Illegal logging in Ghana

  • Hansen C
  • Treue T
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Abstract

The study confirms that illegal logging constitutes a serious problem in Ghana. The annual harvest is conservatively estimated at approximately 3.3 million m3 against the AAC of 1.0 million m3, i.e. some 70% of the annual harvest in Ghana is illegal. This puts Ghana in the high end internationally. Seventy-five per cent of the illegal logging is associated with chainsaw lumbering, which suggests that a solution to the illegal logging problem in Ghana is intimately related to measures which address the underlying causes of chainsaw lumbering. Our study assumes that the annual chainsaw lumber consumption during the period 1996-2005 is about 1.7 million m3 in round wood equivalents. Yet, this probably underestimates the current size of this market. There is thus an urgent need for further research on the size of the chainsaw lumber market in Ghana. The implications of the results are grave. Forest reserves have in all likelihood been grossly over-harvested for the past 10 years, possibly longer. Due to this long standing overexploitation, forest reserves can no longer support an AAC of 0.5 million m3, and a future on-reserve AAC would predominately consist of red and pink star species. The persistent overexploitation implies a high degree of logging disturbance inside forest reserves, inevitably involving areas like steep slopes and river banks where no logging should take place. This in turn threatens the provision of environmental services and biodiversity conservation. Moreover, off-reserve areas can no longer serve to »buffer« the logging pressure, which underlines the increasing vulnerability of forest reserves to illegal logging.

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APA

Hansen, C. P., & Treue, T. (2008). Illegal logging in Ghana. Development Briefs. Policy, 5(2008), 1–4.

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