Deforestation: inevitable as population surges?

(Photo of deforestation in Brazil from Flickr and photographer [cas]/Sotto)

Weekly Angst: World population growth, up from 6 billion to 9 billion (that’s 50%) in the first half of this century will likely lead to cutting down forests to provide more food, fuel and timber, two new reports say. The Rights and Resources Initiative, a global coalition of environmental and conservation NGOs (non-governmental organizations) expects land the size of 12 Germanys will to be cleared between now and 2030.

“Arguably we are on the verge of the last great global land grab,” said Andy White, co-author of one of the reports, called “Seeing People Through the Trees.” And this is going to cause conflict, as well as global warming.

Governments still own most of the forests, said the second report, “From Exclusion to Ownership,” but have been unable to prevent industrial incursions. In Brazil, soy and sugar cane for biofuels are likely to take another 247 million acres from the Amazon rainforest by 2020.

There are several problems intersecting here.

Population growth and economics
First is the rapid and relentless growth of population on the Earth. In 1950 the population stood at just 2.5 billion. By 2000 it was 6 billion, more than double. This week it is 6.7 billion and by 2050, the UN estimates, the number will reach close to 9 billion (8.9B if you want to be exact).

So not only are developing countries trying to lift their people out of poverty with their own industrial revolutions, but there are increasingly more people to lift. More food, more fuel, more plastics, more cars and more electricity will be needed. (China, by the way, points out that without its one-child policy its population would be far bigger than it is.)

Then there’s the difficulty of maintaining forest in its natural state when money is to be made from clearing it to plant crops, grow cattle and sell timber. Most of the forest likely to be cleared is in developing countries, the reports said.

The Amazon rainforest
The Amazon rainforest is a case in point. The largest in the world, it is often called “the lungs of the world” because it consumes CO2 and produces 20% of the Earth’s oxygen. It contains 1/10 of the carbon dioxide stored in land ecosystems on the planet.

After 3 years of declining deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon (due to enforcement and the low price of soybeans), the tide turned last summer, and an estimated 1,096 square miles were lost in May alone.

Brazil is No. 4 in emission of greenhouse gases, not because of fossil fuel plants, but mainly (70%) because of deforestation.

Brazilian officials, under world scrutiny, say outsiders, including NGOs, are grabbing their land, stealing medicinal plants, spying and logging illegally. They say they fear the outside world is after their considerable resources.

Other forests at risk
The Amazon isn’t the only place forest is disappearing. Parts of Asia are losing more than 10,000 square miles of forest every year.

And Canada is logging its boreal forests (mainly evergreens) at such a rate that, combined with permafrost melt, it could produce a “carbon bomb,” according to Greenpeace. A report by the University of Toronto, “Turning up the Heat,” said a 1993 study showed Canada’s large swath of boreal forests stored 186 billion metric tons of carbon (27 times what the world emits from fossil fuels in a year), two-thirds of it stored in the soil. When trees are destroyed, not only is carbon released from them, but also from the soil that is exposed.

The province of Ontario last week promised to preserve 55 million acres, or at least half, of its pristine boreal forests from future development, keeping it as an undisturbed ecosystem and carbon sink. What about the other half? Chainsaw massacre?

More research, more regulation
The interaction between forests and climate change is complex. Droughts can damage forests and so can wildfires and pests brought on by warmer temperatures. The Amazon is threatened by increasingly frequent droughts. A Smithsonian research study going on now on an island in the Panama Canal suggests that as temperatures rise, trees slow their growth and absorb less CO2. There also is the issue that trees, as they get old, reach a point where they don’t take in as much carbon.

Clearly there needs to be more research, and a worldwide agreement to save or replace the forests we have – and not lose more. World officials meeting in Bali last December agreed credits should be given for saving rainforest, a step in the right direction. The details need to be worked out between now and 2012, when a post-Kyoto agreement would begin. And likely the wealthy nations are going to have to pony up.
(Sources: Thomson Reuters, PlanetArk, Greenwire, ClimateWire, State of the Planet 2006-2007, U.S. Census Bureau)