Agriculture in Mozambique:
Forestry and Timber, 1971-1995

Unnumbered Dossier

Timber workers Mozambique

There has been relatively little historical-ecological research on long-term loss of forest cover and the encroachment of savanna in Mozambique, a process known as “vegetation dynamics” in the technical literature. In the mid-2020s the country had just over 40 million ha. of forest over, with just under 27 million ha. having the potential for producing commercial timber, and another 13 million ha. designated for conservation. Inventories of forest resources were carried out in 1980, 1994, and 1995, with the most recent being the fourth Inventário Florestal Naciona published in August 2018.

Much of Mozambique lies within the dry miombo woodlands ecoregion which also includes parts of Angola, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The dominant tree types are mainly African, and include such commercially valuable species as jambire, umbila, mopane, and pau-preto. Altogether there are about 120 commercial species, from which the commercial trade can be graded as follows by volume (not value): 44 per cent in class 2, and four per cent in the “precious” species.

Looking at longer-term environmental history, recent research shows that since about 1400, at least in the south of Mozambique, savannas have encroached on forested areas, for reasons that are disputed. According to Ekblom.

the coastal area 1600 years ago consisted of a mosaic of forests, miombo woodlands and grasslands. The data also show that the area supported extensive forests in the past until AD 1400–1600 when the forests declined dramatically.

Ekblom argues that this decline cannot be attributed to the impact of human settlement, since archaeological evidence

… cannot be correlated with the forest decline and the charcoal abundance, in the sedimentary cores does not suggest an intensification of farming. Instead, the decline of forests appears to be temporally correlated with a prolonged period of repeated dry spells associated with the ‘Little Ice Age’, which caused a shift in vegetation whereby typical forest species as Trema, Celtis and Moraceae were outcompeted on account of the droughts.

She concludes that the

… forest fragments present on the Mozambique coast today are naturally subject to threat from climatic stress and as such are highly sensitive areas to future climate change.

At the time of writing, timber ranked as the country’s sixth most valuable export commodity, with over 95 percent of the trade going to China. The extensive cutting of timber is a major factor in ongoing deforestation and environmental degradation, to the point that that some species may be threatened with extinction commercially speaking. In fact, eince independence forest cover has shrunk dramatically, from an estimated 88 per cent in 1980 to just over 40 per cent in 2020.

The governmental body responsible for the exploitation of forest resources in Mozambique is DINAF (the Direcção Nacional de Florestas or National Forestry Directorate) which falls under the Ministry of Land, Environment and Rural Development (MITADER, or the Ministério da Terra, Ambiente e Desenvolvimento Rural. DINAF is charged with a wide range of forestry management responsibilities, including coordinating the involvement of local communities in the development of sustainable forestry practice.

However, DINAF has not been especially effective. In 2024 it was estimated that Mozambique was losing US$700 million in revenue annually due to timber smuggling, An investigation by the Environmental Investigation Agency, an NGO based in London, found that illegal hardwood exports to China were used to supply manufacturers of luxury furniture, and that income from the trade was a source of finance for the Islamist insurgency in Cabo Delgado that had started in 2017. This was facilitated by extensive money-laundering networks “made possible by systemic corruption in the timber sector."

Decoration

Consolidated Downloadable Zipped Files

Click on the yellow folder image below to download a zipped archive of 96 documents and press clippings in PDF format.

Zipped file image

Decoration