State of the art on drivers of deforestation in the Congo basin tropical forest

The Congo basin forest experiment a low pressure on biodiversity in comparison to other rainforests around the world. But according to the predictions, climate change and direct human drivers could have an important effect on the deforestation rate. In that context, CoForTips project want to foster a better management of the Congo Basin forests through a better understanding of the dynamics, regime shifts and tipping points of biodiversity and a better definition of the conditions of resilience of social and ecological systems. In order to assess the current knowledge about drivers of deforestation in the world tropical forests, we analyzed the existent literature to list the direct and indirect drivers of deforestation in the forested tropical zones and to focus on deforestation in the Congo Basin forest and specifically in Cameroon and Gabon. We listed direct drivers of deforestation like expansion of agriculture which can be either family farming or agribusiness; timber extraction for softwood industry and fuel wood; development of infrastructure leading to the opening up of forested land and populations, and mining industries. The underlying causes found in the literature concern economic factors like gross domestic product, national income based on environmental resources exploitation and consumer demand expressing on local and global markets. Technological factors that allow much larger removal. Cultural issues like representation of the forest in the collective imagination as an important source of economic income. Institutional factors like policy measures advocating pro-deforestation measures and demographic causes taking into account for local population rise due to a high fertility rate and linked to population migration. Those direct and underlying causes of deforestation where then detailed for Cameroon and Gabon.CoForTip