THE NIGERIAN CHALLENGE IN ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY: FOREST ECONOMICS AND THE NEED FOR CONSERVATION

Jonathan Nwosu

Jonathan Nwosu Sumy State University

Keywords: Nigeria, deforestation, forest resources, degradation, Biodiversity conservation, sustainable forest management

Abstract

Forests impact on human lives in many ways. They serve as safe places of solitude for animals and habitat for biological diversities. Forests have supported recreational activities and provide important natural resource for generations of people. Many rural populations, including millions of impoverished people throughout the world are dependent on forests for their way of life. In other words, forests and it resources are their important source of food, shelter and means of livelihood. This notwithstanding, the loss of forest has continued on the downward trend. Today only 36 percent of the world’s forests are primary forests – forests that have never been disturbed by human activities on a large scale (Hirschberger, 2007). In Nigeria, deforestation has been identified as one of the causes of some other environmental problems in the country such as desertification and erosion and loss of biological diversity. Several efforts to preserve the forests in Nigeria have been made yet its decline has continued. The essence of this paper therefore is to identify the causes for the lost of forest around the globe with particular interest in Nigeria and to suggests ways of effective forest conservation.

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