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Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 09:48:22 -0800
To: Recipient List Suppressed:;
From: Native Americas Journal <bfw2@cornell.edu>
Subject: Reigniting the Rainforest: Fires, Development and Deforestation

The following article is provided from Native Americas' special-issue
on "Global Warming, Climate Change and Native Lands." Published by
the Akwe:kon Press at Cornell University's American Indian Program,
Native Americas Journal keeps you informed of issues and events that
impact indigenous communities throughout the hemisphere. You can find
more information on this topic, as well as how to subscribe to Native
Americas, on our website at http://nativeamericas.aip.cornell.edu.
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Reigniting the Rainforest: Fires, Development and Deforestation
By Stephan Schwartzman/Native Americas Journal
© Copyright 2000

The rainforest used to be a most fashionable environmental cause in
Hollywood, but movie stars, along with much of America, have limited
attention spans, and lately, the rainforest has fallen from favor.
The destruction of the rainforest is as real a dilemma as it was ten
years ago, only fewer people discuss it.

The rainforest has real implications and consequences for all of us.
Forest destruction, particularly in the tropics, and the still-open
question of whether or not it can be slowed or stopped, very likely
will be more important to the ecological condition of the planet our
children and grandchildren will inherit than anything else happening
in the world today. The destruction is worse than you think, and is
likely to affect you and your children. But the chances to stop it
are also much better, in large part because of what people in the
forest-indigenous peoples-and their allies in the environmental
movement are doing.

Is it Just a Case of too Many People?
An area of forest bigger than Belgium, Holland and Austria put
together, or about 40 percent of California, was cut down and burned
every year between 1980 and 1995, some 62,000 square miles per year.
NASA's Landsat satellite photographs show that more than 200,000
square miles, an area about the size of France, has been cleared and
burned in Brazil alone. All of this has happened since the 1970s.

Clearly, old-growth forest, or forest that has remained virtually
untouched by industrial development, has a very different value in a
world of 6 billion people. It does not look inexhaustible anymore.
But global aggregates alone cannot be blamed for the devastation of
old-growth forests.

A very large part of forest destruction is driven by multinational
corporate developments many times at the expense of poor people (such
as Indians and other minorities).

Across the tropics, energy and infrastructure development (pipelines,
oil and gas extraction, roads and dams) and mining have taken a heavy
toll. Guyanese Amerindians, the Ogoni minority of Nigeria and New
Guinea tribal peoples all can testify that multinational investment
in the tropics often has featured the dismal combination of
environmental damage, compromised health for local people and human
rights abuses. Major players in the global development race have used
public money and (with the partial exception of U.S. export credit
agencies) have done so with minimal or no environmental,
freedom-of-information or human rights policies.

American consumers are linked directly to tropical deforestation by
tropical timber exports. Each piece of mahogany furniture and every
strip of Indonesian plywood are a part of the devastation. Both
commodities are key causes of opening up the most pristine
rainforests in the world to depredation, fires and invasion of
indigenous people's lands. Tropical timber is a small item in U.S.
wood and wood product consumption, but it has environmental and human
consequences drastically out of proportion to its economic value.

It is, however, important to understand that most tropical timber is
consumed in tropical countries-Brazil exports only 14 percent of the
timber extracted from the Amazon. U.S. consumption of tropical timber
could cease altogether with little or no appreciable effect on
deforestation in most of the tropics, unless consumption patterns in
Asia and the developing countries also change.

Americans use 10 times more paper products than developing countries,
but the consumption of wood and paper is growing much faster in the
developing world than in the United States.

Some scientists estimate that there are only 5.2 million square miles
of old-growth forest (not just tropical, but temperate and boreal as
well) left in the world. That 62,000 square-mile-a-year deforestation
figure could be off by 10,000 either way, but if it does not
radically slow down-and soon-no old-growth will be left in just two
human lifetimes.

Eradicating the old-growth forests of the world would change the
course of evolution on the planet in ways that we cannot imagine. It
could also make global warming happen much faster than it already is,
and in ways that could seriously impair the planet's ability to
sustain life at the levels it presently does. Ecosystems, as Native
people and, more recently, ecologists have long warned, are
interconnected like a Chinese puzzle-take one piece out, and it all
starts to come apart.

Fire and Rain
Forests do things for us we continue to ignore and discount, to our
increasing loss. These things are sometimes called "ecosystem
services" and they are in ever-shorter supply. China, not a world
leader in green consciousness, last year banned all logging in its
few remaining natural forests after disastrous flooding wreaked havoc
along heavily populated rivers. In so doing, China hoped to save
remnants of forest cover on the upper headwaters. But so much forest
is already gone that it may not make much difference.

In February, numerous people died and hundreds of millions of dollars
in property was destroyed in massive floods that shut down the
industrial capital of South America, São Pãolo. Paving over every
patch of green that could have absorbed run-off is one major reason.
Some 70 percent of Brazil's population lives in the coastal Atlantic
forest region. Their water supply, flood control, soil conservation
and regional climate all ultimately depend on this forest, which is
more than 90 percent gone. Experts now expect a third of the world's
population to face serious water shortages in the next 25 years-the
most and worst where there are the least old-growth forests.

The Amazon is a good example of how trees and water connect-about
half of the rain that falls on the forest is produced by the forest
itself, which breathes out water through its multi-billions of
capillaries. Cut the forest down and there are fewer plants to hold
the rain and cycle it back. More water runs off, carrying more
topsoil, leaving less to make rain. The Amazon has about a fifth of
the fresh water in the world, so it is not drying up-yet.

Fruits of the Forest
Tropical forests hold between 50 and 90 percent of the living species
on the planet. This margin of uncertainty accounts for what
biologists do not know about the plants and animals in tropical
forests. No more than one-tenth of the species alive are known to
science (and maybe only one-one hundredth).

Tropical forests have given us rubber, chocolate, vanilla, quinine,
d-tubocurarine (which, made from the arrow poison curare,
revolutionized modern surgery) and vincristine (extracted from
Madagascar periwinkle, which greatly increased survival rates for
childhood leukemia). Scientists have recently reported a new
generation of painkillers under development, much more powerful than
heroin, but non-addictive-based on frog venom traditionally used by
Amazon Natives for shamanic purposes.

Diminished forests will mean diminished biotic resources. Biologists
have calculated that the greatest wave of extinction since the
dinosaurs disappeared 60 million years ago is happening now because
of tropical forest loss.

Where There is Smoke. . .
The grand master of ecological disasters is global warming. It covers
everything. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, some
2,000 climate scientists strong, has concluded that the Earth is
already warmer than it was a century ago, and could become between
one degree and 3.5 degrees Celsius warmer on average over the next
century, largely because of the carbon dioxide and other gases we are
pouring into the atmosphere. How quickly and how much warming occurs
could make a big difference. Scientists are already documenting
rising sea levels and melting glaciers, and looking at shifting
ecological zones, more rapid evaporation and more extreme weather
patterns.

Scientists point to carbon dioxide as the primary suspect in this
unfolding story of ecological cataclysm. Specifically, carbon dioxide
from fossil fuels in industrialized countries-with the United States
first and foremost. But the burning of tropical forests runs a strong
second-tropical forest destruction has contributed some 20 percent of
the carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere. The burning of the
Brazilian Amazon as measured in the Landsat pictures alone
contributes about 5 percent of annual global carbon dioxide
emissions. Furthermore, recent research suggests that forests may act
as carbon "sinks"-which take up and store more carbon than they give
off in photosynthesis, and absorb even more in an increasingly
carbon-rich atmosphere. Forests could be the determinant between
low-end temperature increase, slow enough to adapt to without major
social disruptions, and high-end change, faster than current social
arrangements will easily bear.

The recent wildfires in Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and the United
States have triggered an alarm. More fires mean even more carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere. But the truly hair-raising prospect is
that climate change may be making the forests drier and more
fire-prone, while more fires hasten the change, making bigger fires
more likely. The Woods Hole Research Center has found that for every
acre cleared and burned in the Amazon, at least another acre burns in
ground fires under the forest canopy and/or is degraded by selective
logging (not picked up by the satellites). The frequency and extent
of these ground fires skyrocket in El Niño events, which can then
cause drought in some tropical forests-and such fires are likely to
increase in frequency and intensity with global warming.

The fire that burned out of control in the Amazon forest for two
months last year may look like kindling the next time around. Runaway
industrial energy consumption plays out in everyone else's
atmosphere, and so do the fires in the Amazon. The carbon dioxide
emissions of Amazon fires may be close to 10 percent of the world
total.

What Can Be Done?
In order to change the way things are headed in tropical forests,
people and organizations in the United States have to work with
allies that are there, who can do something about it and who have a
real interest in changing the status quo.

Indigenous peoples in the Amazon have made major gains over the last
decade. Leaders such as Davi Yanomami, Ailton Krenak, Jose Adalberto
Macuxi, Euclides Macuxi and many others have built the alliances
needed to move the Brazilian government to recognize 20 percent of
the Amazon-an area twice the size of California-as indigenous
territory. This is the largest expanse of tropical forest protected
anywhere. Indians in Colombia, Peru and Ecuador have also won
substantial gains in recognition of their land rights. While many
areas are invaded and leaders sell timber and strike deals with
miners, protecting indigenous land in the Amazon objectively halts
deforestation.

Many around the world remember Chico Mendes, the rubber-tapper union
leader from the Amazon who was murdered ten years ago. He led the
movement of forest people who make a living collecting wild rubber
latex against invading cattle ranchers. This was the first social
movement to seek alliance with indigenous organizations in the
region. Neither Indians nor rubber tappers look familiar to most
people in North America, but they and their colleagues have made
significant gains in the last ten years. This forest peoples movement
and sectors aligned with it have elected two state governors in the
Amazon-something almost no one believed possible a few years ago.

Chico Mendes was killed creating a reserve for rubber tappers to live
in and manage sustainably-the first "extractive reserve." The idea
for these reserves was drawn from indigenous reserves. The National
Council of Rubber Tappers that he founded has created 21 of these
reserves. A glance at the satellite images shows that Indian areas
and extractive reserves actually stop deforestation on the Amazon
frontier. The Council of Rubber Tappers is honoring the tenth
anniversary of Mendes' assassination with a campaign for new
extractive reserves-the council wants 10 percent of the Amazon as
extractive reservesby 2002-and for policies to make these and the
Indian lands sustainable and economically viable.

The rainforest is not destroyed. It is shrinking but there is still
time to do plenty about it. The Amazon is a forest almost half the
size of the continental United States, well more than three-quarters
intact. We have an historic opportunity to build strong
constituencies for protection and sustainability before the natural
ecosystem has been practically eliminated.
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Sidebar--Accelerating Destruction
Probably the most significant new data on forests worldwide in the
1990s is the result of the work of the Woods Hole Research Institute
team on fire in the Amazon (Nepstad et al. 1999). Woods Hole has
demonstrated that more forest destruction and degradation is
occurring in the Amazon than is seen by the satellite images.

For every acre of forest cleared and burned, at least another acre is
either degraded by selective logging or damaged by runaway ground
fires, or both. Current satellite images register clearing and
burning, but not selective logging or ground fires. In El Niño years,
this fire-induced damage is even greater. This research in fact
predicted the unprecedented kind of fire that occurred in Roraima in
1998, when primary moist tropical forest burned as a result ofrunaway
fire from deforestation. Previously, moist tropical forest has been
fire-resistant, because of the ability of deep root systems to tap
subsoil water reserves. The 1997?1998 El Niño, however, depleted the
subsoil water enough so that the forest became flammable.

El Niño events may become more frequent as a result of global climate
change (Nepstad et al. 1999). Exacerbating the problem, forest once
burned ismuch more likely to burn again. As is the case with
deforestation rates, the effects of logging and ground fires have
been best studied in Brazil (even if much more research is needed
there). But as massive fires in Indonesia and Mexico demonstrated,
the phenomenon is far more widely distributed.

The prospect of climate change inducing drier conditions in tropical
forests-leading to larger and more destructive fires, which in turn
speeds climate change, provoking a vicious circle of drying, fires,
more drying, greater conflagrations-all represents a qualitative
change in the process of forest destruction. Previously, essentially
all discussion of the issue has been grounded in the deforestation
data-the area cleared and burned as registered in Landsat images.
Fire itself, under conditions of climate change, may threaten much
greater areas of forest much more quickly than deforestation per se.

In addition, local deforestation or burning reduces the leaf surface
available for evapo-transpiration, or the cycling of rainwater
through plants and trees back into the atmosphere. Since
evapo-transpiration accounts for about half of the rain that falls on
the Amazon forest, increasing deforestation could lead to reduced
rainfall on a local level, further exacerbating a cycle of more
drying and greater fires.

The most extensive exercise in analyzing the state of the world's
forest cover is the world forest map compiled by the World
Conservation Monitoring Center (WCMC 1997). By this analysis roughly
half of the world's original primary forest is now gone-and a
disproportionate share of this has been lost in the last three
decades. The largest remaining areas of primary forest are expanses
of boreal forest covering parts of Siberia and northern Canada, and
the tropical forests of the Amazon and Guyana shield region. Most
sources agree that primary temperate forest has virtually disappeared
(WCMC 1997; FAO 1997).
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Stephan Schwartzman is a senior scientist with the International
Program of the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington DC.
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"Nowhere else will you be able to find such powerful-knowledge filled
writing."
-Wilma Mankiller, Editorial Board Member of Native Americas Journal

Native Americas Journal
Akwe:kon Press
American Indian Program
Cornell University
450 Caldwell Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853-2602

Tel.    (607) 255-4308
Subs.   (800) 9-NATIVE
Fax.    (607) 255-0185
Email.  nativeamericas@cornell.edu
Internet        http://nativeamericas.aip.cornell.edu

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