Why should we be concerned about the rainforests in distant locations which most of us have never visited? The rainforests constitute the richest, most productive, and complex ecosystems on earth. Less developed countries except Australia happen to house, in particular, tropical rain forests in the Amazonian basin, South Asia, and Africa. With the immense pressure for land, never before has nature’s greatest treasure been so threatened. This article examines how and why forests fall as well as its damage to the global environment.
Rainforests cover less than two percent of the earth’s surface; they originally covered twice the current area. As the earth’s richest natural reserves, the tropics cherish the oldest living ecosystems of our planet. Fossil records suggest, for instance, that a more or less present form of Southeast Asian forests can be traced back for seventy to one hundred million years. The formation of rainforests is affected by not only the tropical location but also the amount of rainfall they receive, ranging from four to eight meters a year. Without a dry or cold season of slower growth, the tropical forests absorb as much as five times more rain than on most areas of the Eastern coasts of North America. Rolling down the heavy vegetation, the rainfall penetrates in the forest ground as a fine spray.
Rainforests possess remarkable concentrations of extremely diverse life forms. Despite the small land area they cover, rainforests are home for about half of all life forms on our planet – as many as thirty million species of plants, animals, and insects. According to research conducted by National Academy of Sciences, a typical four square mile patch of rainforest hosts as many as 125 mammal species, 400 species of birds, 100 of reptiles, 60 of amphibians, and 150 different species of butterflies as well as 1500 species of flowering plants and 750 species of trees. As they are locally concentrated and remain unique to the area, these species do not spread very easily and are found nowhere else in the world.
The global rate of tropical deforestation has increased rapidly by more than fifty percent over a decade earlier. With the rate of destruction speeding up, the vast majority of the remaining virgin tropical rainforest is doomed to be wiped out in the near future. Many scientists believe that nearly all tropical rainforest ecosystems would be gone by the year 2030.
Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, Laos, and the Philippines lost eighty eight per cent of natural forests. All the primary rainforests in India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka have almost been ruined. While the rainforest in Ivory Coast was almost completely logged, Congo, Cote D’Ivoire and other African countries have gone through the most severe rainforest destruction. More than 60 percent of Mexico’s woodlands have fallen while Haiti rainforests have been completely destroyed. In contrast with other regions, South America still maintains a relatively high percentage of natural ecosystems, particularly in the Amazon and the southern tip of the continent. Unfortunately, however, these pristine areas are being degraded at an alarming rate due to disturbance by human activities. Now the world’s largest rainforest, the Brazilian Amazon, is also seriously threatened.
South America contains some of the world’s largest remaining blocks of
tropical rain forests, blanketing millions of square miles with the Amazon,
Orinoco, and Paraguay Rivers (considered among the largest freshwater systems
on earth) twisting through diverse landscapes. The Amazon River Basin retains
the most extensive system of flooded forests on earth covering nearly 116,000
square miles. As the world’s largest river basin, its streams and rivers
supply twenty percent of the earth’s freshwater. A dynamic ecosystem is
maintained by yearly patterns of water levels creating and demolishing land
along with the constant erosion of riverbanks. Annual fertilization comes from
the deposited soil eroded from the Andes carried by annual flooding.
The Amazon is endowed with a variety of ecosystems containing an astonishing
array of wildlife. One-third of the world’s tropical woods (2,500 tree
species) are known to exist only in the Amazon. The forests and freshwater ecosystems
of the Amazon Basin host an extraordinary seasonal migration of aquatic and
terrestrial animals in and out of the flooded forests. Animals and plants (found
nowhere else in the world) thrive along the slopes of the Andes and Guayanan
mountains. Rich fisheries and wildlife colonies abound along much of its coastlines.
The Southwestern Amazonian forests of western Brazil, northern Bolivia, and southeastern Peru (covering more than 200,000 square miles) form part of the world’s largest intact rain forest eco-region cooled by winds sweeping down from the Andes and warmed by a jungle blanket. The eco-region’s forest types (considered to be among the earth’s most biologically rich) are comprised of lowland tropical moist forests, unique flooded savannas dotted with palm trees, as well as an extensive area of bamboo-dominated forests (World Wildlife Fund, 2002). This extraordinary eco-region is maintained by high rainfall, complex topography and soils, and the meandering river systems that create habitat mosaics.
The region has an incredible array of freshwater fish, birds, and butterflies, many of which are found nowhere else. The flooded forests and freshwater ecosystems of the Amazon contains such species as a fruit-eating fish called the tambaqui and the pirarucz as well as the pink freshwater dolphin, the crocodilian black caiman, the giant river turtle, and the Amazon manatee. Bird species include a blue-faced, prehistoric-looking bird called the hoatzin, macaws, guans, and curassows. As many as 1,200 species of butterflies have been recorded. In addition, the Southwestern Amazonian forests remain one of the last refuges of the highly threatened jaguar, howler monkeys, pumas, ocelots, bush dogs, the harpy eagle, pink freshwater dolphins, the giant river otter, tapirs, and black caimans.
Many plant species (giant kapok trees, the forests’ symbols, and the virola) face extinction from exploitation due to the region’s tripled human population since 1950. Logging the kapok tree and virola is accelerating deforestation over vast regions. Deforestation in South America is mainly attributed to expansion of the agricultural frontier for economic development. Large-scale commercial rice and soybean production has potentially serious consequences for biodiversity conservation in flooded forest ecosystem. The open floodplains are threatened by conversion to cattle ranches and the widespread introduction of water buffalo, which are not native to the region and cause damage to the shoreline vegetation and fish nursery areas. Overfishing, to supply the region’s growing urban centers, could result in the localized extinction of prized species and the consequent loss of subsistence fishing for traditional river dwellers. Hydroelectric dams for the region disrupt such ecological processes as the migration of catfish, which travels from the estuary at the mouth of the Amazon upstream to Colombia and Peru to spawn.
Human capacity for meeting material needs is seriously undermined by the elimination of diverse rainforest systems. Natural ecosystems provide genetic resources for improving human well-being. The supply from the rainforests includes a wide assortment of edible fruits and nuts as well as numerous plant products. Many of our favorite foods (avocado, banana, eggplant, fig, lemon, orange, peanut, pineapple, tomato, and countless others) were originally found in the rainforests. Many plants contain genetic materials essential to fortify our existing agricultural stock.
The rainforests hold important ingredients, which have yet to be discovered in a vast number of species. Medical chemicals (coming from tropical rain forest plants) were long used by native tribes. According to the National Cancer Institute, seventy percent of the plants useful for developing cancer treatment medicines are available only in the rainforests. In addition, many medicines (for example, drugs used to treat leukemia, heart ailments, arthritis, and Hodgkin’s disease) come from rainforest plants. The chemical compounds of only fewer than one percent of tropical forest species have been thoroughly studied. We still do not know completely which plant species may contain the properties for curing various human diseases.
Shrinking rain forests results in local species’ extinction through the loss of their habitat. Many of the world’s most biologically diverse regions are affected by rainforest destruction with the loss of rare species (tree, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals). Rapid lumbering devastated native tribes, ruining their environment. Timber-cutting and the building of huge new dams and other industrial infrastructure placed great pressure on aborigines’ villages. Development of our knowledge and values needed to sustain the human species requires promoting the capability of various cultures to flourish and allowing changes in directions selected. The viability of the human species will be guaranteed by the availability of multiple cultures on earth. Social, cultural impacts are felt through loss of food resources, contamination of drinking water, the spread of disease and loss or damage to archeological sites. Six to nine million indigenous people inhabited the Brazilian rainforest in 1500, but less than 200,000 remained by the end of the last century. Several uncontacted indigenous tribes living in biologically rich areas have been deadly affected. The tribal communities were exposed to a whooping cough and influenza epidemic that killed an estimated fifty percent of their population.
Forests fulfill human needs by performing ecologically balancing roles or functions, including the protection of soils, preservation of water, and provision of timber. The disappearance of forest (deforestation) causes various environmental consequences such as soil erosion, flooding, and climate changes. Forests control soil erosion with reduction in flooding and replenish groundwater supplies. The soils experience erosion within a few years after rainforest clearance and become unproductive without the nutrients provided by the vegetation.
Many invaluable services provided, free of charge, by the ecosystems include the replacement of carbon dioxide (believed to be responsible for approximately half of global warming) with oxygen as well as the maintenance of a local climate. By holding vast reserves of carbon in their vegetation, rainforests play a critical role in the atmosphere (fifty percent of all oxygen comes from rainforests). By converting carbon into cellulose and releasing oxygen through photosynthesis, forests keep increases in carbon dioxide in check. A rough balance was maintained between the bio-mass of the world’s vegetation and carbon dioxide through forests in past millennia.
However, the consequences of human activities in the rainforests have interrelated and cumulative effects in the environment. Loss of the forests undermines the long-term ability of the earth’s atmosphere to neutralize greenhouse gases. Tropical deforestation eliminates our planet’s ability to absorb excessive atmospheric carbon since forests absorb and store atmospheric carbon through photosynthesis. Rainforest loss has an impact on global climate patterns, ultimately flooding low-lying areas with sea level rise.
Despite the release of more carbon into the atmosphere, fewer forests exist
to remove the carbon from the atmosphere. About half the world’s forests
were removed over a thousand years ago; the concentration of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere has been increasing steadily since 1850 with changes in the
composition of the atmosphere caused by human activities.
In addition to coal, oil, and gas (which emits the most carbon dioxide into
the atmosphere), the burning of vegetation in deforestation is the second largest
contributing factor to the greenhouse effect with the release of huge amounts
of carbon into the atmosphere (including carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, and
nitrous oxide) through burning and decaying trees. According to some estimates,
twenty-three to thirty percent of all carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes
from deforestation taking place in Brazil, Indonesia, Burma, Mexico, Thailand,
and other tropical countries.
The forests are seen as resources to be exploited to meet the goal of economic
development and growth. Forests, valued for land and wood, are threatened by
logging. The economic pressure on the developing world is difficult to reverse.
Timber extraction by clear-cutting result in wholesale environmental destruction.
Destruction of rainforests is mainly attributed to various human activities,
including logging, mineral exploration, and setting up plantations of rubber,
coffee, and other crops.
Forests were chopped down to make money from timber sales and to clear land
for farming.
Logging and clearing land for farming have proved the biggest causes of deforestation in places like Cameroon which experienced the fastest deforestation rate in Africa in the late 1990s. Most tropical timber (teak, mahogany, rosewood, ebony, and iroko) consumed in the U.S. comes from in Indonesia, Malaysia, and other Southeast Asian countries which dominate world trade in tropical hardwoods. Despite a great need to regulate large-scale commercial logging enterprises, a growing timber trade encourages logging. In addition, the majority of the globe’s forests do not receive much protection.
Forest degradation is fed by private greed and political corruption. Foreign
companies often bribe their way into lucrative logging concessions. Logging
concession terms generate exceptional profits for private contractors. Government
policies have even contributed to excessive forest depletion with tax and credit
subsidies for wood-processing industries.
A direct and immediate process of depredations involves slash-and-burn farming,
expansion of ranchland as well as unsustainable logging of hardwoods. People
living on the impoverished land traveled to the Amazon for the slash-and-burn
agricultural practice. The uneven distribution of wealth and land is one major
factor in the destruction of tropical forests. Rapid population growth is often
linked to forest destruction through pressure on new land by small farmers.
Instead of redistributing the arable land (concentrated in the hands of a small,
wealthy class) more equitably, in the case of Brazil, the government uses the
vast Amazon Basin as an escape valve by encouraging landless peasants to convert
its forest into small farms and ranches.
Large tracts of rainforest are in danger of being replaced by mono-cultural
plantations of fast-growing, non-indigenous trees for paper-pulp production.
Brazil may become one of the world’s largest paper-pulp producers at the
expense of rainforests. In addition, expansion of ranchland for beef production
is responsible for rapid forest conversion; In particular, cattle farming put
enormous pressure on the Amazon and Central America. This cheap meat imported
into the U.S. is processed for hamburgers, sausage, and other beef products.
Agricultural expansion is not planned in a sustainable fashion, and economic gains have mostly been short term and concentrated in a few hands. Land development and settlement schemes create mono-cultures of cash crops. The activities of multinational corporations, engaged in logging, mineral extraction, and agribusiness, emphasize use of chemical fertilizers and specialization in a few crops.
In addition, oil drilling, gas explorations, and mining, large-scale development
projects also take their toll on the Amazon’s wealth of forests. Exploration
and production of oil represents one of the greatest threats to large areas
of rainforest. Chevron is exploring in the southern highlands of Papua New Guinea;
Shell is involved in Nigeria. The western perimeter of the Amazon Basin is experiencing
heavy penetration, degradation, and pollution by multinational oil companies’
incursion into tribal territories.
While Exxon is active in Columbia, Conoco Inc., Occidental, and British Petroleum,
for example, have been operating in the Yasuni National Park in Ecuador. Shell
also undertook projects in a remote region of the Peruvian Amazon.
Massive forest depletion accompanies the policies that implement new roads, dams, and mines. Clearing large tracts of land for cattle ranches, logging, mining, and oil drilling can proceed with putting the necessary infrastructure in place. Highways must be cut through the virgin rainforest in order to gain access to mineral rich areas. Dams that drown vast areas must be constructed to generate the power needed by industry and for the workers brought in to run the new operations.
Multinational corporations and international aid-lending institutions active in tropical countries contribute directly and indirectly to the destruction of the rainforests and indigenous peoples by investment and industrial projects. Building a gas line linking Southern Peruvian Amazon with oil and gas reserves to Bolivia and Brazil further devastates the region. Oil industry projects to drive a pipeline for thousand miles through the virgin forests to tap a huge oilfield are often financed by transnational corporations and international lending agencies such as the World Bank. Citigroup and other international banks have been notorious backers of destructive oil and gas projects around the world.
Short-term economic interests and lax environmental standards further encourage exploitation of natural resources. Revised land laws turned communal lands into private property with increasing land values. Investment by multinational corporations is encouraged with few controls placed on their activities. Cattle-ranching and beef production are funded by multilateral development banks along with tax incentives.
Third World government-sponsored schemes such as land development, transmigration, road building, and dam construction are major threats to the rainforests. While government policies have political expediency, they do not solve poverty and landlessness. Unmanageable debt, lending policies of international financial institutions, fiscal incentives, and consumerism in the affluent societies all contribute to rapid deforestation and conversion of tropical land to other purposes. Large-scale, export-oriented commodity production for foreign exchange are driven by the need to service huge debt burdens.
Pressures on tropical forests also come from the voracious consumer appetites of industrialized countries for timber, beef, minerals, and other commodities. The unbalanced excesses of consumption is reflected by the fact that although Americans represent only five percent of the world’s population, they consume more than five times mineral and energy resources per capita than people living in Third World countries, and twice as much as Europeans.
Humanity’s biological basis and their place in forest ecosystems need to be recognized in a relationship of mutual dependencies. The forest supports many communities of indigenous people whose livelihood depends on the sustainability of the forest. Many indigenous systems of knowledge recognize local people as part of the forest. Indigenous people’s experience living with and learning from the environment entails more benign and nurturing relationships to the ecosystem than a scientific knowledge system. Sustainable use of resources for indigenous communities is dictated by religious teachings and sheer necessity, and derives from an intimate familiarity with the workings of their habitat. Although the concept of sustainable development has been adopted by national governments and nongovernmental conservation organizations, it is an ancient way of life for most traditional cultures. Indigenous populations effectively utilize everything they need in the forest for food, clothing, medicine, and construction materials. All of these goods have been harvested without their depletion.
The economic and social benefits of a sustainable harvest from the intact forest are greater than those expected from a proposed plantation. In protecting a vital habitat, land can be set aside as an extractive reserve for native people to use on a sustainable basis. Huge tracts of tropical rain forest need to be preserved for sustainable harvesting of rubber, nuts, fruits, and other products. While maintaining a sustainable income, the reserves also are used to maintain native species. Income from extractive reserves actually exceeds revenues generated from lumber and grazing on the same land.
In extractive reserves of the Brazilian Amazon, communities gather fruit and nuts without destroying the forests. Brazil’s success was emulated by several other developing countries, among them Peru and Guatemala, with the establishment of forest and lake reserves. Rubber tappers have been strong advocates for conservation and are helping prevent conversion of forest to pasture and agriculture. Local movements led by internationally known activist Chico Mendes and others attempted to save the Amazonian forests by helping inhabitants make a sustainable living. The oppression of the groups drew strong opposition from human rights, environmental, and indigenous groups around the world.
The desire to preserve the forests for ecological reasons can be combined with economic and social motives as well. Certification will make the products more appealing to consumers in national and international markets. Conservation projects support sustainable uses of fish, timber, and other natural resources of the forests with the development of non-destructive harvesting techniques. Sustainable forest management is beneficial for forest-dwelling inhabitants. Local people both contribute to and benefit from the forest. The recent experimentation of certified forestry by the Brazilian State of Acre promotes sustainable forests.
Sustainable use can generate a synergy between environment and development. Farmers can be more productive on smaller portions of land by using more effective agro-forestry methods. A variety of crop species and trees produce higher yields with organic farming than the usual modern methods of agriculture. While organic, locally-run restoration possibilities need to be further promoted, they provide a hope for easing pressure on the rainforests. Ravaged, unproductive former rainforest land can be utilized to grow plants which support the subsistence of local people and help reduce the need to take on nearby primary forests. There are examples of transforming reclaimed land from useless abandoned cattle pasture into productive farmland by indigenous populations. Conserving energy reduces the need to destroy remote parts of the world in search for oil. Recycling reduces waste of paper, aluminum, and tin products that in many cases come from the rainforests. Changes in life styles along with the awareness of consumption patterns are necessary for reduction in waste and an ultimate slowdown in the destruction of the planet. Some health conscious people have been purchasing non-processed, non-packaged foods originating from the rainforests.
Old-style conservation includes buying up pristine rainforest for its preservation. Several international NGOs joined a movement for the preservation of the Amazon rainforest. The Nature Conservancy has a billion-dollar program for worldwide wilderness purchases. The Rainforest Preservation Foundation wants to save the rainforest by purchasing land from individual owners, then preserving it. Establishing the Mamiraua Sustainable Development Reserve, the largest Brazilian protected area for the conservation of flooded forests, in particular, drew international attention from World Wildlife Fund and others.
In order to deal with sovereignty issues, some Brazilian nonprofit foundations have been established to help the indigenous populations manage the land. Local partners have also been important for the World Wide Fund for Nature’s project in Peru, Brazil, and Venezuela to protect the Amazon’s flooded forests. Rainforest Action Network supports Protect-An-Acre program, which funds indigenous people’s efforts to defend and reforest their land.
International efforts include the preservation of as much rainforest as possible by setting it aside in reserves. In return for financial aid from the Global Environment Facility set up the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, Brazil agreed to preserve just ten per cent of the remaining forest. However, this agreement was undermined by loosening of legal controls on the development of other parts of the Amazon by the Brazilian Congress. The position taken by Western governments and corporations have not been consistent. While the European Union supports rainforest conservation in Brazil, it’s paying for the construction and rehabilitation of roads that are bound to make it easier to invade the forests. The International Tropical Timber Organization also took some initiatives to slow deforestation in Malaysia and other countries, but without cooperation of member states, the measures have not been effective.
Compared with the huge difficulties in a bid to halt the eradication of virgin tropical forest, the efforts to slow the pace remain inadequate. It would be too late to express concern for the loss of beauty, biodiversity, and opportunity of the rainforests only after large swaths of forest are torn down for timber or agricultural purposes. Recognizing the value of rainforests is important so that they can be saved from short-term plundering. Forests will prove of real value to their residents by providing them with important economic or ecological services, such as flood protection. Environmental activism and public opinion are pivotal to changes in the policies of corporations and international financial institutions and help them become more sensitive to ecological issues. The future will depend on consciousness of the public both in the West and people living in Rainforests. Advocacy and scientific groups have played an important role in raising public attention about the importance of protecting the rainforest.
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