Constraints to Tropical Forest Conservation and Successful Monitoring and Assessment of Land Uses Cover and Change: Do the Forest Definition and Administration Really Matter?

Koffi Ayewa Bassan,Kouami Kokou,Erin O Sills

doi:10.4236/nr.2020.111001

Abstract

We examine the constraints to conservation and to successful forestlands’ monitoring/assessments in central Togo through GIS spatial analyses and through a critical overview of the current forestry administration’s model. The major findings are that the land classification based on few inventory parameters cannot substitute for “what forest is”, rather these inventory parameters constitute a mean to sound forest management and conservation when relevantly decided. Also as these parameters measured from satellite imagery are supplemented by continuous fine management data they may consistently contribute to the classification of the vegetation cover. This helps to suggest that solution to forest degradation/deforestation, and monitoring/ assessment requires data refinement through local forest management. Else, the actual forestry administration is local communities and indigenous people’s needs biased because it has been negligent of the cultural forestry practices, the major constraints to conservation and the monitoring/assessment of forest lands. As a common pool-resource, the questions relative to forest cannot be addressed at a single environmental concerns level. Interests are multiple and various along the spectrum from the global environment level to the local environmental level that should be accounted for. Thus we recommend a reconsideration of the forestry administration model. What is required are simple policies processes to define forest management plans that promote simultaneously sustainable forest management while accounting for any stakeholder concern, importantly the cultural forestry that addresses specific local communities and indigenous people’s forest related interests.

Highlights

The monitoring and assessment of tropical forest land have been of serious issues for long
The actual forestry administration is local communities and indigenous people’s needs biased because it has been negligent of the cultural forestry practices, the major constraints to conservation and the monitoring/assessment of forest lands
In this article we assess some constraints to tropical forest conservation and to the successful monitoring and assessment of the land use and cover change, principally the constraints relative to forest definition of the inventory parameters’ threshold, and to the governance

Summary

Introduction

The monitoring and assessment of tropical forest land have been of serious issues for long. Defining what forest ecosystem or other types of vegetation covers are, requires additional information notably, the ecosystem species structure and composition, the life history of the site, the mean biomass periodical increment, and so on Still in this part the article discusses the effects of the inventory parameter thresholds on forest ecosystems. The article reviews the actual forestry administration and shows that it has been biased of the local people needs because negligent of the cultural forestry practices Issues such as agricultural land expansion, wood supply (importantly firewood and charcoal), and many other forestry subsistence practices, that are well documented as factors of deforestation and forest degradation, have not been seriously accounted for in our forestry policy definition. As a common-pool resource the interests on forest must be multiple and embedded on one another from the local users group to the global ones

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