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Ivory Coast
Index
Figure 10. Timber Production, Selected Years, 1961-87
Source: Based on information from J.-N. Loucou, "Histoire," Pierre
Vennetier (ed.), Atlas de la Côte d'Ivoire (2d ed), Paris,
1983, 52-55.
Timber exports ranked third in importance behind cocoa
and
coffee; but by 1980 this industry was declining because of
overcutting. From 1965 to 1975, the period of peak timber
exploitation, log and sawed wood exports contributed an
average of
23 percent of foreign exchange earnings annually. In the
early
1980s, timber exploitation averaged an annual 4 million
cubic
meters of logs and accounted for 9 percent of the
agricultural GDP.
By contrast, in 1984 exports of logs and sawed wood had
declined to
2.1 million cubic meters and represented only 12 percent
of
exports.
Overexploitation through the 1960s and mid-1970s almost
depleted forest resources. Côte d'Ivoire's forest shrank
from 15
million hectares in 1960 to less than 3 million in 1987.
Deforestation continued at a rate of 300,000 to 500,000
hectares a
year, while annual plantings averaged only 5,000 hectares.
The
government's response to this ecological disaster was
halfhearted:
in 1985 the government-owned Forest Development Company
(Société
pour le Développement des Forêts--SODEFOR) initiated an
industrial
reforestation program designed to produce some 6.6 million
cubic
meters of wood in thirty-five years. The SODEFOR program
will have
little impact on timber production through at least the
year 2000,
however, and until then, producers will continue to
exploit
shrinking natural forests. As a follow-up on the SODEFOR
program,
the government declared 1988 "the year of the Ivoirian
forest" and
approved a CFA F1.3 billion tree-planting program to plant
a total
of 25,000 hectares. This represented only 0.2 percent of
the forest
land lost since 1960. Finally, the government announced a
novel
scheme to create agricultural belts around the remaining
wooded
areas, making those who were allocated plots responsible
for
policing the forests. Despite these gestures, the
government
insisted in 1985 that timber exports would cease only when
the
country's financial situation stabilized or when
substitute exports
could be found, neither of which had occurred by 1988.
Data as of November 1988
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