"The irony here is that the growing eagerness to slow climate
change by using biofuels and planting millions of trees for
carbon credits has resulted in new major causes of
deforestation, say activists. And that is making climate
change worse because deforestation puts far more greenhouse
gases into the atmosphere than the entire world's fleet of
cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships combined."
--------------------------------------------------------
Original source URL:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0322-01.htm
Published on Thursday, March 22, 2007 by Inter Press Service
Biofuels Boom Spurring Deforestation
by Stephen Leahy
Nearly 40,000 hectares of forest vanish every
day, driven by the world's growing hunger for
timber, pulp and paper, and ironically, new
biofuels and carbon credits designed to protect
the environment.
The irony here is that the growing eagerness to
slow climate change by using biofuels and
planting millions of trees for carbon credits has
resulted in new major causes of deforestation,
say activists. And that is making climate change
worse because deforestation puts far more
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the
entire world's fleet of cars, trucks, planes,
trains and ships combined.
"Biofuels are rapidly becoming the main cause of
deforestation in countries like Indonesia,
Malaysia and Brazil," said Simone Lovera,
managing coordinator of the Global Forest
Coalition, an environmental NGO based in
Asunción, Paraguay.
"We call it 'deforestation diesel'," Lovera told IPS.
Oil from African palm trees is considered to be
one of the best and cheapest sources of biodiesel
and energy companies are investing billions into
acquiring or developing oil-palm plantations in
developing countries. Vast tracts of forest in
Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and many other
countries have been cleared to grow oil palms.
Oil palm has become the world's number one fruit crop, well ahead of bananas.
Biodiesel offers many environmental benefits over
diesel from petroleum, including reductions in
air pollutants, but the enormous global thirst
means millions more hectares could be converted
into monocultures of oil palm.
Getting accurate numbers on how much forest is being lost is very difficult.
The FAO's State of the World's Forests 2007
released last week reports that globally, net
forest loss is 20,000 hectares per day --
equivalent to an area twice the size of Paris.
However, that number includes plantation forests,
which masks the actual extent of tropical
deforestation, about 40,000 hectares (ha) per
day, says Matti Palo, a forest economics expert
who is affiliated with the Tropical Agricultural
Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in
Costa Rica.
"The half a million ha per year deforestation of
Mexico is covered by the increase of forests in
the U.S., for example," Palo told IPS.
National governments provide all the statistics,
and countries like Canada do not produce anything
reliable, he said. Canada has claimed no net
change in its forests for 15 years despite being
the largest producer of pulp and paper.
"Canada has a moral responsibility to tell the
rest of the world what kind of changes have taken
place there," he said.
Plantation forests are nothing like natural or
native forests. More akin to a field of maize,
plantation forests are hostile environments to
nearly every animal, bird and even insects. Such
forests have been shown to have a negative impact
on the water cycle because non-native,
fast-growing trees use high volumes of water.
Pesticides are also commonly used to suppress
competing growth from other plants and to prevent
disease outbreaks, also impacting water quality.
Plantation forests also offer very few employment
opportunities, resulting in a net loss of jobs.
"Plantation forests are a tremendous disaster for
biodiversity and local people," Lovera said.
Even if farmland or savanna are only used for oil
palm or other plantations, it often forces the
local people off the land and into nearby
forests, including national parks, which they
clear to grow crops, pasture animals and collect
firewood. That has been the pattern with pulp and
timber plantation forests in much of the world,
says Lovera.
Ethanol is other major biofuel, which is made
from maize, sugar cane or other crops. As prices
for biofuels climb, more land is cleared to grow
the crops. U.S. farmers are switching from soy to
maize to meet the ethanol demand. That is having
a knock on effect of pushing up soy prices, which
is driving the conversion of the Amazon
rainforest into soy, she says.
Meanwhile rich countries are starting to plant
trees to offset their emissions of carbon
dioxide, called carbon sequestration. Most of
this planting is taking place in the South in the
form of plantations, which are just the latest
threat to existing forests.
"Europe's carbon credit market could be disastrous," Lovera said.
The multi-billion-euro European carbon market
does not permit the use of reforestation projects
for carbon credits. But there has been a
tremendous surge in private companies offering
such credits for tree planting projects. Very
little of this money goes to small land holders,
she says.
Plantation forests also contain much less carbon,
notes Palo, citing a recent study that showed
carbon content of plantation forests in some
Asian tropical countries was only 45 percent of
that in the respective natural forests.
Nor has the world community been able to properly
account for the value of the enormous volumes of
carbon stored in existing forests.
One recent estimate found that the northern
Boreal forest provided 250 billion dollars a year
in ecosystem services such as absorbing carbon
emissions from the atmosphere and cleaning water.
The good news is that deforestation, even in
remote areas, is easily stopped. All it takes is
access to some low-cost satellite imagery and
governments that actually want to slow or halt
deforestation.
Costa Rica has nearly eliminated deforestation by
making it illegal to convert forest into
farmland, says Lovera.
Paraguay enacted similar laws in 2004, and then
regularly checked satellite images of its
forests, sending forestry officials and police to
enforce the law where it was being violated.
"Deforestation has been reduced by 85 percent in
less than two years in the eastern part of the
country," Lovera noted.
The other part of the solution is to give control
over forests to the local people. This community
or model forest concept has proved to be
sustainable in many parts of the world. India
recently passed a bill returning the bulk of its
forests back to local communities for management,
she said.
However, economic interests pushing deforestation
in countries like Brazil and Indonesia are so
powerful, there may eventually be little natural
forest left.
"Governments are beginning to realize that their
natural forests have enormous value left
standing," Lovera said. "A moratorium or ban on
deforestation is the only way to stop this."
This story is part of a series of features on
sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ -
International Federation of Environmental
Journalists.
© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service
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