Biofuels Boom Spurring Deforestation

2007-03-23

Richard Moore

       "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."

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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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