Abuses of The Rainforest
There
are many different and complicated factors to the destruction of the
rainforest, but at the roots, the reasons are economic. Maybe it is
because tropical rainforests are located in poor or poorer
countries, with Australia the only exception. Due to their poor
economies, many of these countries have to grapple with the demand
for immediate financing to support local economies and the huge
debts waiting to be cleared. Thus they have no choice but to turn to
the rainforests as a source of cash. The governments usually clear
the rainforests, sell the timber and develop the cleared land into
farms to produce cash crops for export. Furthermore, with the poor
knowledge of the effects that may result due to deforestation, many
governments of such countries have little or almost no hesitation
about destroying the rainforest.
In addition, although
logging can be executed in a renewable and non-destructive manner in
theory, it is rare in practice. To make matters worse, large areas
are destroyed just to harvest just a few commercially valuable trees
such as mahogany and teak. Even in countries that have strict
logging regulations, forestry officials often do not have the
manpower or information to enforce them. As a result countries such
as Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Nigeria, and Peninsular Malaysia
which are some of the world's largest exporters of tropical
hardwoods have been forced to stop exports or will have to do so in
the near future. The rapid increase in populations around the world have also
indirectly resulted in the destruction of the rainforest. It has
been estimated that around 2 billion people worldwide depend on wood
as fuel for cooking, placing additional pressure on the rainforests.
As the number of people increases especially in such countries,
governments have a very difficult time finding land for even
subsistance farming today. The only thing governments can do, is to
clear the rainforests to make way for farms to provide food for its
people. In Central America, almost 65%of the tropical rainforest has
been cleared to create pastureland for grazing cattle.
In
some extremely poor countries, rural residents have turned to cash
crops in order to escape from extreme poverty. In most cases, as the
rural residents cannot afford the costly, proper way of clearing the
rainforest, instead they have opted for a cheap but destructive
method called the shifting cultivation or slash and burn
cultivation. This shifting cultivation is a farming method where
farmers grow crops on a piece of land until it is no longer fertile
and then move on to find another piece of land, where the cycle
continues. This process by itself is not very hazardous by itself
although it may takes long periods of time for the soil to regain
its fertility, the risky part is that shifting cultivation usually
includes the slash and burn process where existing vegetation is
cut, stacked, and burned to provide space and nutrients for
cropping. This is risky and undesirable in the sense that acres of
land can be destroyed if the fire is not carefully controlled. The
slash and burn process was the culprit for the forest fires in
Indonesia which caused a haze to descend upon South-east Asia in
1997.
Although recently
environmentalists have been successful to a certain extent in
educating people around the world about the importance of the
conserving the rainforests, the destruction of the tropical
rainforest is still very bad. This is due to the fact that
developing countries are disproportionately influenced by
money-minded agencies that do not care about the environment and
only care about the amount of money it earns.
Clearing of rainforests, north of Rio Bravo, Belize.
Credit: Gary S. Hartshorn
Rainforests are constantly cleared to provide more land for agriculture, Chapare, Bolivia.
Credit: Gary S. Hartshorn
Slash and burn clearing advancing in a rainforest in Boliva (Pando).
Credit: Gary S. Hartshorn
Shifting cultivation plots near San Carlos de Rio Negro, Venezuela.
Credit: Gary S. Hartshorn
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