Country estimates as part of the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) Global Forest Assessment for 2015 aggregate several classes that are not usually considered as “forest” in normal discourse in Sierra Leone (for example, mangrove swamps, rubber plantations and Raphia palm swamps). This paper makes use of maps from 1950, 1975, and 2000/2 to discuss the fate of forests in Sierra Leone. The widely accepted narrative on forest loss in Sierra Leone and generally in West Africa is that it is rapid, drastic and recent. We suggest that the validity of this narrative depends on how you define “forest”. This paper provides a detailed description of what has happened, and at the same time, offers a different view on the relationship between forests and people than the ideas put forward by James Fairhead and Melissa LeachIf we are going to progress the debate about forests in West Africa, up-to-date information and the involvement of all stakeholders are needed to contribute to the debate on what to measure. Otherwise, the decades-old assumption that the area of forest in Sierra Leone lies between less than 5% and more than 75%, provides an error margin that is not useful. This, therefore, necessitates a new forest inventory.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard A. Wadsworth & Aiah R. Lebbie, 2019. "What Happened to the Forests of Sierra Leone?," Land, MDPI, vol. 8(5), pages 1-16, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:8:y:2019:i:5:p:80-:d:229465
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/8/5/80/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/8/5/80/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Burgess, Robin & Miguel, Edward & Stanton, Charlotte, 2015. "War and deforestation in Sierra Leone," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt83h9d9gb, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Petra Hlaváčková & Sheku Kemoh Mansaray & Samuel Antwi Darkwah & Iva Živělová, 2024. "Applying the European Union (EU) assessment initiative of forest sustainability in Africa: A case study of the timber harvesting impact on the environment in Sierra Leone," Journal of Forest Science, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 70(2), pages 79-90.
    2. Amit John Kurien & Sharachchandra Lele & Harini Nagendra, 2019. "Farms or Forests? Understanding and Mapping Shifting Cultivation Using the Case Study of West Garo Hills, India," Land, MDPI, vol. 8(9), pages 1-26, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hufschmidt, Patrick & Ume, Chukwuma Otum, 2023. "Conflicts and political intervention: Evidence from the anti-open grazing laws in Nigeria," Ruhr Economic Papers 1009, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    2. Panel, Sophie & Pietri, Antoine, 2022. "God did not save the kings: Environmental consequences of the 1982 Falklands War," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    3. Prem, Mounu & Saavedra, Santiago & Vargas, Juan F., 2020. "End-of-conflict deforestation: Evidence from Colombia’s peace agreement," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    4. Shapiro, Aurélie C. & Bernhard, Katie P. & Zenobi, Stefano & Müller, Daniel & Aguilar-Amuchastegui, Naikoa & d'Annunzio, Rémi, 2021. "Proximate causes of forest degradation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo vary in space and time," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 2.
    5. Barry REILLY & Rafael Isidro PARRA-PEÑA S., 2019. "Forests and Conflict in Colombia," Archivos de Economía 17507, Departamento Nacional de Planeación.
    6. Andres Suarez & Paola Andrea Árias-Arévalo & Eliana Martínez-Mera, 2018. "Environmental sustainability in post-conflict countries: insights for rural Colombia," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 997-1015, June.
    7. Olukorede Abiona & Joseph B. Ajefu, 2023. "The impact of timing of in utero drought shocks on birth outcomes in rural households: evidence from Sierra Leone," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 36(3), pages 1333-1362, July.
    8. Castro-Nunez, Augusto & Mertz, Ole & Quintero, Marcela, 2016. "Propensity of farmers to conserve forest within REDD+ projects in areas affected by armed-conflict," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 22-30.
    9. Mariana Unda & Andrés Etter, 2019. "Conservation Opportunities of the Land Restitution Program Areas in the Colombian Post-Conflict Period," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-19, April.
    10. Canavire-Bacarreza, Gustavo & Diaz-Gutierrez, Julian Eduardo & Hanauer, Merlin M., 2018. "Unintended consequences of conservation: Estimating the impact of protected areas on violence in Colombia," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 46-70.
    11. Rachel A. Neugarten & Ranaivo A. Rasolofoson & Christopher B. Barrett & Ghislain Vieilledent & Amanda D. Rodewald, 2024. "The effect of a political crisis on performance of community forests and protected areas in Madagascar," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-13, December.
    12. Mihaylova, Iva, 2023. "Perpetuating the malign legacy of colonialism? Traditional chiefs’ power and deforestation in Sierra Leone," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:8:y:2019:i:5:p:80-:d:229465. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.