World Fells Trees At ‘Alarming’ Rate

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Experts: World Fells Trees At `Alarming' Rate

 

Scientists say global deforestation will feed global warming

The Associated Press

updated 3:48 a.m. CT, Sun., Feb. 3, 2008

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22970058/

 

ABO EBAM, Nigeria - In the gloomy shade deep in Africa's rain forest,

the noontime silence was pierced by the whine of a far-off chain saw.

It was the sound of destruction, echoed from wood to wood, continent

to continent, in the tropical belt that circles the globe.

 

From Brazil to central Africa to once-lush islands in Asia's

archipelagos, human encroachment is shrinking the world's rain

forests.

 

The alarm was sounded decades ago by environmentalists — and was

little heeded. The picture, meanwhile, has changed: Africa is now a

leader in destructiveness. The numbers have changed: U.N. specialists

estimate 60 acres of tropical forest are felled worldwide every

minute, up from 50 a generation back. And the fears have changed.

 

Experts still warn of extinction of animal and plant life, of the

loss of forest peoples' livelihoods, of soil erosion and other

damage. But scientists today worry urgently about something else: the

fateful feedback link of trees and climate.

 

Global warming is expected to dry up and kill off vast tracts of rain

forest, and dying forests will feed global warming.

 

" If we lose forests, we lose the fight against climate change, "

declared more than 300 scientists, conservation groups, religious

leaders and others in an appeal for action at December's climate

conference in Bali, Indonesia.

 

20 percent of manmade emissions

 

The burning or rotting of trees that comes with deforestation — at

the hands of ranchers, farmers, timbermen — sends more heat-trapping

carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than all the world's planes,

trains, trucks and automobiles. Forest destruction accounts for

about 20 percent of manmade emissions, second only to burning of

fossil fuels for electricity and heat. Conversely, healthy forests

absorb carbon dioxide and store carbon.

 

" The stakes are so dire that if we don't start turning this around in

the next 10 years, the extinction crisis and the climate crisis will

begin to spiral out of control, " said Roman Paul Czebiniak, a forest

expert with Greenpeace International. " It's a very big deal. "

 

The December U.N. session in Bali may have been a turning point,

endorsing negotiations in which nations may fashion the first global

financial plan for compensating developing countries for preserving

their forests.

 

The latest data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

helped spur delegates to action.

 

" Deforestation continues at an alarming rate of about 13 million

hectares (32 million acres) a year, " the U.N. body said in its

latest " State of the World's Forests " report.

 

Because northern forests remain essentially stable, that means 50,000

square miles of tropical forest are being cleared every 12 months —

equivalent to one Mississippi or more than half a Britain. The lumber

and fuelwood removed in the tropics alone would fill more than 1,000

Empire State Buildings, FAO figures show.

 

Different causes

 

Although South America loses slightly more acreage than Africa, the

rate of loss is higher here — almost 1 percent of African forests

gone each year. In 2000-2005, the continent lost 10 million acres a

year, including big chunks of forest in Sudan, Zambia and Tanzania,

up from 9 million a decade earlier, the FAO reports.

 

Across the tropics the causes can be starkly different.

 

The Amazon and other South American forests are usually burned for

cattle grazing or industrial-scale soybean farming. In Indonesia and

elsewhere in southeast Asia, island forests are being cut or burned

to make way for giant plantations of palm, whose oil is used in food

processing, cosmetics and other products.

 

In Africa, by contrast, it's individuals hacking out plots for small-

scale farming.

 

Here in Nigeria's southeastern Cross Rivers State, home to one of the

largest remaining tropical forests in Africa, people from surrounding

villages of huts and cement-block homes go to the forest each day to

work their pineapple and cocoa farms. They see no other way of

earning money to feed their families.

 

" The developed countries want us to keep the forests, since the air

we breathe is for all of us, rich countries and poor countries, " said

Ogar Assam Effa, 54, a tree plantation director and member of the

state conservation board.

 

" But we breathe the air, and our bellies are empty. Can air give you

protein? Can air give you carbohydrates? " he asked. " It would be easy

to convince people to stop clearing the forest if there was an

alternative. "

 

The state, which long ago banned industrial logging, is trying to

offer alternatives.

 

Working with communities like Abo Ebam, near Nigeria's border with

Cameroon, the Cross Rivers government seeks to help would-be farmers

learn other trades, such as beekeeping or raising fist-sized land

snails, a regional delicacy.

 

Logging licenses

 

The state also has imposed a new licensing system. Anyone who wants

to cut down one of the forest's massive, valuable mahogany trees or

other hardwoods must obtain a license and negotiate which tree to

fell with the nearby community, which shares in the income. The logs

can't be taken away whole, but must be cut into planks in the forest,

by people like David Anfor.

 

He's a 35-year-old father of one who earns the equivalent of 75 U.S.

cents per board he cuts with a whizzing chain saw. " The forest is our

natural resource. We're trying to conserve, " he said. " But I'm also

working for my daily eating. "

 

A community benefiting from such small-scale forestry is likely to

keep out those engaged in illegal, uncontrolled logging. But

enforcement is difficult in a state with about 3,500 square miles of

pristine rain forest — and few forest rangers.

 

On one recent day deep in the forest, where the luxuriant green

canopy allows only rare shards of sunlight to reach the floor, the

trilling of a hornbill bird and the distant chain saw were the only

sounds heard. As forestry officials rushed to investigate, the saw

operator fled deeper into the forest, sign of an illegal operation.

 

Global strategy needed

 

Environmentalists say such a conservation approach may work for

rural, agrarian people in Nigeria, which lost an estimated 15 million

acres between 1990 and 2005, or about one-third of its entire forest

area, and has one of the world's highest deforestation rates — more

than 3 percent per year.

 

But lessons learned in one place aren't necessarily applicable

elsewhere, they say. A global strategy is needed, mobilizing all rain-

forest governments.

 

That's the goal of the post-Bali talks, looking for ways to integrate

forest preservation into the world's emerging " carbon trading "

system. A government earning carbon credits for " avoided

deforestation " could then sell them to a European power plant, for

example, to meet its emission-reduction quota.

 

" These forests are the greatest global public utility, " Britain's

conservationist Prince Charles said in the lead-up to Bali. " As a

matter of urgency we have to find ways to make them more valuable

alive than dead. "

 

Observed the World Wildlife Fund's Duncan Pollard, " Suddenly you have

the whole world looking at deforestation. "

 

But in many ways rain forests are still a world of unknowns, a place

with more scientific questions than answers.

 

How much carbon dioxide are forests absorbing? How much carbon is

stored there? How might the death of the Amazon forest affect the

climate in, say, the American Midwest? Hundreds of researchers are

putting in thousands of hours of work to try to answer such questions

before it is too late.

 

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

 

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22970058/