Resources and Environment
Burkina Faso's natural resources include manganese, limestone, marble, phosphates, pumice, salt and small deposits of gold. 17.7% of its land is arable, and 0.22% has permanent crops as of 2005. As of 2003, 250 km² were irrigated. Its total renewable water resources as of 2001 were 17.5 m³, with a total freshwater withdrawal of 0.8 km³/yr (13% domestic, 1% industrial, 86% agricultural; this amounts to a per-capita withdrawal of 60 m³/yr.
Burkina Faso's fauna and flora are protected in two national parks and several reserves: see List of national parks in Africa, Nature reserves of Burkina Faso.
Recurring droughts and floods are a significant natural hazard. Current environmental issues include: recent droughts and desertification severely affecting agricultural activities, population distribution, and the economy; overgrazing; soil degradation; deforestation.
Burkina Faso is party to the following international environmental agreements: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Marine Life Conservation, Ozone Layer Protection, Wetlands. It has signed, but not ratified, the Law of the Sea and the Nuclear Test Ban.
Read more about this topic: Geography Of Burkina Faso
Famous quotes containing the words resources and/or environment:
“The poor tread lightest on the earth. The higher our income, the more resources we control and the more havoc we wreak.”
—Paul Harrison (b. 1936)
“The poorest children in a community now find the beneficent kindergarten open to them from the age of two-and-a-half to six years. Too young heretofore to be eligible to any public school, they have acquired in their babyhood the vicious tendencies of their own depraved neighborhoods; and to their environment at that tender age had been due the loss of decency and self-respect that no after example of education has been able to restore to them.”
—Virginia Thrall Smith (1836–1903)