GHOSTS OF THE FORESTS
The world's finest timberlands are fast disappearing. These
woods in the czech republic are dying of dirty air. Many others
are falling victim to humanity's chain saws and torches. |
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BY MICHAEL S. SERRILL
Critics of the unrestrained free enterprise that has overrun many developing countries and formerly communist nations have a name for the trend. They call it wild capitalism. And nowhere is the entrepreneurial spirit more savage than in the forests of Russia. That country accounts for 23% of all the world's woodlands, and when Moscow and regional governments desperate for hard currency opened up the forests to foreign exploitation a few years ago, there was a headlong rush to accept the invitation. Logging companies from the U.S., Japan, South Korea and European countries crashed into Russia's vast western and Siberian forests with their chain saws whirring.
The result has been destruction on a breathtaking scale. In 1996 at least 10,000 sq km of Russian trees were cut down, and experts say the figure would be much higher if the overall economy were more vigorous. Entire ecosystems are being destroyed as logging turns forests into deserts and peat bogs, melts permafrost, clogs rivers with silt and debris and ruins habitat for wildlife. Unless the tree harvesting is brought under control, ecologists predict, the loggers will turn vast tracts of Russia into a wasteland.
Russia is just one region--others are the Amazon, west and central Africa, Indonesia, Alaska and western Canada--where logging and deforestation continue as if there were no ecological tomorrow. Although the devastation was well publicized before and during the 1992 Earth Summit, the world's forests are still in as much danger as ever. The latest report from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, which tracks forests, disclosed that between 1991 and 1995, tropical rain forests were burned and bulldozed at a rate of 126,000 sq km a year.
Nontropical regions gained 13,000 sq km of forest a year, but that figure is deceptive because it includes industrial tree plantations and abandoned agricultural lands that have sprouted trees once again. There is no way to bring back virgin woodland with all the life it once supported. In the U.S., 98% of the forest has been logged at least once.
Just 40% of the world's ancient forest cover remains intact, according to the World Resources Institute in Washington. In a recent report on what it dubs "frontier forests," the w.r.i. calls for an emergency program to prevent the loss of the remaining pristine woodlands, two-thirds of which are in Canada, Russia and Brazil. "People treat forests as capital to be liquidated," says Dirk Bryant, the w.r.i. researcher who was the principal author of the report. "If we don't do something dramatic in the next 10 years, it's a lost cause." Even forests not being logged are seriously threatened by air pollution.
Much more is at stake than the chance to take a vacation hike in a national park. Forests protect water quality and soil stability. They provide habitat for most of the world's land-based plants and animals, and from this biodiversity comes a wealth of foods and medicines essential to human health. Forests are home to most of the world's 50 million indigenous people. On a larger scale, forests act as "carbon sinks," absorbing carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gases behind global warming. When trees burn or rot, they release carbon into the atmosphere, adding fuel to a warming phenomenon that could have disastrous consequences for humankind. Finally, forests regulate local temperature and rainfall--and influence climate--by a complicated interaction among ground, water, air and trees that is still not fully understood.
Can the forests be saved? Much depends on the ability of governments to come up with plans for the sustainable management of forests that will also satisfy the needs of those who are cutting woodlands down at an accelerating rate. So far the record is not good. At the Earth Summit, delegates signed no convention on forests because developing nations were unwilling to cooperate in what they saw as an effort by wealthy countries to restrict resource development in poorer regions. Nations like Brazil resented being dictated to by countries that have little forest left to protect. Efforts by the U.N. to restart negotiations on an international forest treaty at a conference in June called Earth Summit + 5 were opposed by all sides and got nowhere.
There may be more potential in the enforcement of existing treaties, including the Convention on Biological Diversity, a pact reached at the Earth Summit that indirectly fosters forest preservation as a way of protecting plants and wildlife. Another promising initiative comes from the Forest Stewardship Council, an independent, international accrediting agency based in Oaxaca, Mexico. The council certifies the sources of timber, so that buyers have the option of getting supplies from well-managed forests.
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