Africa

The Africa Forest-Poverty Atlas is a joint effort of PROFOR and the World Bank’s Environment and Natural Resources Global Practice. This Atlas is intended to illuminate key issues tying together poverty and natural resource use in Africa, particularly in forested landscapes. Illustration of the extent of forest cover, its loss, and land degradation, set the stage for understanding the natural world in this region, while overlaying poverty on these landscapes allows readers to make connections about the livelihoods of those in proximity to key resources and how they may change over time.

The Africa Forest-Poverty Atlas provides an overview of the relationship between environment, natural resources, and poverty in 10 African countries. Each of the 6 pages in a country profile presents a national map, and written interpretation with further contextual information, and in most cases, a supporting chart or table. Each country profile contains three standard map pages on landscape, poverty, and forest cover, followed by additional pages detailing country-specific issues. These additional issues usually detail land degradation, but also cover topics such as drought and fire outbreak, depending on which themes are most relevant to each country.