Africa's environment threatened by man's perverse need to conquer

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Professor Bill Laurance.

frica’s natural environments and spectacular wildlife are about to face their biggest challenge ever. In a paper published today in Current Biology, my colleagues and I assess the dramatic environmental changes that will be driven by an infrastructure-expansion scheme so sweeping in scope it is dwarfing anything the Earth’s biggest continent has ever been forced to endure.

Africa’s population is exploding - expected nearly to quadruple this century, according to the United Nations. With that, comes an escalating need to improve food production and food security.

Read the piece on The Conversation by research Professor and Australian Laureate at James Cook University, Bill Laurance - “Massive road and rail projects could be Africa’s greatest environmental challenge.”