SEEING THE FOREST FOR THE TREES: TROPICAL FORESTS, THE STATE AND VIOLENT CONFLICT IN AFRICA

Abstract

Much of the world’s remaining undisturbed moist tropical rainforest is in Africa. It is home to complex, interlinked human and nonhuman forest communities, a great carbon store, and a site of enormous biodiversity. It is also threatened—by population pressure, rapacious logging companies in league with corrupt governments and other groups, and widespread violent conflict. In defense of the forest, various NGOs have demonstrated the relationship between violent conflict and deforestation. For example, Liberia’s Charles Taylor used revenue from the sale of timber to directly support the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel movement in Sierra Leone (see Chapters 3 and 7 by de Koning and Price et al.). Others have followed the causal pathway in the opposite direction, suggesting that deforestation and other forms of environmental degradation lead to violent conflict (Homer-Dixon, 1999; Homer-Dixon & Blitt, 1998).