Blog Action Day

It is probably unfair to look at the ecological record of a developing country when the developed world is responsible for consuming 90% of the world's resources. However as part of the global Blog Action Day we thought we would highlight the cause of Mozambique's tropical hardwood forests.

One of the super close up satellite images recently made available on Google Maps is this beautiful coconut grove that provides shade for a small coastal village in Mozambique,




The beauty of this image provides a suitable contrast to the ugliness being left behind by the illegal logging in the country. Businesses, members of the Government and forest services are colluding to strip precious tropical hardwoods from the slow-growing forests at a rate that will exhaust the resource in 5-10 years. The timber is exported as unprocessed logs, undermining local industry, and transferring all its potential benefits from one of the poorest countries in the world to the richer countries

The impact on the economy is great, in terms of loss of employment, loss of revenues, abuse of community rights and degradation of a valuable resource.