by Deana Cox
Tropical forests cover about 6% of the Earth's land are (about the size of the contiguous United States) and grow in the equatorial regions of Latin America, Africa and Asia. Just four countries, Brazil, Indonesia, the region formerly known as Zaire and Peru, contain more than half of the world's total. Tropical forests come in several varieties: rain forests, which receive rainfall almost daily, tropical deciduous forests, which have one or two dry seasons each year, dry deciduous forests, and forests on hills and mountains. All of these are threatened with deforestation, but the worst destruction is occurring in the wetter ones.
Climate and biological data suggest that mature tropical forests once covered at least twice as much area as they do today, with most of the destruction occurring since 1950. Satellite scans and ground-level surveys used to estimate forest destruction indicate that tropical forests are vanishing rapidly. The most widely accepted estimate of tropical forest loss is a rate of 154,000 square kilometers (59,000 square miles) per year, or about the same as 34 city blocks per minute or two football fields per second.. It is estimate that and equal area of forest is seriously degraded without being destroyed outright every year as well. In other words during every minute of every day roughly 68 blocks of tropical forest are destroyed or degraded.
About 40% of current tropical deforestation takes place in South America, especially in the vast Amazon Basin. However, the rates of such deforestation in Southeast Asia and in Central America are about 2.7 times higher than those in South America. Haiti has lost 98% of its original forest cover, the Philippines 97%, and Madagascar 84%. Most attention has focused on the Amazon Basin, but 95% of the once vast rainforests on Brazil's Atlantic coats and 98% of the coniferous forests of the south have been devastated by logging and urban expansion.
Biologists consider the plight of tropical forests to be one of the world's most serious environmental problem because these forests are home to 50-90% of the Earth's total stock of species, most of which are still unknown. Tropical forests touch the daily lives of everyone on Earth through the products and ecological services they provide. These forests supply half the world's annual harvest of hardwood, hundreds of food products (including coffee, tea, cocoa, spices, nuts, chocolate, and tropical fruits), and materials such as natural latex rubber, resins, dyes, and essential oils that can be harvested sustainably. The active ingredients for 25% of the world's prescription drugs are substances derived from plants, most of which grow in tropical rainforests. Seventy percent of the 3,000 plants identified by the National Cancer Institute as sources of cancer-fighting chemicals come from tropical forests. despite this immense potential, fewer than 1% of the estimated 125,000 flowering plant species in tropical forests (and less than 3% of all the world's 235,000 such species) have been examined closely for their possible use as human resources. Deforestation is kind of like burning down an ancient library before reading the books.
Tropical deforestation results from a number of interconnected causes, all of which are related in some way to population growth, poverty and government polices that encourage deforestation. Population growth and poverty combine to drive subsistence farmers and the landless poor to tropical forests, where they try to grow enough food to survive. To defuse social tensions relating to unfair land distribution or to the pressures of rapid population growth, governments have encouraged the poor to colonize tropical forests by giving them land to clear. The process of tropical deforestation begins with a road, usually one cut by logging companies. Once the forest becomes accessible it can be cleared and increasingly degraded by a number of factors. One is unsustainable forms of small scale farming. Hordes of poor people follow logging roads into the forest to build homes and to plant crops on small cleared plots. Instead of practicing various methods of traditional and potentially sustainable shifting cultivation, the practice farming that depletes soils and destroys large tracts of forests. Cattle ranching is another factor. These are often established on cropland that has been exhausted by small scale farmers. When torrential rains and over-grazing turn the thin, nutrient-poor soils into eroded wastelands, ranchers move on to another area and repeat the destructive process. Clearing large areas of forest for cash crops severely degrades tropical forests. Immense plantations grow crops such as sugarcane, bananas, pineapples, peppers, strawberries, cotton, tea and coffee, mostly for export to the more developed countries of the world. the degradation of the forests continues with mining. Much of the extracted minerals, such as iron ore and bauxite are exported to the more developed countries and widespread gold mining has been particularly destructive because it pollutes streams and soils with mercury. Dams built on rivers flood large areas of tropical forests. And finally commercial logging. Japan alone accounts for 53% of the world's tropical lumber imports, followed by Europe at 32% and the United States at 15%.
A number of analysts have suggested ways to protect tropical forests, to use them sustainably and to restore degraded areas. First we must make a detailed survey to determine how much of the world is covered with tropical (and other) forests, how much has been deforested or degraded, and where. We also need to identify and move rapidly to protect areas of tropical forests that are both rich in unique species and in imminent danger. Environmentalists urge countries to reduce the flow of the landless poor to the tropical forests by slowing population growth and discouraging the poor from migrating to undisturbed tropical forests and to sharply reduce the poverty that leaves the poor no choice but to use forests unsustainably. Programs are needed to help settlers in tropical forests learn how to practice small-scale sustainable agriculture. Governments can also phase out subsides that encourage unsustainable deforestation and phase in tariffs, use taxes, user fees and subsides that favor sustainable forestry and protection of biodiversity. Tropical timber-cutting regulations and practices can be reformed, and finally global efforts can be mounted to reforest and rehabilitate degraded tropical forests and watersheds.
People all over the world are working to protect forests. In 1985 the Rainforest Action Network was virtually alone in the United States in opposing tropical deforestation. Today there are more than 200 Rainforests Action groups around the United States and hundreds of other organizations around the world. Most college campuses have at least one and many international organization focus primarily on forest conservation or include it among the many causes they support.
Listed below are just a few of the many organizations you can write to for more information, and here are a few ways you, as an individual, can make a difference.
1. Develop a plan for the sustainable use of any forested area you own.
2. Plant tress on a regular basis and take care of them.
3. Reduce the use of wood and paper products, recycle paper products, and buy recycled paper products.
4. Don't buy furniture, doors, flooring, window frames, paneling, or other products made from tropical hardwoods such as teak and mahogany.
5. Help restore or rehabilitate a degraded area of forest near your home.
6. When building a home, save all the trees possible. Require that as little of the natural environment as possible be disturbed.
World Wildlife Fund 1250 24th ST., NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC 20037
World Rainforest Movement International Secretariat, 87 Cantonment Rd., 10250, Penang Malaysia;
The Sierra Club 730 Polk St., San Francisco, CA 94109 or 408 C St., NE, Washington, DC 20002
Earth First! 305 n. sixth St., Madison, WI 53704
International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources 1400 16th ST., NW, Washington, DC 20036
Friends of the Earth 218 D St., SE, Washington, DC 20003
All information, statistics, photographs and pictures came from G. Tyler Miller Jr.'s Living In The Environment, Ninth Edition, Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1996.
