Guinea is launching a vast reforestation campaign of 6,000 hectares of land throughout the country. The initiative by the Guinean Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development aims to preserve national biodiversity and rejuvenate a forest cover that has been the victim of massive looting. The West African country is one of the "poor performers" in forest conservation.
Reforestation at the heart of the celebration of the 2022 edition of World Environment Day in Guinea. On 5 June 2022, the Guinean government and its partners officially launched an operation to reforest 6,000 hectares of land across the country by the end of 2022 in the Botanical Garden in Conakry. “This initiative will rejuvenate classified forests and urban and rural forest sites in a state of advanced degradation,” explains Safiatou Diallo, Secretary General of the Guinean Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development.
The celebration of World Environment Day took place in Guinea under the national theme, “think globally and act locally”. Among the international partners present on this occasion, the United Nations system, whose representative in Guinea, Vincent Martin, stressed that the environment and the planet are in crisis and that rapid action is needed.
Devastated forest cover
Guinea is one of the countries with the fastest rates of deforestation in the world. According to official figures, the country’s forest cover has fallen from 14 million hectares in the 1960s to less than 700,000 hectares in the late 2010s. This deforestation, which is mainly caused by illegal deforestation and the expansion of cocoa, coffee and palm oil cultivation, is impoverishing biodiversity and impacting on the populations, who are confronted with soil erosion and acidification.
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In addition to reforestation activities, the Guinean government has adopted strong measures. These include a ban on the cutting and transport of timber throughout the country from 14 June 2021 until further notice.
Boris Ngounou
