Home arrow Conservation News arrow Conservation News arrow Ghana cuts submerged forests
Ghana cuts submerged forests
Submerged hydroelectric reservoirs contain potential gold mines. On the bottom of these lakes, valuable tropical wood is waiting to be harvested. Ghana is the first country in the world that is now exploiting its submerged tropical forest.

Exploiting submerged rot-resistant hardwoods such as ebony, wawa or odum trees in Lake Volta, the largest man-made lake in Africa, can also slow deforestation on land and curb emissions of greenhouse gases linked to burning of forests.

"Logging will start in October," Robert Bamfo, head of Climate Change at the government's Forestry Commission, told Reuters on the sidelines of a U.N. August 21-27 climate conference in Accra. "This will reduce the pressure on our forests. The project aims to harvest 14 million cubic meters of timber worth about $4 billion," he said.

Logging will be led by a privately owned Canadian company, CSR Developments, which says it aims to invest $100 million in Ghana. Cutting equipment can be mounted on barges, guided by sonars to grab trees below water. Lake Volta is 90 meters deep at its deepest, with a mean depth of 19 meters.

Need for alternatives
In the 1960s, no one saw a need to fell the trees as the lake rose. "Maybe at the time we thought we had enough timber in our forest estates to sustain us. Now, because of the decline, we need to diversify." Ghana is being deforested at a rate of about 1.9 percent a year.

"The trees are still strong," the senior official said, even though they had been under water since construction of the Akosombo Dam in the 1960s. Harvesting would cost more than on land but was still commercial because of the value of the timber.

Forgotten forests
"There are very similar circumstances in numerous countries around the world including Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Brazil, Surinam, Malaysia and others," Bamfo said of forgotten forests swamped by hydroelectric dams. It is estimated that there are 5 million hectares of salvageable submerged timber in the hydroelectric reservoirs in the tropics with the potential to supplement global demand for timber. "So, the potential is there - other countries are awaiting to see the outcome of the Ghana project," Bamfo said.

Traffic fatalities
An added benefit of cutting underwater trees would be that it will decrease the number of traffic accidents. In some shallower parts of the lake, thousands of trunks jut several meters out of the water. Also, "boat collisions with submerged tree stumps cause many fatalities every year," Bamfo said.

U.N. conference
The U.N. conference is looking at ways to slow deforestation, blamed by U.N. surveys for emitting almost 20 percent of greenhouse gases from human activities. Trees soak up carbon dioxide as they grow and release it when burnt or when they rot.

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSLP39117720080825?sp=true
 

Sponsored Links