Mozambique moves to combat deforestation
Mozambique’s Land, Environment and Rural Development Minister Celso Correia has approved a series of measures to halt the deforestation which has seen country losing 219,000 hectares of forest every year largely due to the conversion of forests into agricultural land and to the unsustainable production of woodfuels.Correia told journalists in Maputo on Thursday that the current deforestation rate is 0.58 percent a year, which the government wants to reduce initially to 0.2 percent per annum.
Also contributing to the degradation of native forests is excessive logging, way above the theoretical limits imposed on licensed loggers. In 2012, for example, the amount of logs cut was estimated at 727,000 cubic metres.
Correia announced that the government is suspending for the next two years all new logging licences, not just the simple licences, but even the forestry concession licences, the holders of which are obliged to process the timber they cut.
The minister added that all logging of ironwood is suspended for five years, since this species has been under enormous pressure,
The government will also revise the legislation on timber exports so as to ban the export of logs of any kind from any species of tree. All exported timber must first be processed in Mozambique, thus only finished or semi-finished products can be exported and not the unprocessed logs.
“If we don’t take effective action, we run the risk of losing our forestry potential, with serious losses to the local communities, to the environment and to our economy,” said Correia, adding the deforestation would worsen Mozambique’s vulnerability to climate change.