Abstract
Land-based mitigation presents viable mechanism for offsetting carbon deficits from land-use change-driven emissions especially in areas with relatively large lowland forests. This chapter reviews key issues about the drivers of land-use change, deforestation, and forest degradation. It also presented a case assessment of perception on drivers of land-use change and deforestation using rapid appraisal data collected from 108 households and 57 forest resource users in 17 purposively selected peri-urban and rural communities in the forest zone of Southwest Nigeria. From the appraisal, lumbering and polewood extraction, fuelwood and charcoal production, crop cultivation, urban growth, animal grazing, and transportation remain important proximate land-use change, deforestation, and forest degradation drivers. Population increase and poverty are considered the most important underlying drivers. Response to economic opportunities with regard to cash (tree) and commercial arable crops and high local and export demands for wood substantially drive land-use change and deforestation. National climate change actions, natural resource policies, land tenure, international multilateral commitments, and carbon credit frameworks have very little impacts with regard to land-use change in Southwest Nigeria. Lack of alternative livelihoods undermines people’s resilience and further drives deforestation and forest degradation.
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Fasona, M. et al. (2020). Drivers of Deforestation and Land-Use Change in Southwest Nigeria. In: Leal Filho, W. (eds) Handbook of Climate Change Resilience. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93336-8_139
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