Nature Laid Waste: The Destruction of Africa. By Michael McCarthy, London Independent, June 11, 2008. "Using before and after satellite photos, taken in all 53 countries, UN geographers have constructed an African atlas of environmental change over the past four decades -- the vast majority of it for the worse. In nearly 400 pages of dramatic pictures, disappearing forests, shrinking lakes, vanishing glaciers and degraded landscapes are brought together for the first time, providing a deeply disturbing portfolio of devastation. The atlas [Africa Atlas of Our Changing Environment, PDF, 393 pp], compiled by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) at the request of African environment ministers, and launched on Tuesday simultaneously in Johannesburg and London, underlines how extensively development choices, population growth, regional conflicts and climate change are impacting on the natural world and the nature-based assets of the continent. The satellite photos, some of them spanning a 35-year period, offer striking snapshots of environmental transformation in every country... Rapidly rising populations account for one of the principal pressures on the natural resource base. Between 2000 and 2005, the atlas says, Africa's population grew by 2.32 per cent annually -- nearly double the global rate of 1.24 per cent per year. Twenty of the 30 fastest growing countries in the world are in Africa, including Liberia, which has the highest annual growth rate -- 4.8 per cent -- of any country in the world."
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