Deforestation (Run, Forest, run!)

A fair point.

Source: True Activist, Imagine if Trees Gave off WiFi Signals, 2013.

Deforestation. Not a word with positive connotations, is it? Don’t worry; I am definitely not here to change that. But I am here to inform you a bit more about it, because I’m fun like that. People talk about the Amazon a lot. It’s like the polar bear of ecosystems; big and exciting, and everyone knows that we need to save it. It’s the one you talk about because people have heard of it, and because you can put it on the front of a magazine and people will care. No one wants to hear about preserving peat bogs anymore than they want a big picture of a worm telling them it needs their help. People want pretty things like polar bears and enormous, mysterious forests to care about. In short, poster children.

Look at that vista; how can you not want to save it?

Source: Wikimedia Commons, Amazon 24, 2011.

 And let’s be clear, the poster child of biomes is in trouble, but so are the Indonesian rainforests, and plenty of other ecosystems. There are forests all over the world; there used to be a lot more, in fact England was once covered in trees. Think of all those fairytales where people get lost in the woods; can you imagine managing that in the UK today? Walk in a straight line for an hour or two and you’ll find an A road. But time was you could wander for days without ever leaving the trees. We’ve lost a lot of that over the centuries, and now we’re doing the same to the rainforests of the world. We have many reasons, but one of the biggest ones is agriculture; in 2002, it was estimated that agriculture was the driver behind 96% of deforestation (Geist and Lambin, 2002).

 You’ve probably heard that palm oil is far from ecologically friendly, but do you know why? One word, dear readers; monoculture. From mono, meaning one; an area in which only one crop is cultivated. Swathes of Indonesian rainforest are cut down in favour on palm oil and other monoculture crops, resulting in enormous amounts of deforestation. And we don’t call the rainforests the lungs of the Earth for nothing; we need them. For air. That we breathe. But monoculture has another, sinister impact; it destroys the natural ecosystem. The habitat of a multitude of endangered species, being cut down for products you probably barely think about on a day-to-day basis. Go on, try to think of something you use palm oil for. I dare you. (Actually, it’s in half the stuff we use).

The same trees, as far as the eye can see.

Source: Wikimedia Commons, Oil palm plantation in Cigudeg, 2008.

 One of the big drivers of deforestation in favour of agriculture. Cash crops in Indonesia like palm oil, cocoa, and coffee became popular because of their monetary value; developing from relatively eco-friendly agroforests to all-encompassing monoculture in a period of only about three decades (Feintrenie et al, 2010). The fact of the matter is, most people want to increase their income; and they’re not willing to jeopardise that in the name of conservation. And, side note, can we blame them? It’s easy enough for those of us living in relative financial stability to look with scorn upon those who would squander this natural beauty in favour of cold hard cash, but when it’s a choice between deforestation or poverty, would any of us really choose differently? Too often, the poor pay the price for conservation sought by the rich (Martin et al, 2013).

  And what is the impact of all of this deforestation? We’ve all seen the pictures of sad orangutans looking lost and pathetic, as would you if someone had just replaced your home with a field of coconut trees, but the reality is an enormous loss of diversity from the rainforests we’re cutting down. Biodiversity isn’t just something that’s nice to look at; it’s important for the entire ecosystem that a balance is maintained, and a lot of the ecosystem services we rely on – air, pollination, and the like – rely themselves on some stability in the ecosystem (Memmott et al, 2007). Not only that, but monoculture results in a loss of genetic diversity in the area, which can cause problems for adaptation to the kinds of changes anthropogenic global warming is driving.

When will my forest return from the war?

But seriously, these guys are losing their habitat. It's not good.

Source: Wikimedia Commons, Sad Orangutan, 2009.

 These large forests also do a lot to dampen the impacts of our greenhouse gas emissions; through 

photosynthesis, those enormous areas of trees take up tonnes of carbon dioxide on a daily basis, but when we chop them down that helping hand is cut away. A study in 2005 (Santilli et al) estimated that the annual tropical deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia would equal about 80% of the emissions supposed to be reduced under the Kyoto Protocol. Deforestation is thought to account for between 5-20% of global carbon emissions annually, with an area roughly the size of Egypt being cut down from 2000-2012 (Norris, 2016). More, in 2014 Arima et al found that enforcement of deforestation prevention in Brazil over 3 years avoided ~10,000km² of forest loss, as well as emissions of 1.23*10^-1Pg carbon.

 This is one of those facets of agriculture that seem irredeemable. The loss of so much natural beauty, so much diversity and, if you’re not swayed by any of that, the services we receive from these ecosystems is no small issue. But, until we can change policies to discourage expansion of agriculture into tropical forests, and find a way to enforce these policies effectively, there doesn’t seem to be much hope of change. It isn’t hopeless; Arima et al showed that with the benefits of good enforcement of forestry protection, but how can we protect the entirety of these enormous biomes? Is there a way to provide as much financial incentive to protect the forests as people receive to cut them down for farmland, without damaging economies? There doesn’t seem to be an easy solution, as always with the agricultural system.