Every year millions of hectares
of tropical forest disappear. It is estimated that between 1960
and 1990 more than 20 % of these forests were lost (33% in Asia
and 18% in Africa and Latin America). To make matters worse, this
process of destruction doesn't
show any signs of stopping. In fact, current deforestation of
the Amazon proceeds at an even greater speed than in the 1980s,
when the issue started to arouse worldwide concern. Nevertheless,
there is still time to revert this process. Why do tropical
forests disappear?
There are many causes of Rainforest destruction and they vary
according to the different countries and regions. It is important
to distinguish between the direct and the indirect (or underlying)
causes. Among the direct causes of deforestation,
some of the main ones are: the substitution of forests by other
activities (agriculture, cattle-raising, tree plantations, shrimp
farming, etc.), logging, mining and oil exploitation and the construction
of large hydroelectric dams (which result in the flooding of extensive
areas of forest).
In particular, it is necessary
to emphasize the negative role that large scale tree plantations
are playing as a direct cause of deforestation. These plantations,
promoted as "planted forests" are in reality crops -and
not forests- and they are generally preceded by the clear cutting
of the native forest ecosystem
and its substitution by agrosystems, such as large-scale monocrops
of exotic species. Given the serious social and environmental
impacts generated by them, the World Rainforest Movement has launched
an international campaign against its promotion and in favour
of socially and environmentally sustainable alternatives.
The underlying causes of deforestation are those behind the direct
causes, which determine their occurrence. Let's see an example.
An important number of peasants arrive to the forest in a certain
country and start cutting and burning the forest in order to use
the land for agriculture and cattle raising. That is the direct
cause. The question is: why do these farmers arrive and act in
that manner? Normally peasants migrate to the forest because in
their native area they don't have enough agricultural land. Such
situation originates in an inequitable land allocation policy.
That is an underlying cause. But they are able to arrive in the
forest because previously the government or the logging and mining
companies had opened up roads into the forest. This is another
underlying cause. In many cases the government promotes this migration
in order to expand the agricultural frontier with the aim of increasing
exports. This has several implicit underlying causes: the need
to pay the external debt, policies imposed by international financial institutions, the existence of
consumer markets in the richer countries, among others.
The impacts of
deforestation
What importance does deforestation
have in general and on tropical forests in particular?
To forest peoples and other forest-dependent
peoples, deforestation implies the loss of their possibilities
of survival as independent cultures. For them, the forest is their
home and provides them with food, medicines, building materials,
firewood, water and all the material and spiritual elements that
assure the long term survival of the community. The disappearance
of the forest means the loss of all this, and consequently implies
malnutrition, an increase in illnesses, dependency, and in many
cases emigration and the disappearance of the community itself.
Secondly, deforestation
results in impacts at the regional level. As forests assure the
preservation of water, soils, plants and wildlife in general,
their destruction cause -among other- serious impacts such as
extensive flooding, aggravated droughts, soil erosion, the consequent
pollution of watercourses and the appearance of pests due to a
breakup in the ecological balance. Such impacts affect the lives
and health of people at the regional level, as well as their productive
activities, such as agriculture, cattle-raising, fishing, etc.
Finally, deforestation also
implies serious impacts at the global level. Forests have important
functions in relation to climate and their disappearance affect
humanity as a whole. On the one hand, the vast forest cover helps
to regulate the global climate regarding rain, temperature and
wind regimes. On the other hand, they constitute an enormous carbon
reservoir and their elimination contributes to the aggravation
of the greenhouse effect (generated mainly by the use of fossil
fuels). When they are burnt or cut down, the carbon that had been
stored up for centuries in the forests is incorporated to the
atmosphere, thereby increasing the level of carbon concentration
in it and thus aggravating the greenhouse effect.
Additionally, tropical forests are home to a large part of the
planet's biodiversity. Both animal
and plant species tend to disappear together with the forests
and the rate of species' extinction
increasingly accelerates.
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