Smouldering Threat

Nigeria is losing its tropical forests at an alarming rate to satiate the world's growing appetite for charcoal. Subhojit Goswami finds how the cheap fuel now threatens the country's biodiversity.

- Subhojit Goswami

NIGERIA IS losing its last remaining patches of thick forests, and at an alarming rate. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the country has lost 50 per cent of its forest cover in two decades and is losing at 5 per cent a year, the highest in the world. At this rate, experts warn, the country would lose all its forests by 2047. And a prime reason for this is Nigeria’s growing appetite for charcoal—a cheap source of energy produced through pyrolysis, or burning of wood under high temperature in the absence of air.

Though Nigeria is the top producer of crude oil in Africa, it reels from severe fuel shortage because it lacks the infrastructure to refine crude oil at home. “Charcoal has been the most preferred fuel in the country, because gas is costly, kerosene is scarce and power supply is erratic in Nigeria,” says Stephen Aina, senior conservation officer at non-profit Nigerian Conservation Foundation. An analysis by Down To Earth shows that a household using charcoal spends an average of US $7 a month on fuel, which is almost half the price of LPG. “Even charcoal stoves are affordable and produced locally. Thus 93 per cent of the households alternate between firewood, kerosene, electricity and charcoal for cooking fuel,” says Aina, adding that Nigeria is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of charcoal.

But of late, there has been a surge in the country’s charcoal production. UN data shows that the production has increased by 30 per cent between 2010 and 2015 to about 4 million tonnes a year. While there are several factors fuelling the surge, analysts cite increasing land degradation as the major reason.

Trapped in vicious cycle?