Rainforest

The tropical rainforests surround the equator of the earth like a belt. They occupy a total area of about 9 million square kilometers. The largest rainforests are in South America, particularly the Amazon forest in Brazil, which stretches to Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela and French Guyana. Smaller forests are found in tropical Asia and central Africa. The world’s rainforests receive 2-10 metres of rain every year. There have been rainforests on Earth for over 75 million years. That makes them the oldest habitats on the planet. Half of all the species of butterflies, birds, flowers and trees, and insects live in rainforests.

Tribes have lived in rainforests of South America for over 10,000 years. People like these have the oldest cultures on Earth. But now they are in serious danger. When Columbus sailed to the Americas 500 years ago, between 6 million and 9 million people lived in the Amazon rainforest. Today, that number is less than 200,000. Since 1900, 87 tribes have disappeared completely. Why? Because outsiders shot them, poisoned them and gave them diseases.

The rainforests are facing a total disaster. Nobody knows exactly how much is cut down every year. Estimates vary between 100,000 and 400,000 square km. Brazil alone lost about 48,000 square km of rainforest in 1990. The tropical forest of West Africa (Nigeria and Ivory Coast) have almost disappeared over the past 40 years. According to the most conservative estimate, all the rainforests in the world will be gone in less than a century unless the rate of felling slows down. A more realistic estimate is 40 years. If this continues for the next 40 years, millions of species of plants and animals will become extinct. 50 species become extinct every year.

Why are people cutting down the rainforests? The first reason is because Third World farmers don’t have enough land. 800 million people in the Third World have nowhere to grow food for their families. 250 million of them are destroying the rainforest simply to live. The second reason is because rich countries depend on rainforest products. Between 10 and 30% of the trees are sold as logs to the timber trade. Most of the trees from the Nigerian rainforests were sold to the timber industry in Japan, the US and other industrialised countries. Tropical hardwoods such as mahogany are used in rich countries to make luxury furniture, doors and window frames. But much of the wood is not made into durable products. It is made into cheap throwaway goods. The destruction of rainforests for the timber trade sometimes involves political corruption. In many developing countries, a person must get a license from the government before they can cut down trees. A license to cut down trees is almost a license to print money.

The largest cause of the destruction of rainforest is probably the creation of grazing land to feed cattle. The growth of the fast foods industry in the 1970s created a demand for cheap beef for making hamburgers. The Costa Rican government removed thousands of hectares of rainforest by the infamous slash-and-burn technique to provide grazing land for export cattle.

Why do we need to conserve the rainforests? First, because the rainforests are the lungs of the world. They take in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen by photosynthesis. The loss of vegetation in the rainforests magnifies the greenhouse effect. Second, the rainforests are the world’s most important means of storing water. The trees suck up water in the rainy season and slowly release it into the ground and rivers. This protects the fragile soils from the potentially devastating effects of tropical storms. The rainforests supply water to the rivers during the dry season. If they didn’t do this, many rivers would disappear in the dry season and become raging torrents in the rainy season, flooding the nearby fields and washing away the soil. Third, the rainforests control the climate. Without them, the greenhouse effect will just get worse and worse. Without the rainforest the temperature difference between the tropics and the temperate zones would be far greater. Fourth, the rainforests are a reservoir of micronutrients. Most of the essential nutrients are stored not in the soil but within the trees themselves. When the trees are cut down, vital nutrients are washed away with the run-off and a whole ecosystem quickly dies. Fifth, the rainforests, and the ecosystems that they support, are an important source of raw materials for many different industries. They supply us with hundreds of useful products – from rubber to peanuts. One very important benefit is the supply if medicinal plants. About 80% of all traditional herbal medicines and 25% of modern Western medicines are extracted from plants that grow in the rainforests. Many doctors think that some of rainforest plants may contain a cure for cancer. Loss of plant species within the rainforests will mean that lifesaving drugs will never be discovered. One last – and very important – reason for conserving the rainforests is that they are the home of several million people, who still live in primitive tribal homelands of these unique and fascinating societies. The rainforest tribes have an intimate knowledge of the many thousands of plants and animals that live there. They can show us how to use these plants and animals for new sources of food, medicines and building materials. The tribal people are more than an anthropological curiosity. They are the key to the living resources of the rainforests.

What can we do to conserve what is left of them? One important step is to reduce the demand for new hardwood products. Governments could do this by putting a high tax on these products. The revenue from a tropical hardwood tax could fund conservation projects. Many environmentally-conscious people today refuse to buy goods that are made from tropical hardwoods. The demand for hardwood in the West is falling since the international timber trade has received a lot of bad publicity because of its role in the destruction of the rainforests. Some timber companies now concentrate on selling softwoods such as pine and beech instead.

We must also address the other causes of deforestation – lack of alternative fuel, the need to create grazing land for cattle and the widespread public ignorance about the ecological importance of the rainforests. In 1987, several international organisations (including the World Bank, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and the United Nations Development Programme) launched the Tropical Forest Action Plan, a 5-year plan to invest money in forestry, conservation and agricultural projects.

Conservation costs money. The developing countries can’t afford to forgo the immediate revenue that they can earn by selling timber or raising cattle. But they could, and should, try to develop the economic potential of the rich resources that grow beneath the trees – the non-timber forest products. The medicinal plants in the rainforests have great scientific potential, but they also have enormous economic value. Harvesting medicinal herbs for the pharmaceutical industry is potentially more profitable for the developing countries than selling timber or raising cattle on the deforested land. If the poor countries are to benefit from non-timber forest products, the distribution of the profits must change radically. But at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, 1992, delegates from rich and poor countries argued angrily with one another. The delegates from the rich countries agreed in principle with an action plan to save the rainforests, but in the end they were too greedy to sacrifice their own comfortable lifestyles. In addition, they did not trust the poor countries; they believed that money given for conservation projects would be wasted or stolen by incompetent and corrupt officials.

The plight of the disappearing tropical rainforests is one of the most urgent environmental crises in the world today. The lungs of the world are being sacrificed for the rich man’s love of hardwood furniture and hamburgers and the poor man’s need for fuel and a basic income. Conserving the rainforests is an ecological imperative that demands personal sacrifices from rich and poor alike. The rich must change their consumption habits. The poor must find alternative sources of fuel and income so that they no longer need to plunder the precious rainforests to ensure their own survival. The destruction of the rainforests is an example of how poverty and environmental destruction are interdependent. Both require international dialogue and political action. In reality, the fight to save the rainforests has hardly begun.