Mokwa, Niger State – A motorcycle laden with logs from Mokwa Forest Reserve pulled up on a field. On the far edge of the field was a supervisor standing beside a neat pile of logs and barking orders at a group of labourers. “Hey, find a good space and add the log to the other ones.”
Once they assembled the right quantity of logs, the labourers covered the logs with dead leaves and sand and set fire to the woods. The woods crackled in the heat for days until the labourers returned to douse the dying embers and excavate the resulting mass of luminous black coal. Afterwards, they stuffed the charcoal into white bags weighing 50kg and loaded them onto trucks that ferried the combustible goods to buyers in town.
Mokwa Forest Reserve is one of the 94 reserves covering about 76,300 square kilometres of arable land in Niger State, north-central Nigeria. The reserve, which spans 8,000 hectares, confronts increasing deforestation with the surge in demand for charcoal by residents. Niger State lost 76 hectares of tree cover, equivalent to 324 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, in 2022, according to Global Forest Watch, a forest-tracking platform. In January 2024 alone, at least 334 deforestation alerts were reported within the state.
