Forest Holocaust The statistics paint a grim picture. According to the World Resources Institute, more than 80 percent of the Earth’s natural forests already have been destroyed. Up to 90 percent of West Africa’s coastal rain forests have disappeared since 1900. Brazil and Indonesia, which contain the world’s two largest surviving regions of rain forest, are being stripped at an alarming rate by logging, fires, and land-clearing for agriculture and cattle-grazing.
Among the obvious consequences of deforestation is the loss of living space. Seventy percent of the Earth’s land animals and plants reside in forests. But the harm doesn’t stop there. Rain forests help generate rainfall in drought-prone countries elsewhere. Studies have shown that destruction of rain forests in such West African countries as Nigeria, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire may have caused two decades of droughts in the interior of Africa, with attendant hardship and famine.
Deforestation may have catastrophic global effects as well. Trees are natural consumers of carbon dioxide—one of the greenhouse gases whose buildup in the atmosphere contributes to global warming. Destruction of trees not only removes these “carbon sinks,” but tree burning and decomposition pump into the atmosphere even more carbon dioxide, along with methane, another major greenhouse gas.
UN warn for negative effects of biofuels
Biofuels like ethanol can help reduce global warming and create jobs for the rural poor, but the benefits may be offset by serious environmental problems and increased food prices for the hungry, the United Nations concluded Tuesday in its first major report on bioenergy. Biofuels, which are made from corn, palm oil, sugar cane and other agricultural products, have been seen by many as a cleaner and cheaper way to meet the world‘s soaring energy needs than with greenhouse-gas emitting fossil fuels. But environmentalists have warned that the biofuel craze can do as much or more damage to the environment as dirty fossil fuels - a concern reflected throughout the report, which was being released Tuesday in New York, by U.N.-Energy, a consortium of 20 U.N. agencies and programs. Changes in the carbon content of soils and carbon stocks in forests and peat lands might offset some or all of the benefits of the greenhouse gas reductions, it said. It noted that soaring palm oil demand has already led to the clearing of tropical forests in southeast Asia.
"Liquid biofuel production could threaten the availability of adequate food supplies by diverting land and other productive resources away from food crops," it said, adding that many of those biofuel crops require the best land, lots of water and environment-damaging chemical fertilizers. It suggested that farm co-ops, as well as government subsidies, could help small-scale farmers compete. "More and more, people are realizing that there are serious environmental and serious food security issues involved in biofuels," Greenpeace biofuels expert Jan van Aken said. "There is more to the environment than climate change," he said. "Climate change is the most pressing issue, but you cannot fight climate change by large deforestation in Indonesia."But with the surge in interest by the private sector, the rise in commodity prices and an awareness of the strain on water supplies that has resulted from biofuel production, "we now have to raise the red flags and say ‘be careful, don‘t go too fast,‘" he said in an interview. That the report exists is something of a miracle, since there has long been opposition among U.N. member states - including OPEC , nuclear and other energy lobbies_ to have any kind of international dialogue on energy. There is for example, no U.N. Millennium Goal for energy, and recent U.N. working documents on sustainable development continue to be very fossil-fuel oriented, Best said. The document is intended for governments to help them craft bioenergy policies that maximize the potential but minimize the negative impacts - even as the technology continues to change. "We can‘t cross our arms and wait to have better data or better methodologies," Best said. "We need to contribute to the discussion, but in a balanced way."
0 comments:
Post a Comment