Rain Forests Fall at 'Alarming' Rate
AP
Posted: 2008-02-02  13:01:30
 
ABO EBAM, Nigeria (AP) - 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

NEXT: Part II - Forests in Question.



Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The  information contained in the AP 
news report may not be published, broadcast,  rewritten or otherwise distributed 
without the prior written authority of The  Associated Press. 


02/02/08 13:00  EST





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