Petro-Landscapes: Urban Expansion and Energy Consumption in Mbanza Kongo City, Northern Angola

摘要

Angola is a resource-rich country, which experienced a major urban concentration of the population owing to a long civil war followed by an oil-related economic boom. The majority of the population, however, remains without access to basic services such as potable water, sanitation or electricity. Despite the economic and social exclusion of the majority of the citizens, how does its oil wealth translate into the energy consumption patterns of poor urban households in the capital city of one of its oil-rich provinces? Research conducted in around 300 households of Mbanza Kongo city of Zaire province-whose livelihoods relied on odd jobs and/or peri-urban agriculture-showed that contrary to much received wisdom most of the poor urbanites do not use either fuelwood or charcoal as their main source of energy, and thus do not contribute to deforestation or forest degradation. Unexpectedly, a major impetus for deforestation is house construction. Attention must be paid to diverse drivers of deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. The major expansion of urban areas is an important factor; here we mapped one World Heritage city in Angola through remote sensing.