GAMBIA

Gambia is one of the world's poorest countries and has a rapidly growing population, which puts considerable pressure on resources, including the forests. Gambia no longer has any intact primary forests although 42% of the land area has some kind of forest cover. Forests have been degraded or destroyed for fuelwood, hunting, settlements, and illegal clearance for agriculture. Desertification has caused further decline. Soil erosion is a major problem and the water table has dropped.

Agriculture is Gambia's leading sector, contributing about 25% of the GDP. Forestry only contributes around 1% and has received almost no investment. Over 90% of Gambia's forests are not under any type of controlled management and only 3% of land is in protected areas.

The government has enacted laws to promote sustainable development; recent government policy aims at maintaining 30% of the total land area under forest cover and to manage at least 75% of this area. However, laws are widely disregarded, or not understood by a largely illiterate population, and the government lacks the resources, in terms of both money and staff, to enforce its laws. At present the rate of deforestation (5-6% annually) is higher than the rate of reforestation through government initiatives.

DOCUMENTS

DATE	TITLE	AUTHOR
29/05/2009	Tropical Forest Tenure Assessment: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities The goal of this report is to present and analyse the state of forest tenure in much of the world's ...	Rights and Resources Initiative / International Tropical Timber Organisation
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01/02/2008	Forest Products Trade between China and Africa: An Analysis of Imports and Exports Recent media coverage of China's efforts to secure access to natural resources in Africa suggests ...	Forest Trends (Kerstin Canby, James Hewitt, Luke Bailey, Eugenia Katsigris, Sun Xiufang)
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NEWS

DATE	TITLE	AUTHOR
19/07/2010	Police, Forestry to collaborate against deforestation The commissioner of police in the Upper River Region, Mr. Ebrima Cham has underscored the importance ...	Today Newspaper, Gambia
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23/07/2009	The need to check deforestation in West Africa Achieving long-term development in West Africa requires much more than just exploiting the region's ...	Business Day, Nigeria
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28/05/2009	Indigenous people, forest communities in Africa control less than 2% of forest land Less than 2 percent of Africas tropical forests are under community control, hindering efforts to slow ...	Mongabay.com
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25/05/2009	Slow forest tenure reform threatens Africa's action against climate change A new report released today at a major global forestry conference in Cameroon has found that deforestation ...	Africa Science News Service (Kenya)
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29/04/2009	Gambia: National Forest Programme launched The National Forest Programme (NFP), designed to halt the rapidly degrading forest environment amidst ...	allAfrica.com
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18/06/2008	Fish and timber in West Africa need more sustainable EU policies say MEPs Fish and timber are natural resources often not managed in a sustainable way in West Africa due to inadequate ...	European Parliament (EU)
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22/08/2006	Gambia: Salifou Sadio's Men Impose Embargo On Timber Trade Gambia - The Salifou Sadio faction of the southern Senegalese separatist MFDC movement has imposed an ...	AllAfrica.com
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22/01/2006	Goodbye to West Africa's rainforests West Africa's once verdant and extensive rainforests are now a historical footnote. Gone to build ...	Mongabay.com
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