Is deforestation a necessary evil? Part 2

Back in 2010, there was a huge amount of hype surrounding the finale of the TV series Lost and I would like to think this final post offers a similar amount of suspense in drawing together all the loose ends, questions and arguments formed throughout the past three months in order to answer the important question - is deforestation a necessary evil?
In the second part of this post I will be exploring why we should be stopping deforestation/why are the trees important? and whether we can achieve such as thing  as "sustainable deforestation"? Once again, I will be drawing upon past blogs as well as new academic literature.

I would love to hear your opinion - you can comment on the post or vote in the POLL at the top left of the blog.

Why We Should Stop Deforestation?
From the dark Gothic forests rolling across Siberia to the Kapok trees with their mighty buttresses in Amazonia, trees provide an irreplaceable beauty  that is destroyed by deforestation. No academic study can quantify (or qualify) the uniqueness and brilliance of the natural world held within the planet's forests.
With 70% of the world's land species living in forest biomes, deforestation is an ecological threat. Many of the world's endangered species are threatened with habitat loss due to deforestation:

• The Javan Rhino has been reduced to 60 left in the wild because of the conversion of natural forest to farmland (Fernando et al. 2006).
• Bornean Orangutan is critically endangered due to habitat destruction caused by illegal logging (Curran et al. 2004).
• Golden Lion Tamarin is endemic to the Amazon jungle but is endangered due to agriculture and logging (Keirulff and Rylunds 2003).

Hear Me Roar! A Golden Lion Tamarin with her offspring in the Amazon (Rainforest Alliance)

Furthermore, as I have mentioned already the natural and the anthropogenic world are consistently interlinked and the destruction of forests would have more than an environmental/ecologically impact but also a human one. Plants and animals provide food, medicine and fuel for indigenous communities and less developed nations around the world and removing this vital resource would limit economic growth (Butler 2012). However, as I pointed out with the case study of Madagascar sometimes local communities exploit the rainforest as much as the developed world to the extent that they see the forest as a source of income rather than a resource to be appreciated. 25% of global medicines are derived from plants found in the world's forests (Kirkman 2014). What would happen if these were no longer available? What about medicines for diseases we have yet to discover?

From a purely ecological/environmental perspective deforestation is dark and evil like the ace of spades. It degrades the environment irreversibly and results in the extinction of priceless plants and animals. However, Part 1 showed that deforestation is crucial for human survival so can we reach a compromise?

Can We Achieve "Sustainable Deforestation"?

David Horsey's "Environment and Climate" cartoons sum up environmental politics nicely (source)

The world watched the COP21 in eager anticipation to see what world leaders would do to tackle global environmental change. There was a pleasing emphasis on deforestation with many countries such as Brazil pledging to reduce net deforestation to 0 under the REDD+ initiative and 42 companies pledging to be sustainable with regards to deforestation.
However, there are real questions about whether this can be achieved or are we heading for a "tree apocalypse"?
I have talked extensively about corruption and problems with political motivation in Brazil and Indonesia but it also goes down to a smaller bureaucratic level. Particularly in developing countries, departments concerned with forestry, agriculture, water, town planning and land use fail to interact ad often work in isolation with a detrimental effect on the environment as each pursues their own aims. Bawar and Siedler (2015) found this to be the case in the Eastern Himalayas where forest conservationist, land-use departments and small-holder farmers failed to interact to address problems associated with deforestation. What about developed nations? How do we manage the bureaucracy and political motivations there? However, education is key in many respects, as illustrated in the Madagascar case study (Dauvergne 1994). Showing local people, as well as governments, the value in preserving forests and the detrimental effects that will happen if deforestation continues  is effective if you show how their actions will adversity effect their lives, and the lives of their children.
Furthermore, a focus on development goals, infrastructural improvements and improving quality of life within countries such as Brazil or Indonesia has put environmental issues on the sideline, in the case of Brazil increased them (Ferraira et al.2014). This paper in Science noted how Brazil's natural resource extraction had increased due to development/urbanization and their growing economy.
We can never fully replace the trees that we have already chopped down, but afforestation and reforestation (discussed on this blog post quite extensively) offers a way to partially restore habitats as well as continue to provide a carbon sink and mitigate against climate change. However, a solution such as this would only be effective if all countries where to monitor deforestation (something that is arguably hard to do) and plant trees to replace the ones that had been felled.

A Conclusion
So that I don't loose track of my conclusions I am going to display them as concise points:

• Whether we like it or not, humans require natural resources (such as wood) to grow and survive and maintain a quality of life that we take for granted. 
• Indigenous people have a right to fell trees and make a living off the land in which they live but at the same time should be educated on the negative impacts deforestation will have on their community and the world. 
• We must learn from the mistakes of past societies (e.g. the Maya) so that we don't repeat them. Although our considerable technological advancements would mean total societal collapse due to deforestation is unlikely. 
• Illegal logging and deforestation is very wrong and tougher penalties should be enforced on those that do not abide by the law. 
• As individuals we can purchase environmentally sustainable products so as not to fuel illegal or unsustainable forestry practices. 
• Deforestation practices need to be altered in order to meet a growing population or population policies must be implemented in order to ensure we have an adequate amount of natural resources. 
• Deforestation can be managed and mitigated in a way that saves endangered species and precious habitats but also provides humans with a source of wood. 
• Deforestation is not a necessary evil but wood is a necessity that humans require. Deforestation is a means by which we get this necessity. However, it can be undertaken in a more environmentally friendly way. We can manage and not waste the natural resources we have at our disposal (e.g. slash and burn methods are extremely wasteful or plant fast growing trees that we can then cut down). 

Deforestation is a complicated topic that has been explored within this blog. It is implicated within sensitive issues (e.g. population) and complicated ones (e.g. politics) but it is a very real environmental problem that needs addressing. I will also post the results of the Twitter Poll ("Is deforestation a necessary evil?") once it has closed in 17 hours time. The poll on the side of this blog is open until noon on the 13th January so keep voting!

Thanks to everyone who has commented and read this blog over the past few months. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing and investigating deforestation. 

A cattle ranch in Mato Grosso, Brazil - was it really worth cutting down all those trees? (WSJ)

We're all in this Together - Deforestation and Politics

In my post about afforestation I mentioned that a post about deforestation and policy was inevitable. This is that post! I want to start out by explaining (that as I'm sure you all know) politics is complicated, driven by agenda and never clear cut. It is therefore difficult to link it to the overarching question of is deforestation a necessary evil? Instead I want to pose and potentially answer questions surrounding:

• Are governments to blame for illegal logging and uncontrolled deforestation?
• Can more be done to combat deforestation?

In this blog post I will focus my attention once again on the country of Brazil and examine the influence of politics on deforestation. 

"I used to worry that all the trees in the jungle would be cut down to make paper for their reports on how to save the rainforest" - Nick Birch (1993)

A Brief History of Politics in Brazil

In a pre-colonial setting of spears and campfires, and indeed during colonization, the people living within the verdant countryside of Amazonia valued the forests and appreciated their beauty. Wood was harvested but wisely and used for core practices such as shelter and fire.

Following independence the Brazilian government gave away large portions of land to small-scale farmers as long as they used it "productively" (Chaurahha 2013). This meant tax holidays and government incentives led to deforestation and the expansion of cattle ranches. The money used from the government was put into deforesting more trees rather than the careful management of the land ranch owners had acquired. 

Deforestation peaked in the 1980s when it became clear that the forest was only marketable once the trees had been removed. As Moran (1994) interestingly notes the price of beef did not decline in Brazil despite an expansion of cattle ranches because the money from selling off the land was more profitable for small-scale farmers than the actual cattle rearing. 

By 1988 the first environmental impact assessments were undertaken and under Article 26 of the 1988 Brazilian Constitution, the destruction of the Amazon and Atlantic forests were a crime. As both Chaurahha and Moran note, the law was rarely enforced. 

Furthermore the construction of the Trans-Amazon Highway (no longer functioning) opened up previously inaccessible portions of the jungle to small-scale farmers and logging companies (Butler Rhett 2012). I have already discussed how the development of infrastructure causes deforestation in "The Future of our Trees". Deforestation moved from the periphery of the Amazon to its core. 

Journey to the Center of the Amazon - the Trans-Amazon Highway built in 1972 (source)

Following a move from a dictatorship to democracy and international pressure Brazil adopted the REDD initiative with which it receives $21 billion to maintain the Amazon jungle. However, this transition to a more democratic government did little for the environment when in 2008 Marina Silva (the then environment minister) resigned due to pressure from powers of economic interest when she argued against the exploitation of the Amazon (NY Times 2008) 

Discussion

The two historical accounts by Moran and the blogger "Chaurahha" combined provide a definitive and complementary account of government led initiatives that accelerated deforestation within the 1970s and 1980s before more environmental policies were adopted. The environment and the political are entwined particularly in the Amazon which receives a significant amount of media attention (Hurrell 1991). I think it is ultimately international pressure and public opinion that drives the Brazilian government to combat deforestation after decades of almost promoting it. Furthermore, keeping the rainforest has become profitable for the government under the REDD+ initiative which means the government receives money for maintaining the rainforest (Hecht 2012)  - see COP21 post for more details on REDD+. I would agree with Hecht that providing an incentive for maintaining valuable rainforests is key to low income countries understanding the value of the landscape. Supportive of this is Peter Dauvergne's (1994) work into politics and deforestation in Indonesia showed that the government saw the trees as a waste of space on potentially profitable land but once their eyes were opened to the value of keeping the trees attitudes towards palm oil production and logging changed. 

The fate of the environment in Brazil (and other countries) comes down to a complex, ever changing and impossible to understand politics (Hecht 2012). It comes down to money pure and simple so the profit of keeping trees must outweigh the profit of cutting them down in rainforests are to be maintained. In a bottom-up approach to analyzing politics through the perspective of environmental groups, Lemos and Roberts (2008) found that the success of the environmental group (with international connections and resources) was always outweighed by developmentalist interests - a process of money making and urban expansion. Furthermore, in a country where millions of people live in favelas why would the government care about the environment when there is humanitarian work to be undertaken?