BY ONOME AMUGE
A large number of livelihoods in sub-Saharan African countries are sustained by the fuelwood and charcoal economies, a situation evident in Nigeria where over 40 million people or one-fifth of the country’s population are engaged in fuelwood collection and charcoal production, which provides an estimated 530,000 full-time equivalent direct jobs for the teeming populace, a recent publication by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), “The State of the World’s Forests (SOFO) 2022, has disclosed.
The publication, released at the 15th World Forestry Congress (WFC) in Seoul, South Korea, further disclosed that an additional 200,000 people, on a full-time basis, provide transport services for retail and wholesale trade in Nigeria’s fuelwood and charcoal production sector.
The international food agency, however, observed that the high demand for woodfuels, including fuelwood and charcoal, is gradually exceeding the sustainable supply capacity of forests and trees, resulting in forest degradation and loss, greenhouse gas emissions, soil-quality degradation, and biodiversity loss.
Apart from the environmental concerns, the report asserted that the transition to improved energy access and modern renewables have implications for livelihoods as it could result in millions of people losing their sources of income, further increasing the country’s poverty level.
In its recommendations towards addressing the challenges, the report noted that the gap between demand and sustainable supply can be bridged through the restoration of degraded forests, establishment of fast-growing tree plantations, improving the use of residues from wood harvesting and processing, and the recovery of post-consumer wood through its cascading use within a more circular economic framework.
It emphasised the need for environmental, economic and social sustainability in bioenergy production, which can be assessed through a set of multi-criteria indicators, adding that life-cycle assessment can be used to explore environmental performance.
It also added that national woodfuel strategies are important for coordinating actions across government agencies and ensuring that interventions produce positive economic, social and environmental impacts for addressing problems in charcoal production and demand in the near, medium and long terms.
According to the FAO report, though the full impact of wood fuel on climate change is disputed, there is little disagreement that benefits can be maximised by applying sustainable forest management practices and increasing the operational efficiencies of combined-heat-and-power plants and biorefineries.
