Wood Fuel in Kano, Nigeria: The Urban-Rural Conflict

Abstract

"The Kano Rural Energy Research Project was established to investigate the quantitative and organisational dimensions of wood fuel production, consumption and exchange, and the ecological implications of wood fuel resource management. This paper summarizes some of the major and most interesting findings of the study. The area chosen for the study was the Kano region, in northern Nigeria, where a major urban metropolis is extending its firewood hinterland beyond the Kano Close-Settled Zone (where intensive agroforestry is practised) to woodlands at ever greater distances. The study investigated fuelwood consumption in urban Kano, the rural-urban trade in firewood, the ecology of wood fuel, and the management of wood resources in the hinterland. The database for this study has been formed over a 20 year period, with household, commercial and traffic surveys carried out in the 1960s and again in the 1980s. This paper presents an account of the changes that have occurred in the wood fuel hinterland of Kano during the past two decades and in particular the demands of urban energy needs on rural areas."