With 3.4 million hectares of forest in 2022 compared to 16 million 60 years ago, the forest cover of Ivory Coast is constantly decreasing. One of the causes of this massive deforestation is bush fires. In this context, a reforestation and awareness-raising operation to protect biodiversity has just been completed in the department of Tiébissou, 389 km from Abidjan.
The initiative of the local authorities, which mobilised civil society, led to the planting of 300 Terminalia mentaly trees (trees with 20-metre high trunks used as ornaments in gardens and parks, editor’s note) in the localities of Duibo and Kpato.
Between November and March 2016, for example, a period of severe drought in Ivory Coast, up to 1,100 hectares of agricultural plantations and forests were ravaged by fire. The Ivorian state recorded losses worth more than 204 billion CFA francs, or more than 300 million euros. The following year, these bush fires devastated 30 hectares of cashew tree fields in full production in Bohizra in the council of Zuénoula, and about ten hectares of the same species in the localities of N’Gala, Tagbonon, and Lahoré, all located in the Dabakala department.
Read also-Ivory Coast: An initiative allows the reforestation of five hectares of land in Divo
To reverse the situation, the Ivorian government launched the “zero bushfire” caravan. In 2018, the initiative then led by the Ivorian Minister of Water and Forests, Alain Richard Donwahi, was implemented notably in the regions of Bélier, Marahoué, Béré and Worodougou.
Benoit-Ivan Wansi