Education

Reasons for Saving Tropical Forests

There are many reasons for saving tropical forests, and indeed for creatively trying to seek solutions for many of the environmental problems that are bombarding our fragile planet. It is a battle between trying to undo all the destruction that has taken place already, and trying to prevent the destruction of the few remaining fragmented islands of natural pristine land we have left on the planet. Some of the reasons why tropical forests should be saved are detailed below. They are meant to be ideas to provoke your thoughts and hopefully you can add many more reasons, and think of ways that you in your life can contribute to saving what little forests remain.

Deep Ecology: The forests and its diverse life forms have an inherent value and we, as people, have no right to destroy this richness and diversity for our own purposes.

The destruction of the world’s tropical forests will drastically change the world’s weather patterns and exacerbate global warming.

Biodiversity: Tropical forests contain over half of the earth’s plant and animal species. Destruction of habitat destroys intricate webs of diverse life, as well as destroying species as yet unknown.

Medicinal Plants: We are losing species that could be of medical or other importance for humans. One quarter of all prescription medicine and 70% of medicines used for cancer treatments comes from tropical forest plants.

Inspirational: Tropical forests are wild and uniquely beautiful inspirational places where amazing and strange plants and animals live. They have long inspired artists, scientists and others. The ongoing loss of these forests is beyond quantification for humans everywhere.

Inter-generational Equity: We are destroying our children's heritage. We have an obligation to our children as yet unborn to leave them the beauty, diversity and essential ecological functioning of the tropical forests.

Cultural Traditions: As forests disappear so to do the cultural traditions of many indigenous peoples - these people have a right to live where and how they want. Communities who live outside of the tropical forests depend on many of the products that come from the forests including hard woods, food and bamboo. As destruction continues these products become increasingly scarce and expensive.

Flood & Drought Prevention: Rainforests act to protect the watersheds of the world’s great tropical rivers. The forest vegetation acts as a sponge to prevent flooding during the rainy season by releasing water slowly and moderating run-off. The loss of thousands of acres of tropical forests is already causing serious local problems such as soil erosion, flooding, droughts and pollution.

Seed Bank: Remnant tropical forests provide a truly safe seed bank to preserve biological diversity for future regrowth.

Psychological: Humans are becoming more and more trapped in modern city living, out of touch with the natural cycles of life. This has a major negative psychological impact on the human psyche. As this trend continues, the remaining wild places of the earth will become increasingly sacred and sought after.

Environmental Issues

Deforestation:

Less than two centuries ago, tropical forests covered a fifth of the earth’s surface, forming a lush green tropical band around the planet. In this short interval, humanity in its quest for growth and expansion has destroyed two thirds of the forests, leaving 7% of the earth as fragmented forest islands in deserts of infertile land. And this trend is continuing with 120 million hectares of forest being destroyed each year - about 2.4 hectares for every second of every day. If this rate continues, there will be no pristine rainforests on the planet surface within the next 50 years!

As with the rest of the planet, this trend has been mirrored in Costa Rica where the 20th Century has witnessed a decimation of tropical forests. Scientists believe that 99.8% of Costa Rica’s 51 000 square kilometers was originally covered with lush tropical forests as only one of the 12 ecological life zones found in the country -constituting 0.2% of the land - is naturally forest free. But by 1950 one quarter of the tropical forests were destroyed. During the period from 1950 to 1985, Costa Rica had one of the highest deforestation rates in Central America, during which time a further 50% of forests were destroyed. Currently only approximately 26% of the land remains under forest, of which 20% is formally conserved in protected areas.

However, in comparision to other Central American countries, the situation is much better in Costa Rica which has well-established conservation organisations and a national commitment to conserving the remaining forests. The escalation of ecotourism in the past decade has also illustrated the financial benefits of conservation, but the danger is that uncontrolled ecotourism will lead to environmental degradation, and destroy the natural resource base upon which it depends.

Reasons for Deforestation:

Deforestation is a function of complex social, economic and political factors, without any easy solutions. There are many reasons for deforestation including cattle ranching, demand for land, timber harvesting, population growth, roads opening areas previously inaccessible, political policies, slash and burn agriculture and the exportation of forest products. Below are highlighted some of the main causes of deforestation in Costa Rica.

Demand for Land:

In Costa Rica, increased demands for land primarily for agriculture has been the primary cause for deforestation rather than timber harvesting, even though most of the country’s land is generally unsuitable for agriculture and many slopes are very steep, rainfall is high and soil fertility is low.

Legal System:

Historically, the legal system has encouraged deforestation as the common law recognised that people who openly occupy and work the land not actively used by another, gains rights due to labor or for “improvements”, i.e. the removal of trees. And in the last century laws were promulgated which encouraged people to settle and acquire ownership of public land. Currently, the legal system still allows people to aquire legal title by clearing land. This has been abused by squatters who in some cases invade forest land, remove the trees and then sell to farmers or commercial developers. The squatters then move onto more forest land and repeat the process. As forest lands are particularly vulnerable to invasion by squatters, private landowners avoid this by selling off timber to loggers and creating extensive pasture lands, or by sub-dividing their property into small farmers irrespective of the agricultural quality of the land. All this has resulted in continuing deforestation.

Cattle Ranching:

The conversion of forest land to cattle pasture, known as the McDonald Syndrome whereby forests are converted into pasture lands with low soil fertility to feed the cattle that are sold as cheap beef to the international market for sale as hamburgers, is prevalent in Costa Rica. Statistics indicate that over the period from 1950 to 1993 deforestation increased by 50% whilst pastural land increased by almost 50%, currently covering approximately 60% of Costa Rican land. This trend is still continuing as the early 1990’s showed an average annual rate of deforestation of approximately 800 square kilometers per annum.

Cattle Ranchers form a very strong lobby group and they have historically opposed progressive law reform, which would improve the situation, from taking place. Additionally, the national banking system has continued to provide interest loans for cattle ranching, and the overseas market has provided much incentive for exporting cheap beef.

Population Growth:

The population of the planet, especially in developing areas, is increasing at an alarming rate. This exploding population is trying to survive off a limited resource base, which is quickly disappearing. However, overpopulation cannot be seen in isolation as people in the developed world, where population growth has been contained, have a life-style based on the non-sustainable exploitation of natural resources - especially energy and water, resulting in the fact that a child of a first world country, such as the United States, uses many times more resources than a third world child, for example in Africa. Costa Rica is caught in the middle, with its people aspiring to first world lifestyles and still having a relatively high birth rate of about 2.5%. Within the past 100 years the population has expanded from approximately 300 000 people to its current 3 000 000, and this is exacerbating the land pressure problem, increasing the rate of urbanization and forcing people onto more marginal land for agricultural purposes and thereby exacerbating deforestation.

Soil Erosion:

Once land has been clear-felled to make way for pastures and crops, the soil becomes degraded very quickly and is unable to sustain production. Soil erosion in the forms of landslides, surface and wind erosion, and water erosion creating barren gullies and non-productive lands is encroaching rapidly on the already low proportion of fertile lands in Costa Rica. It is very visible in Costa Rica for instance on the road between the inter-Americana Highway and the Monteverde District. The loss of fertile land is exacerbated by the rapid rate of urbanization which converts agricultural land into urban sprawl. Additionally, soils are also being degraded biologically and chemically through toxic chemicals, fertilizers and pesticides.

In Costa Rica it was estimated a decade ago that over a third of the country’s land surface was severely eroded, and that another third was subjected to increased flooding and subtler forms of erosions. In addition to creating wastelands out of once fertile soils, erosion also cause the rivers and lakes to fill with sediments which causes increased flooding, reduces the capacity of dams and therefore hampers the production of energy through hydro-electric power. In the Arenal Catchment statistics for the soil loss per hectare attributed to the different land uses ranged from 1.4 tons/hectare for natural forests, 18.2 t/h for permanent crops, 109 t/h for pasture and 840 t/h for annual crops. These figures are conservative as they are based on soils with a low erosion index. For soils with a high erosion index these statistics would double.

Rainforests and soils are not rich in nutrients because most of the nutrients are tied up in the biomass above the soil. Additionally, the high rainfall results in a high leachate of nutrients. Once a rainforest area is cleared, it takes between 3 and 10 years for the land to become unproductive, forcing farmers to deforest more land. In addition, cattle compact and toxify the soil, which may take centuries to regenerate.

Greenhouse Effect:

Gases such as carbon dioxide and methane act like the glass of a greenhouse around the earth’s surface by allowing the sun’s heat to enter the earth’s atmosphere but preventing it from escaping. The sun’s heat enters the earth’s atmosphere in long wave radiation, and as it bounces off the earth’s surface it gets reflected off the increased carbon levels back to the earth and the heat stays within the atmosphere instead of escaping, so that effectively the earth is getting hotter and hotter. Tropical forests help as the trees provide carbon sinks, the more trees there are, the less carbon there is in the atmosphere. Additionally, tropical forests are often cleared to make way for cattle ranching which adds to the greenhouse effect as methane - a potent greenhouse gas - is produced in the cattle digestion process and liberated through cattle burps.

The international scienfic community is becoming increasingly concerned regarding the devastating impact global climate change and global warming will have on the word’s ecosystems which are already suffering undue stress levels.The cloud forests, which depend on the constant presence of the cool, condensed saturated air, is particularly vulnerable to global warming, and studies show that its impact may already be felt. Birds which are located in altitudinal niches within the local environment may be moving into higher zones and it is feared that birds which are found in the highest altitudinal zones around Santa Elena and Monteverde, such as the Red Start, may be declining.

Water:

Deforestation results in reduced water supplies and this is becoming increasingly problematic in Costa Rica. As deforestation increases, humans increasingly move into areas previously uninhabited and need a source of water. Therefore water becomes increasingly diverted away from streams and springs for human use and this decreases the flow rate has a concommitant reduction in species diversity, abundance and richness. In addition to reduced flow the destruction of forests reduce the holding of water in the ground resulting in increased events of floods and droughts and also stops the natural function of watersheds which is that of purifying water.

El Niño:

Global climates, especially in South and Central America are periodically disturbed by an event called El Niño named after the Christ Child as it usually takes place around Christmas time. It occurs when a high pressure weather system that is normally stable over the eastern Pacific Ocean breaks down, destroying the pattern of trade winds. The cold ocean currents which usually flow along the west coast of Central and South America veers out to sea and is replaced by much warmer waters which results in warmer and drier weather. El Niño causes major disruptions to ecosystems and has a huge impact on global heat patterns and weather systems - causing floods, droughts, fires and other natural disasters around the world with a concomitant impact on humans - the financial damage which ensued from the El Niño event in 1982 was estimated to amount to almost $9 billion.

In Costa Rica the El Niño years have a longer dry season and a shorter warmer and drier wet season. This fools trees into flowering out of time, and in some cases not to fruit at all which some studies have shown can have a disastrous effect on the fruit eating animals. There have been eight major El Niño events since 1945 and the causes responsible for the periodicity of El Niños are as yet unknown. Tropical forests which are already very sensitive to seasonal changes are severely affected by changes caused by El Niño.