Plant Conservation

Abstract

The world’s human population has reached 4.8 billion and is expected to double before it stabilises (Plucknett et al., 1987). At the same time the environment is being destroyed at an unacceptable rate. For example, 11.3 million ha out of a global total of more than 4,000 million ha of forest are currently being cleared annually, 45 % of which is attributed to shifting cultivation and long fallow agriculture. Many countries, especially in Africa, will be unable to meet their domestic fuel requirements. It has also been estimated that by the year 2000 no less than 64 countries — 29 of them in Africa — will be unable to feed themselves from their own natural resources (Committee on Forest Development in the Tropics, 1985); plant resources other than food are similarly affected. The time has passed but the threat still remains. In view of the global increase in population and the concurrent degradation of the environment, increasing productivity without further degrading the environment is an obvious necessity. While it is widely recognised that social and economic pressures are often the cause of environmental degradation, it is unfortunate that land degradation, depletion of renewable resources and population increases, in turn, further increase the social and economic pressures.