The removal of forests by human activity has led to massive extinctions, both flora and fauna. As their natural habitats are destroyed, they no longer have suitable living conditions for them to survive and therefore become extinct. Biodiversity is essential for the continued ecosystem survival. From our perspective, from common drugs and possible cures for cancers, majority of the raw materials needed for medicines came from plants, many of which are endangered.
A 20-year study has shown that deforestation and introduction of non-native species has led to about 12.5% of the world’s plant species to become critically rare. (In fact, as an example, a study suggests that the Amazon damage is worse than previously thought, due to previously undetected types of selective logging and deforestation.)
A report from the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development suggests that the forests of the world have been exploited to the point of crisis and that major changes in global forest management strategies would be needed to avoid the devastation.
What also makes this a problem is that many of the endangered species are only found in small areas of land, often within the borders of a single country.
New species of animals and plants are still being discovered. In Papua New Guinea, 44 new species of animals were discovered recently in the forests. Logging may affect these animals’ habitats, though. The loss of rainforests around the world, where many species of life are found will mean that potential knowledge, whether medicinal, sustenance sources, or evolutionary and scientific information etc. could be lost.
Brazil, which is estimated to have around 55,000 species of flora, amounting to some 22% of the world’s total and India for example, which has about 46,000 and some 81,000 animal species (amounting to some 8% of the world’s biodiversity), are also under various pressures, from corporate globalization, deforestation, etc. So too are many other biodiverse regions, such as Indonesia, parts of Africa, and other tropical regions.
Showing posts with label Deforestation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deforestation. Show all posts
Environment
"The tendency of an increase in deforestation has been controlled", said Environmental Minister Jose Sarney Filho.
It is estimated that until 1970, deforestation had amounted to approximately 100,000 square kilometers, especially in the states of Pará and Maranhão. From 1978 to 1988, the average annual rate is estimated at 21,500 square kilometers. Starting in 1988, a downward trend is evident: in 1988-89, the rate was estimated at 18.842 square kilometers; in 1989-1990, it was 13,813 square kilometers - a 27% decrease. This is consistent with changes that have been observed in land use in the northern region and seems to be a response to the policies adopted by the Brazilian authorities that will be described later. The total deforested area, as estimated by Brazil's National Space Research Institute (INPE) in February 1991, was 415,215 square kilometers.
On 11 May 1994, the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs of the United States Congress promoted a hearing on the issue of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Two scientists, Compton Tucker and David Skole, presented the results of an independent study commissioned by NASA in order to dispel doubts regarding the many conflicting and scientifically debatable assessments about deforestation in the Amazon, which have in the past led to criticism of Brazilian environmental policies. These results were published in the March 25, 1993 issue of "Science" magazine and gave rise to considerable repercussions within the scientific community.
In their presentation, Tucker and Skole stressed that the difficulty of monitoring changes in such a vast region as the Amazon gave rise to tremendous discrepancies with regard to the extent of deforestation. They specifically mentioned the erroneous figures published by the World Bank in 1988, which stated that 600.000 square kilometers (12%) of the Amazon Region had been cleared by that year, while the Brazilian National Space Research Institute (INPE) has reached the much lower estimate of 280.000 square kilometers (5%) for the same period. This was precisely the discrepancy that motivated NASA to commission the independent study. The conclusions of the study are similar to those published by INPE and its estimates are even lower.
Tucker and Skole declared that "we therefore conclude that Brazilian estimates of deforestation in Brazil's Amazon are scientifically accurate". The scientists also indicated that the present rate of deforestation in the Amazon tropical forest has fallen, in 1992/1993, to 11,000 square kilometers per year, which translates as a yearly clearing of 0.3% of forest area. They compared these figures with the yearly deforestation rates in the United States, estimated at 1%. They also declared that "the government of Brazil has been extremely active since 1990 trying to reduce the rate of illegal deforestation in Brazil. This and the removal of tax incentives for deforestation has dramatically lowered the deforestation rate in the Amazon of Brazil to present levels. We hope that this trend continues and the example of the Brazilians in this regard is very encouraging".
The scientists ended their presentation by indicating that "we thus conclude that while the rate of tropical deforestation in the Amazon of Brazil is substantially lower than previous estimates, it is important to continue to minimize deforestation and thus minimize habitat fragmentation and additional losses to biological diversity. This applies to tropical forests as well as the forests of North America". It must be said that the public appears to have, in general, an exaggerated view of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. This happens probably because some important facts have received less exposure than the deforestation figures.
Firstly, care must be taken with regard to the definition of "forest". The figures estimated by INPE refer to an area of approximately 390 million hectares which includes the rain forest itself plus the transitional forest and parts of the scrub forest or savanna known as "cerrado". The critical areas of deforestation in legal Amazonia are located in a peripheral zone to the east, south, and southwest, where the vegetation consists basically of "cerrado" interspersed with tracts of semi-humid transitional forests. This is the area where human occupation is most recent. The great nucleus of the Amazon basin, the real Hylaea Amazonica, is still practically intact.
Secondly, the fires detected in the dry season, especially during the months of August, September and October, were interpreted as forest destruction, whereas these, in many cases, represent the clearing of land in agricultural fields for the preparation of the upcoming harvest or the clearing of pastures.
Thirdly, the sense of urgency concerning deforestation in the Amazon resulted largely from the publication of projections based on premises that proved incorrect. One such trend analysis, made in the early 1980's, indicated that the states of Pará, Mato Grosso, Maranhão, Goiás and Rondônia would be completely deforested by 1990. Data obtained from satellite imagery show that in Rondônia, the most deforested of Amazonian states, not more than 12.6% had been cleared in 1990. The basic flaw of these predictions seems to have been the assumption that certain behaviors that are responsible for deforestation would continue to grow, when in fact this has not happened.
Finally, if we consider the time frame of deforestation in the Amazon by dividing the forest area into the annual rate of deforestation to obtain the number of years over which the forest would be cleared, it could be concluded that, as of last year, deforestation was proceeding with a time frame of about 300 years, well above the recovery period of 20 years for the restoration of biomass density, or 80 to 100 years for full recovery. This does not take into account the significant percentage of forest clearings that have been abandoned with the resulting re-growth of the forest.
These facts demonstrate that the image of the Amazon forest being cut down or burnt to the last tree has much more to do with the imagination than with reality. This is not to deny the seriousness of deforestation but to indicate that it is necessary to view the problem in its true proportions.
The true price of disposable chopsticks
China's appetite for disposable chopsticks eats up 25 million trees each year. With forests fast disappearing, now the pressure is on for people to adopt less wasteful eating habits.
The burly diner in the dumpling restaurant peers at a copy of Beijing News, tears open a paper packet and slides out a pair of wooden chopsticks. In a scene repeated millions of times every day all over China, he snaps apart the bamboo sticks, joined at the end, and uses the utensils to manoeuvre a steaming meat dumpling into his mouth. When he's finished eating, a waitress empties the scraps and the chopsticks into a black plastic bag. It joins dozens of other bags of chopsticks and waste food out at the back of the restaurant.
Disposable chopsticks in China are convenient, hygienic and everywhere. And they are incredibly wasteful - environmentalists say they are up there with plastic carrier bags, individual mini-cheeses and clear plastic CD cases.
The Chinese use 45 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks every year, which adds up to 1.7 million cubic metres of timber or 25 million full-grown trees, which means badly depleted forests. China is the world's largest maker of disposable chopsticks, with more than 300 plants employing about 60,000 workers. Since the start of the decade, the country has exported nearly 165,000 tonnes of chopsticks, with 15 billion pairs finding their way to dinner tables in Japan and South Korea.
Environmentalists warn that if China continues to use timber at current levels, China's remaining forests will be gone in about a decade.
Now a campaign against disposable chopsticks has come to symbolise China's efforts to try to halt the degradation of the country's forests and to protect the environment. In a surprising move, the government in Beijing has introduced a tax on "one-time" chopsticks from 1 April.
"It's basic maths. If one Chinese consumes two pairs of wooden chopsticks a day, how many trees have to be chopped down? A large portion of those chopsticks are shipped overseas," says Yang Dabin, a spokesman for Friends of Nature. Yang is a big fan of the new tax but is waiting to see how it works in practice.
He points to the success in European countries, such as Denmark, of lowering use of plastic shopping bags by introducing a tax on the product. "People all knew that using plastic bags was environmentally unfriendly, but it was convenient so they kept it up until a tax was imposed. I think we Chinese people are usually practical on this point," he says.
Hundreds of companies make chopsticks. Eisho in Guilin says it can provide a million chopsticks a day for export. One small producer of disposable chopsticks, Qingyuan Kangxin in southern Guangdong province, says the new tax will almost certainly affect its production plans. It may consider cutting production, particularly for export.
China is now trying to persuade its people to use metal or plastic chopsticks instead of disposable ones. The country's environment is getting steadily worse - the World Bank says 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China and more than 400,000 people die prematurely each year from pollution-related illnesses. As well as deforestation, roughly a third of China is exposed to acid rain and around 70 per cent of the country's rivers and lakes are polluted.
"We are losing our forest resources at an alarming rate to a rapidly growing economy. We cannot make people replace their wooden furniture with steel and switch to electronic newspapers. But we can have a law to make people pay for using disposable chopsticks. Or we can switch permanently to steel, aluminium or fibre chopsticks," he said.
How did chopsticks come to occupy the position of environmental pariah in a country that is one of the worst polluters in the world? Known in Chinese as "kuazi" which translates as "quick little one" - "chop" is pidgin for "kuai", which means quick or speedy - they occupy a vital position in Chinese culture and history.
"The honourable and upright man keeps well away from the slaughterhouse and the kitchen. And he allows no knives on his table," taught the philosopher Confucius, a vegetarian who helped to popularise chopsticks. They come in all shapes and sizes, including golden and jade chopsticks engraved with calligraphy and probably dating back, in a rough form, more than 5,000 years ago in Asia, when westerners were eating with their hands. Food was cut into small pieces before going into the pot to use less fuel. Twigs were used to retrieve food from the pot.
Like so many other booms in China, the rise of disposable chopsticks can be traced back to the success of the open economy. Market reform meant economic success in the city, which in turn led to people earning more and eating out more in restaurants, hence the pressure for more disposable chopsticks.
Chopsticks are often made from bamboo: the wood is very common in Asia, is particularly resistant to heat and is easy to split. China began using disposable chopsticks in earnest in the mid-1980s, when they were mass-produced from birch or poplar. The government insisted on them as they helped to stop the spread of disease and promoted better public hygiene. Their use rose during the Sars epidemic in 2003, when they were seen as a hygienic option.
Today, a public campaign has galvanised schoolchildren into action, calling for disposable chopsticks to be banned. Pouches for reusable chopsticks are de rigueur for hip young things keen to enjoy the cachet that being an environmental activist offers. Over the past few years, thousands of restaurants have started washing and reusing chopsticks.
South Korea is held up as a model as it has mostly switched to metal chopsticks and banned the use of disposable chopsticks in many restaurants. Beijing's top Qinghua University uses reusable chopsticks in the canteen following pressure from students. Initially it used spoons to replace the disposable chopsticks but they were hugely unpopular as people had difficulty eating with them - try eating noodles with a spoon. Also, students cut their mouths on the thin material used.
Recent high-profile cases of environmental disaster, such as the poisoning of the Songhua River near Harbin in north-east China, have had an impact on how environmental issues are dealt with in China.
There is a feeling in the central leadership that "green taxation" can help it to fight environmental damage and it realises that gross domestic product growth is not the only yardstick for success - becoming an international pariah for your polluting ways is bad for trade, and the country's dire environmental record could create political discord.
The chopstick tax, part of a package of environmental taxes, is part of the Communist Party's latest Five-Year Plan, which is charged with moving the nation to a more sustainable growth model with less environmental degradation. Owners of four-wheel-drive vehicles will have to pay extra, while wooden floor panels will now be taxed.
Nan Shunji, a deputy at the annual rubber-stamp parliament, the National People's Congress, has been promoting alternatives to disposable chopsticks for years. This year she took aim at wooden toothpicks and brought along toothpicks made of cornflour to promote the concept of environment friendly consumption. "We have wasted a lot of natural resources at our dinner tables," she said.
The burly diner in the dumpling restaurant peers at a copy of Beijing News, tears open a paper packet and slides out a pair of wooden chopsticks. In a scene repeated millions of times every day all over China, he snaps apart the bamboo sticks, joined at the end, and uses the utensils to manoeuvre a steaming meat dumpling into his mouth. When he's finished eating, a waitress empties the scraps and the chopsticks into a black plastic bag. It joins dozens of other bags of chopsticks and waste food out at the back of the restaurant.
Disposable chopsticks in China are convenient, hygienic and everywhere. And they are incredibly wasteful - environmentalists say they are up there with plastic carrier bags, individual mini-cheeses and clear plastic CD cases.
The Chinese use 45 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks every year, which adds up to 1.7 million cubic metres of timber or 25 million full-grown trees, which means badly depleted forests. China is the world's largest maker of disposable chopsticks, with more than 300 plants employing about 60,000 workers. Since the start of the decade, the country has exported nearly 165,000 tonnes of chopsticks, with 15 billion pairs finding their way to dinner tables in Japan and South Korea.
Environmentalists warn that if China continues to use timber at current levels, China's remaining forests will be gone in about a decade.
Now a campaign against disposable chopsticks has come to symbolise China's efforts to try to halt the degradation of the country's forests and to protect the environment. In a surprising move, the government in Beijing has introduced a tax on "one-time" chopsticks from 1 April.
"It's basic maths. If one Chinese consumes two pairs of wooden chopsticks a day, how many trees have to be chopped down? A large portion of those chopsticks are shipped overseas," says Yang Dabin, a spokesman for Friends of Nature. Yang is a big fan of the new tax but is waiting to see how it works in practice.
He points to the success in European countries, such as Denmark, of lowering use of plastic shopping bags by introducing a tax on the product. "People all knew that using plastic bags was environmentally unfriendly, but it was convenient so they kept it up until a tax was imposed. I think we Chinese people are usually practical on this point," he says.
Hundreds of companies make chopsticks. Eisho in Guilin says it can provide a million chopsticks a day for export. One small producer of disposable chopsticks, Qingyuan Kangxin in southern Guangdong province, says the new tax will almost certainly affect its production plans. It may consider cutting production, particularly for export.
China is now trying to persuade its people to use metal or plastic chopsticks instead of disposable ones. The country's environment is getting steadily worse - the World Bank says 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China and more than 400,000 people die prematurely each year from pollution-related illnesses. As well as deforestation, roughly a third of China is exposed to acid rain and around 70 per cent of the country's rivers and lakes are polluted.
"We are losing our forest resources at an alarming rate to a rapidly growing economy. We cannot make people replace their wooden furniture with steel and switch to electronic newspapers. But we can have a law to make people pay for using disposable chopsticks. Or we can switch permanently to steel, aluminium or fibre chopsticks," he said.
How did chopsticks come to occupy the position of environmental pariah in a country that is one of the worst polluters in the world? Known in Chinese as "kuazi" which translates as "quick little one" - "chop" is pidgin for "kuai", which means quick or speedy - they occupy a vital position in Chinese culture and history.
"The honourable and upright man keeps well away from the slaughterhouse and the kitchen. And he allows no knives on his table," taught the philosopher Confucius, a vegetarian who helped to popularise chopsticks. They come in all shapes and sizes, including golden and jade chopsticks engraved with calligraphy and probably dating back, in a rough form, more than 5,000 years ago in Asia, when westerners were eating with their hands. Food was cut into small pieces before going into the pot to use less fuel. Twigs were used to retrieve food from the pot.
Like so many other booms in China, the rise of disposable chopsticks can be traced back to the success of the open economy. Market reform meant economic success in the city, which in turn led to people earning more and eating out more in restaurants, hence the pressure for more disposable chopsticks.
Chopsticks are often made from bamboo: the wood is very common in Asia, is particularly resistant to heat and is easy to split. China began using disposable chopsticks in earnest in the mid-1980s, when they were mass-produced from birch or poplar. The government insisted on them as they helped to stop the spread of disease and promoted better public hygiene. Their use rose during the Sars epidemic in 2003, when they were seen as a hygienic option.
Today, a public campaign has galvanised schoolchildren into action, calling for disposable chopsticks to be banned. Pouches for reusable chopsticks are de rigueur for hip young things keen to enjoy the cachet that being an environmental activist offers. Over the past few years, thousands of restaurants have started washing and reusing chopsticks.
South Korea is held up as a model as it has mostly switched to metal chopsticks and banned the use of disposable chopsticks in many restaurants. Beijing's top Qinghua University uses reusable chopsticks in the canteen following pressure from students. Initially it used spoons to replace the disposable chopsticks but they were hugely unpopular as people had difficulty eating with them - try eating noodles with a spoon. Also, students cut their mouths on the thin material used.
Recent high-profile cases of environmental disaster, such as the poisoning of the Songhua River near Harbin in north-east China, have had an impact on how environmental issues are dealt with in China.
There is a feeling in the central leadership that "green taxation" can help it to fight environmental damage and it realises that gross domestic product growth is not the only yardstick for success - becoming an international pariah for your polluting ways is bad for trade, and the country's dire environmental record could create political discord.
The chopstick tax, part of a package of environmental taxes, is part of the Communist Party's latest Five-Year Plan, which is charged with moving the nation to a more sustainable growth model with less environmental degradation. Owners of four-wheel-drive vehicles will have to pay extra, while wooden floor panels will now be taxed.
Nan Shunji, a deputy at the annual rubber-stamp parliament, the National People's Congress, has been promoting alternatives to disposable chopsticks for years. This year she took aim at wooden toothpicks and brought along toothpicks made of cornflour to promote the concept of environment friendly consumption. "We have wasted a lot of natural resources at our dinner tables," she said.
China: Facing two evils -deforestation and monoculture tree plantations
The entrance of China into the global capitalist market with the ensuing accelerated expansion of its economy has been marked by a growing hunger for timber.
The path to industrialization first swallowed the country’s forests. Rampant logging led to the irretrievable loss of China’s natural wealth: accelerated desertification, decline of biodiversity and loss of forests up to the point that there is almost no old-growth left in China. The case of Yichun serves to illustrate the issue. The Guardian’s correspondent Jonathan Watts, reports that in “Yichun, a north-eastern city in Heilongjiang province close to the frozen river border with Siberia, the forests were once so dense that the area was known as the Great Northern Wilderness. But more than fifty years of unsustainable logging have taken their toll. Yichun was classified last year (2008) as one of China's 12 ‘resource-depleted cities.’ ‘We are in a situation where we have no wood to cut. None of the forests are mature enough,’ Dong Zhiyong, former vice-minister in the forestry administration said.”
With the soil exposed to erosion fierce sandstorms have lashed the country while deforestation –especially in the upper reaches of river systems-- has contributed to devastating floods that caused thousands of deaths and millions of displaced people.
In 1998, a sweeping logging ban was established. However, wood consumption still increased, now at the expense of the forests of neighbouring countries (e.g. Burma, Cambodia, Russia) as well as of far away countries such as those in Western Africa, among other.
The need for papermaking resources added to wood demand and as result China launched in 2000 a Fast-growing and High-yielding Timber Plantations Program. The program –part of a wider set of six key programs- was to be established in 18 eastern and southwestern provinces and by 2012 the government aims to have planted an area of 44 million hectares (see WRM Bulletin Nº 85). This has implied land tenure reforms shifting from state-run or collectively owned land to land privatization in a country where farmer population is 1 billion out of a population of 1.5 billion.
Tax reductions and leeway management of fast growing, high-yield tree plantations have been established in an attempt to attract private investment. According to a Canadian report “reforms are now moving from the recognition of individual assets and the encouragement of private companies to large-scale natural resource management”.
A number of pulp and paper firms have taken advantage of the opportunity and arrived to China to invest in planting trees and producing paper. Stora Enso, with business such as an integrated pulp and paper project in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, where the company leases 91,000 hectares of land for eucalyptus plantations plans to reach 160,000 hectares by 2010 to supply Stora Enso's pulp and paper project in Beihai. The notorious Asia Pulp and Paper has stakes in over 20 pulp and paper enterprises, as well as more than 20 tree plantation sites in China. The Finnish UPM-Kymmene is also looking into investing further in the country in planting fast-growing trees.
Soon an alert sounded: the province of Guangdong experienced a worsening drought coincidentally with the establishment of some 700,000 hectares planted with eucalyptus trees. Local authorities as well as members of the Chinese Academia exposed the link between the increasing number of eucalyptus tree plantations and the worsening drought in Guangdong (see WRM Bulletin Nº 106).
The weakness of the monoculture model –that lacks the natural protection provided by biodiversity- expressed itself in the case of poplar tree plantations, which became prone to insect attacks causing severe damage to leaves and trunks.
To amend the mess, a worse problem was introduced: genetically modified (GM) trees. Two genetically modified poplar lines were developed with support from Germany, FAO, and UNDP: Populus nigra and Populus hybrid named Poplar-12 and Poplar-741, which produce a Bt toxin in their leaves that kills leaf-eating insects.
In 2002, both varieties were released for commercial use. Poplar is a fast-growing tree and the plans involved the establishment of commercial plantations with a ten-year rotation period covering an area of approximately 17 million hectares by the year 2012.
China is the first country to approve the commercial release of GM trees. According to Huoran Wang of the Chinese Academy of Forestry, "The accurate area of GM plantations cannot be assessed because of the ease of propagation and marketing of GM trees and the difficulty of morphologically distinguishing GM from non-GM trees." He adds that "a lot of materials are moved from one nursery to another and it is difficult to trace them."
In spite of official assertions that GM poplars were female varieties with altered fertility –which allegedly would prevent cross-breeding– the Nanjing Institute of Environmental Science has already found genes from the GE poplars appearing in natural varieties. The threat of GM pollution has now become a tragic reality.
The case of China exemplifies the intrinsic problems of large-scale monoculture tree plantations, as well as those stemming from trying to address them through genetic manipulation. Reforestation is of course necessary in a country with few forests left, but much will depend on how it is understood. Reforestation can either mean larger monocultures of fast-growing tree species for wood production –including GM trees- or biodiverse plantations adapted to local environments and aimed at forest restoration. Planting billions of trees –as currently carried out in China- can be very good or very bad, depending on how it is implemented. We hope that the enormous effort carried out every year by the Chinese people and government will have the positive result of helping to bring back the country’s native forests.
The path to industrialization first swallowed the country’s forests. Rampant logging led to the irretrievable loss of China’s natural wealth: accelerated desertification, decline of biodiversity and loss of forests up to the point that there is almost no old-growth left in China. The case of Yichun serves to illustrate the issue. The Guardian’s correspondent Jonathan Watts, reports that in “Yichun, a north-eastern city in Heilongjiang province close to the frozen river border with Siberia, the forests were once so dense that the area was known as the Great Northern Wilderness. But more than fifty years of unsustainable logging have taken their toll. Yichun was classified last year (2008) as one of China's 12 ‘resource-depleted cities.’ ‘We are in a situation where we have no wood to cut. None of the forests are mature enough,’ Dong Zhiyong, former vice-minister in the forestry administration said.”
With the soil exposed to erosion fierce sandstorms have lashed the country while deforestation –especially in the upper reaches of river systems-- has contributed to devastating floods that caused thousands of deaths and millions of displaced people.
In 1998, a sweeping logging ban was established. However, wood consumption still increased, now at the expense of the forests of neighbouring countries (e.g. Burma, Cambodia, Russia) as well as of far away countries such as those in Western Africa, among other.
The need for papermaking resources added to wood demand and as result China launched in 2000 a Fast-growing and High-yielding Timber Plantations Program. The program –part of a wider set of six key programs- was to be established in 18 eastern and southwestern provinces and by 2012 the government aims to have planted an area of 44 million hectares (see WRM Bulletin Nº 85). This has implied land tenure reforms shifting from state-run or collectively owned land to land privatization in a country where farmer population is 1 billion out of a population of 1.5 billion.
Tax reductions and leeway management of fast growing, high-yield tree plantations have been established in an attempt to attract private investment. According to a Canadian report “reforms are now moving from the recognition of individual assets and the encouragement of private companies to large-scale natural resource management”.
A number of pulp and paper firms have taken advantage of the opportunity and arrived to China to invest in planting trees and producing paper. Stora Enso, with business such as an integrated pulp and paper project in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, where the company leases 91,000 hectares of land for eucalyptus plantations plans to reach 160,000 hectares by 2010 to supply Stora Enso's pulp and paper project in Beihai. The notorious Asia Pulp and Paper has stakes in over 20 pulp and paper enterprises, as well as more than 20 tree plantation sites in China. The Finnish UPM-Kymmene is also looking into investing further in the country in planting fast-growing trees.
Soon an alert sounded: the province of Guangdong experienced a worsening drought coincidentally with the establishment of some 700,000 hectares planted with eucalyptus trees. Local authorities as well as members of the Chinese Academia exposed the link between the increasing number of eucalyptus tree plantations and the worsening drought in Guangdong (see WRM Bulletin Nº 106).
The weakness of the monoculture model –that lacks the natural protection provided by biodiversity- expressed itself in the case of poplar tree plantations, which became prone to insect attacks causing severe damage to leaves and trunks.
To amend the mess, a worse problem was introduced: genetically modified (GM) trees. Two genetically modified poplar lines were developed with support from Germany, FAO, and UNDP: Populus nigra and Populus hybrid named Poplar-12 and Poplar-741, which produce a Bt toxin in their leaves that kills leaf-eating insects.
In 2002, both varieties were released for commercial use. Poplar is a fast-growing tree and the plans involved the establishment of commercial plantations with a ten-year rotation period covering an area of approximately 17 million hectares by the year 2012.
China is the first country to approve the commercial release of GM trees. According to Huoran Wang of the Chinese Academy of Forestry, "The accurate area of GM plantations cannot be assessed because of the ease of propagation and marketing of GM trees and the difficulty of morphologically distinguishing GM from non-GM trees." He adds that "a lot of materials are moved from one nursery to another and it is difficult to trace them."
In spite of official assertions that GM poplars were female varieties with altered fertility –which allegedly would prevent cross-breeding– the Nanjing Institute of Environmental Science has already found genes from the GE poplars appearing in natural varieties. The threat of GM pollution has now become a tragic reality.
The case of China exemplifies the intrinsic problems of large-scale monoculture tree plantations, as well as those stemming from trying to address them through genetic manipulation. Reforestation is of course necessary in a country with few forests left, but much will depend on how it is understood. Reforestation can either mean larger monocultures of fast-growing tree species for wood production –including GM trees- or biodiverse plantations adapted to local environments and aimed at forest restoration. Planting billions of trees –as currently carried out in China- can be very good or very bad, depending on how it is implemented. We hope that the enormous effort carried out every year by the Chinese people and government will have the positive result of helping to bring back the country’s native forests.
China's Deforestation No Longer Driven Mainly By Poverty
It was around 5:00 p.m. when I arrived in Xinan, a small town in Xiapu County in China’s southeastern Fujian Province. A handful of young people came up to greet me, saying they would accompany me to Fuzhu Village, 14 kilometers away, after dinner. It will still be light then, they said, and you’ll be able to see the hills where natural forests were cut down two years ago, as well as the sites where they replanted eucalyptus last year.
As our motorcycle fleet curved along the bay towards Fuzhu, I shared the ride with a young man who was a master at maneuvering the vehicle beneath us. After several kilometers, however, the paved road became broken, and the way ahead was rough. “These are the best road conditions we’ve had,” my driver told me, turning his head back to speak. He explained that a few younger villagers had once organized a 10-person team to rebuild the road, and had labored hard to persuade Lin Kaiji, the head of the village committee, to cover the expenses.
Fuzhu Village is a relatively wealthy area of Xinan town. But under the leadership of Lin Kaiji, few villagers know exactly how the money is being spent, and they haven’t seen any visible improvement in the public infrastructure. The poor road conditions mean that residents must pay more for goods that arrive from outside, and they earn less for the products they sell. They are envious of other villages that have gotten rich because of good infrastructure.
It was already dark when we arrived in Fuzhu. My companions decided to settle me down with a family along the coast, to “enjoy the bestow of the sea.” Traditionally, local villagers depended on the sea for their livelihood, and had little interest in the mountains. But not long ago, Lin Kaiji, and the village party secretary Zheng Tingqi, came to realize the “fortune” of the lush natural forests blanketing the nearby hills. Keeping villagers in the dark, they leased the forestry lands as “wastelands” to Fujian Fangte Company, a logging firm. The company began to systematically erase the exuberant natural forests, replacing them with widespread eucalyptus plantations.
The destruction of China’s natural forests has taken on a new face in recent years. Tree clearing was once an outgrowth of poverty, as farmers gradually and sporadically encroached on nearby forests to gather fuel wood and “shake off poverty.” These days, however, profit is the primary motive between forest clearing, and commercial timber or plantation companies are intensifying their efforts to “enclose” the land for fast-growing and high-yielding plantations. Overstepping villagers’ rights and interests, they have been laying bare entire hillsides, a practice that will most likely exacerbate natural disasters and engender a new form of poverty. Their efforts, unfortunately, are often backed by the close cooperation of forestry authorities and village governing bodies.
Liu Qihua, Manager of Fujian Fangte Company, told me that his firm used to be an IT enterprise, and only recently broke into the plantation business. With the growth/logging cycle for eucalyptus lasting only six years, he explained, it is very profitable to “plant” forests in the same way you plant grass. The company has done well from its activities in Fujian Province, and Xiapu County alone now harbors several large “plantation fields.” Eucalyptus can be used for paper and mid-density fiberboard production, and there are several such factories in Fujian.
The forest coverage rate in the province is 62 percent, the highest in China, yet natural forest accounts for only about 10 percent. With no sizable wastelands left for forest plantations, loggers are turning to the remaining natural areas. “Any logging under the excuse of planting forests on ‘wasteland hills’ is unfounded,” contends Lin Peng, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Director of Xiamen University’s Institute of Ecology. However, if forests are left alone and given time, Lin argues, they will re-grow naturally on the hills with the help of Fujian’s favorable climate and high soil quality.
“I think that the biggest environmental problem in China at the moment is the irreversible trend to destroy natural forests,” says Lin. Although the government has adopted comprehensive measures to protect natural forests, this won’t stop people who are driven by profits from replacing these forests with monoculture plantations, he adds. “Their common excuse is to ‘rebuild wastelands’ or to ‘green’ the coastlines. Nowadays, eucalyptus plantations grow like crazy. This will probably portend a new round of ecological disasters.”
In recent years, the planting of eucalyptus has expanded in Fujian Province, and western Yong’an County has become “China’s southern center” for the high-yielding tree. With temperatures there a bit low and volatile for eucalyptus growth, however, large groves began dying in the cold weather. Failing to observe this, blind expansion of plantations brought huge losses to the business. The province’s eastern and southern regions, including Xiapu County, have similar climatic features, but have not yet learned these lessons; plantations there continue to spread.
According to Hong Shenghe, a forestry authority with Fujian’s Nanjing County, there are three major ways to replace natural forests: with tree plantations, with grain or vegetable production, or with profit-making fruit orchards. Before China’s forestry reform in the early 1980s, state-owned plantations grew mainly fir or pine trees. But with the decentralization of forest ownership and responsibilities, farmers gained more liberties and began converting their assigned forest lots to farmland. “Fujian is one of the pilot provinces that pushed forest reforms a step further,” says Hong. “It’s in a transition period of gradually loosening its forest ownership, and many commercial plantation companies have jumped at the chance to enclose land. This has spurred a heated new round of ecological replacement.”
Hong observes that fast-growing and high-yielding plantations have become very popular in southern Fujian, as lands that were once used to grow lychee, longan, and banana are converted to eucalyptus groves. “And in places where there are few vacant commercial plantation lots, investors have turned their sights to natural forests,” he adds.
Lin Jianren, publicity authority with Xiapu County, contends that the lands under dispute in Fuzhu Village “had no forests originally.” The ongoing “greening project,” according to Lin, is one of the county’s great achievements in attracting investment. “Fangte Company has already passed its bid by the forestry authorities, and all procedures are legally binding,” he says. Lin adds that the Forestry Department of Fujian Province recently launched an investigation, which concluded that a few young men in Fuzhu had instigated other villagers to seize ownership of the fast-growing hillside plantations.
The villagers tell a different story. Several Fuzhu residents explained to me that, “we are not asking for money, nor aiming to take possession of the company’s eucalyptus woods; we are fighting for ecology and our dignity.” Ever since the disputed logging activity was discovered, residents have been sending out reporting letters to government legal and disciplinary agencies and departments, and making follow-up calls. But their efforts have yielded few results. During this process, the local forestry bureau and Fangte Company even tried several times to pacify them with promises of compensation for their losses. “We turned them down,” the villagers said.
In a visit to Fuzhu Village in mid-July, I noticed that on the steep distant hills, more than 80 hectares of forest lots had been planted with eucalyptus. Yet forestry regulations allow only 20 hectares of monoculture plantations on slopes below 25 degrees, and only 5 hectares of them on slopes 25 degrees or higher. Villagers told me that some of the lots had once been home to natural broadleaf forests, while others held decades-old red cedars. They described trees so large that a person could not embrace them, and a deep, dark forest with steep slopes. “We dared not venture into it when we cut firewood in the past,” they said.
The villagers believe that the forest’s nutrient-rich humous soil was a key reason the land was cleared for eucalyptus plantations, as eucalyptus trees need large quantities of nutrients to grow. Their suspicion is correct: experience shows that eucalyptus trees grow better on lands that were originally natural forest lots.
Bordering a bay, Fuzhu Village exercises jurisdiction over three smaller villages that traditionally depend on fishery and aquaculture for livelihood. Villagers have been keen on preserving their forests, which to them have minimal economic value but huge ecological value. Little damage had been done to the forests until 2004, when authorities signed a 30-year contract with Fangte Company, leasing the hills for roughly US $15 a hectare. Villagers believe that in addition to the village committee head and the village party secretary, several local forestry authorities are involved in the deal for personal gain.
According to residents Lin Zhenxi and Li Jinzhao, village committee head Lin Kaiji purchased the logged timber and then resold it to businessmen in neighboring Zhejiang province. Covert observations revealed that the logged wood was loaded onto at least eight large barges, with all the proceedings pocketed by Lin Kaiji. In the meantime, Lin has been hired as “forest manager” by Fangte Company and receives a considerable monthly salary from the company. Village party secretary Zheng Tingqi, meanwhile, as the village’s “forest steward,” has failed in all means of carrying out his proper duties.
As our motorcycle fleet curved along the bay towards Fuzhu, I shared the ride with a young man who was a master at maneuvering the vehicle beneath us. After several kilometers, however, the paved road became broken, and the way ahead was rough. “These are the best road conditions we’ve had,” my driver told me, turning his head back to speak. He explained that a few younger villagers had once organized a 10-person team to rebuild the road, and had labored hard to persuade Lin Kaiji, the head of the village committee, to cover the expenses.
Fuzhu Village is a relatively wealthy area of Xinan town. But under the leadership of Lin Kaiji, few villagers know exactly how the money is being spent, and they haven’t seen any visible improvement in the public infrastructure. The poor road conditions mean that residents must pay more for goods that arrive from outside, and they earn less for the products they sell. They are envious of other villages that have gotten rich because of good infrastructure.
It was already dark when we arrived in Fuzhu. My companions decided to settle me down with a family along the coast, to “enjoy the bestow of the sea.” Traditionally, local villagers depended on the sea for their livelihood, and had little interest in the mountains. But not long ago, Lin Kaiji, and the village party secretary Zheng Tingqi, came to realize the “fortune” of the lush natural forests blanketing the nearby hills. Keeping villagers in the dark, they leased the forestry lands as “wastelands” to Fujian Fangte Company, a logging firm. The company began to systematically erase the exuberant natural forests, replacing them with widespread eucalyptus plantations.
The destruction of China’s natural forests has taken on a new face in recent years. Tree clearing was once an outgrowth of poverty, as farmers gradually and sporadically encroached on nearby forests to gather fuel wood and “shake off poverty.” These days, however, profit is the primary motive between forest clearing, and commercial timber or plantation companies are intensifying their efforts to “enclose” the land for fast-growing and high-yielding plantations. Overstepping villagers’ rights and interests, they have been laying bare entire hillsides, a practice that will most likely exacerbate natural disasters and engender a new form of poverty. Their efforts, unfortunately, are often backed by the close cooperation of forestry authorities and village governing bodies.
Liu Qihua, Manager of Fujian Fangte Company, told me that his firm used to be an IT enterprise, and only recently broke into the plantation business. With the growth/logging cycle for eucalyptus lasting only six years, he explained, it is very profitable to “plant” forests in the same way you plant grass. The company has done well from its activities in Fujian Province, and Xiapu County alone now harbors several large “plantation fields.” Eucalyptus can be used for paper and mid-density fiberboard production, and there are several such factories in Fujian.
The forest coverage rate in the province is 62 percent, the highest in China, yet natural forest accounts for only about 10 percent. With no sizable wastelands left for forest plantations, loggers are turning to the remaining natural areas. “Any logging under the excuse of planting forests on ‘wasteland hills’ is unfounded,” contends Lin Peng, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Director of Xiamen University’s Institute of Ecology. However, if forests are left alone and given time, Lin argues, they will re-grow naturally on the hills with the help of Fujian’s favorable climate and high soil quality.
“I think that the biggest environmental problem in China at the moment is the irreversible trend to destroy natural forests,” says Lin. Although the government has adopted comprehensive measures to protect natural forests, this won’t stop people who are driven by profits from replacing these forests with monoculture plantations, he adds. “Their common excuse is to ‘rebuild wastelands’ or to ‘green’ the coastlines. Nowadays, eucalyptus plantations grow like crazy. This will probably portend a new round of ecological disasters.”
In recent years, the planting of eucalyptus has expanded in Fujian Province, and western Yong’an County has become “China’s southern center” for the high-yielding tree. With temperatures there a bit low and volatile for eucalyptus growth, however, large groves began dying in the cold weather. Failing to observe this, blind expansion of plantations brought huge losses to the business. The province’s eastern and southern regions, including Xiapu County, have similar climatic features, but have not yet learned these lessons; plantations there continue to spread.
According to Hong Shenghe, a forestry authority with Fujian’s Nanjing County, there are three major ways to replace natural forests: with tree plantations, with grain or vegetable production, or with profit-making fruit orchards. Before China’s forestry reform in the early 1980s, state-owned plantations grew mainly fir or pine trees. But with the decentralization of forest ownership and responsibilities, farmers gained more liberties and began converting their assigned forest lots to farmland. “Fujian is one of the pilot provinces that pushed forest reforms a step further,” says Hong. “It’s in a transition period of gradually loosening its forest ownership, and many commercial plantation companies have jumped at the chance to enclose land. This has spurred a heated new round of ecological replacement.”
Hong observes that fast-growing and high-yielding plantations have become very popular in southern Fujian, as lands that were once used to grow lychee, longan, and banana are converted to eucalyptus groves. “And in places where there are few vacant commercial plantation lots, investors have turned their sights to natural forests,” he adds.
Lin Jianren, publicity authority with Xiapu County, contends that the lands under dispute in Fuzhu Village “had no forests originally.” The ongoing “greening project,” according to Lin, is one of the county’s great achievements in attracting investment. “Fangte Company has already passed its bid by the forestry authorities, and all procedures are legally binding,” he says. Lin adds that the Forestry Department of Fujian Province recently launched an investigation, which concluded that a few young men in Fuzhu had instigated other villagers to seize ownership of the fast-growing hillside plantations.
The villagers tell a different story. Several Fuzhu residents explained to me that, “we are not asking for money, nor aiming to take possession of the company’s eucalyptus woods; we are fighting for ecology and our dignity.” Ever since the disputed logging activity was discovered, residents have been sending out reporting letters to government legal and disciplinary agencies and departments, and making follow-up calls. But their efforts have yielded few results. During this process, the local forestry bureau and Fangte Company even tried several times to pacify them with promises of compensation for their losses. “We turned them down,” the villagers said.
In a visit to Fuzhu Village in mid-July, I noticed that on the steep distant hills, more than 80 hectares of forest lots had been planted with eucalyptus. Yet forestry regulations allow only 20 hectares of monoculture plantations on slopes below 25 degrees, and only 5 hectares of them on slopes 25 degrees or higher. Villagers told me that some of the lots had once been home to natural broadleaf forests, while others held decades-old red cedars. They described trees so large that a person could not embrace them, and a deep, dark forest with steep slopes. “We dared not venture into it when we cut firewood in the past,” they said.
The villagers believe that the forest’s nutrient-rich humous soil was a key reason the land was cleared for eucalyptus plantations, as eucalyptus trees need large quantities of nutrients to grow. Their suspicion is correct: experience shows that eucalyptus trees grow better on lands that were originally natural forest lots.
Bordering a bay, Fuzhu Village exercises jurisdiction over three smaller villages that traditionally depend on fishery and aquaculture for livelihood. Villagers have been keen on preserving their forests, which to them have minimal economic value but huge ecological value. Little damage had been done to the forests until 2004, when authorities signed a 30-year contract with Fangte Company, leasing the hills for roughly US $15 a hectare. Villagers believe that in addition to the village committee head and the village party secretary, several local forestry authorities are involved in the deal for personal gain.
According to residents Lin Zhenxi and Li Jinzhao, village committee head Lin Kaiji purchased the logged timber and then resold it to businessmen in neighboring Zhejiang province. Covert observations revealed that the logged wood was loaded onto at least eight large barges, with all the proceedings pocketed by Lin Kaiji. In the meantime, Lin has been hired as “forest manager” by Fangte Company and receives a considerable monthly salary from the company. Village party secretary Zheng Tingqi, meanwhile, as the village’s “forest steward,” has failed in all means of carrying out his proper duties.
China to plant 2.5 billion trees
BEIJING - CHINA will plant 2.5 billion trees this year, 10 per cent more than last year, as part of reforestation efforts as the country battles increasing environmental problems, state media reported on Tuesday.
The newly planted trees will lead to a 5.3-million-hectare expansion of China's forest area, the China Daily reported, citing the State Forestry Administration.
'China has become one of the countries which embrace fast growth of forest coverage,' said Jia Zhibang, the administration's director. 'It has made contributions to counter the negative effects of logging.'
The tree-planting drive is part of a campaign to boost green coverage from the current 18.2 per cent of China's land area to 20 per cent by 2010, according to the paper.
Despite China's reforestation drive, the rapidly industrialising nation has come under criticism from abroad for its role in depleting the world's forest resources.
A report by Washington-based Forest Trends said last year that China's soaring demand for paper on the back of rapid economic growth was threatening forests around the globe.
Deforestation is linked to the extinction of plants and animals, social conflict, climate change and natural disasters such as flooding and landslides.
The newly planted trees will lead to a 5.3-million-hectare expansion of China's forest area, the China Daily reported, citing the State Forestry Administration.
'China has become one of the countries which embrace fast growth of forest coverage,' said Jia Zhibang, the administration's director. 'It has made contributions to counter the negative effects of logging.'
The tree-planting drive is part of a campaign to boost green coverage from the current 18.2 per cent of China's land area to 20 per cent by 2010, according to the paper.
Despite China's reforestation drive, the rapidly industrialising nation has come under criticism from abroad for its role in depleting the world's forest resources.
A report by Washington-based Forest Trends said last year that China's soaring demand for paper on the back of rapid economic growth was threatening forests around the globe.
Deforestation is linked to the extinction of plants and animals, social conflict, climate change and natural disasters such as flooding and landslides.
China does not menace global forest resources at all
BEIJING, August 19 -- "China will deplete all the world's forest resources by 2031, when one of every two logs from tropical rain forests for export will be shipped to the country." In response to such thrilling hearsays spread by Western media recently, a Chinese State Forestry Administration spokesman cited these remarks as simply "groundless" without "any scientific basis".
Lester R. Brown, president and chair of the World Watch Institute in the United States, issued a 100-page report titled "who will feed China -- a Wake-up Call for a small planet", provoking the "Brown Wave" concerning China's food menace theory 12 years ago. Twelve years later, he again made a prediction on the impact of the country's economic growth on the global resources and environment In 12 years, specifically by 2031, China's per capita income will reach the level of the United States today.
Brown did not intend to see China follow the US mode in its economic development, but Western media quoted him out of context, saying that its paper consumption then will be twice as much the whole world's present consumption and so paper making industry in China will deplete the forest resources around the globe.
Meanwhile, some non-government organizations (NGO) also refer to China as "imperiling the global forest resources."
"Global Witness," a NGO based in London, said most of the "timber imported into China, now the largest consumer of logs from tropical developing countries, now converted into furniture, plywood and other processed products for export to the United States and Europe", and the country imported 350 million US dollars worth of timber from Myanmar in 2005 alone.
The Environment Investigation Agency, a NGO in the U.S., has gone to the extreme with his censures, as its chairman Allan Thornton said China has, by importing timber from Indonesia, Myanmar, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, has deprived these countries of their futures.
Reuter and other Western media agencies also report on China's possible menace on the world's forest resources with its drastic rise in timber demand.
Moreover, a Russian media report said China intents to lease one million hectares of forests in Siberia, but the rumor has been clarified officially and denied by the relevant Chinese authority.
On August 15, Cai Qingrao, a Chinese State Forestry Administration spokesman, made responses to all these allegations, saying that China has not depleted its own forest resources and the country's forest resources are still being renewed and developed.
China's forest coverage rated has risen from the past 8.6 percent to 18.21 percent at present and up to over 23 percent by 2020, he said. Though China imported some logs, it also exported timber products in large quantities, and export volume overtook import volume in 2005 total trade quotas. From a long term point of view, China is fully capable of coping with its own forest resources issue.
In refuting China's illegal importation of logs, Cao said his country has enacted very rigid regulations on log import and has been bent on improving relevant laws and codes, while setting up coordination mechanism with its neighboring countries to deal with illegal timber trade.
With repeated media reports on wild logging spread, the people's awareness of timber resources crisis has been on steady rise in recent years. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the global log storage volume stood at 337 billion cubic meters in 1990 and rose to 386 billion cubic meters with an average annual increase of more than 900 million cubic meters.
Russia's forest acreage amounted to some 800 million hectares, or 20 percent of the world's total. With a storage volume of over 82 billion cubic meters, its potential use volume can reach as high as more than 550 million cubic meters, whereas the country logged only 130 million cubic meters.
Therefore, the fallacy on China's depletion of the global forest resources is nothing but an exaggeration. Some of the Western media reports have ill intentions and some are exaggerated, while some others are out of good intentions, experts have acknowledged. As a very responsible nation, China is clearly aware and duty bound to protect natural resources, and pays increasingly greater attention to log import and export management, so as to lessen the effect on the primitive forest resources around the world.
(Souce: People's Daily Online)
Lester R. Brown, president and chair of the World Watch Institute in the United States, issued a 100-page report titled "who will feed China -- a Wake-up Call for a small planet", provoking the "Brown Wave" concerning China's food menace theory 12 years ago. Twelve years later, he again made a prediction on the impact of the country's economic growth on the global resources and environment In 12 years, specifically by 2031, China's per capita income will reach the level of the United States today.
Brown did not intend to see China follow the US mode in its economic development, but Western media quoted him out of context, saying that its paper consumption then will be twice as much the whole world's present consumption and so paper making industry in China will deplete the forest resources around the globe.
Meanwhile, some non-government organizations (NGO) also refer to China as "imperiling the global forest resources."
"Global Witness," a NGO based in London, said most of the "timber imported into China, now the largest consumer of logs from tropical developing countries, now converted into furniture, plywood and other processed products for export to the United States and Europe", and the country imported 350 million US dollars worth of timber from Myanmar in 2005 alone.
The Environment Investigation Agency, a NGO in the U.S., has gone to the extreme with his censures, as its chairman Allan Thornton said China has, by importing timber from Indonesia, Myanmar, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, has deprived these countries of their futures.
Reuter and other Western media agencies also report on China's possible menace on the world's forest resources with its drastic rise in timber demand.
Moreover, a Russian media report said China intents to lease one million hectares of forests in Siberia, but the rumor has been clarified officially and denied by the relevant Chinese authority.
On August 15, Cai Qingrao, a Chinese State Forestry Administration spokesman, made responses to all these allegations, saying that China has not depleted its own forest resources and the country's forest resources are still being renewed and developed.
China's forest coverage rated has risen from the past 8.6 percent to 18.21 percent at present and up to over 23 percent by 2020, he said. Though China imported some logs, it also exported timber products in large quantities, and export volume overtook import volume in 2005 total trade quotas. From a long term point of view, China is fully capable of coping with its own forest resources issue.
In refuting China's illegal importation of logs, Cao said his country has enacted very rigid regulations on log import and has been bent on improving relevant laws and codes, while setting up coordination mechanism with its neighboring countries to deal with illegal timber trade.
With repeated media reports on wild logging spread, the people's awareness of timber resources crisis has been on steady rise in recent years. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the global log storage volume stood at 337 billion cubic meters in 1990 and rose to 386 billion cubic meters with an average annual increase of more than 900 million cubic meters.
Russia's forest acreage amounted to some 800 million hectares, or 20 percent of the world's total. With a storage volume of over 82 billion cubic meters, its potential use volume can reach as high as more than 550 million cubic meters, whereas the country logged only 130 million cubic meters.
Therefore, the fallacy on China's depletion of the global forest resources is nothing but an exaggeration. Some of the Western media reports have ill intentions and some are exaggerated, while some others are out of good intentions, experts have acknowledged. As a very responsible nation, China is clearly aware and duty bound to protect natural resources, and pays increasingly greater attention to log import and export management, so as to lessen the effect on the primitive forest resources around the world.
(Souce: People's Daily Online)
Forests Growing in China
China's total forested area increased by 16.0 million hectares from 2000 to 2003 to reach 175 million hectares, the State Forestry Administration announced in Beijing on Tuesday.
The data come from a five-year study that ran from 1999 to 2003. It was the nation's most complete survey of forestry ever conducted, although five less comprehensive surveys had been completed in the past.
More than 20,000 scientists and forestry workers were mobilized to conduct a nationwide inventory of forest coverage, using satellite imaging and monitoring technologies as well as on-site observations. The government budgeted 610.0 million yuan (US$73.7 million) to gather data concerning accumulation, composition, distribution, growth and consumption as well as the influence of forests on the environment.
In 2003, the total forest coverage rate was 18.2 percent, up from 16.6 percent in 2000.
Forest quality also improved. The average number of plants per hectare increased by 72, and broadleaf and broadleaf-conifer mixed areas increased 3 percent. The area of shelterbelt and special-purpose forest increased 21 percent.
Some 20.3 percent of forested areas and 41.1 percent of young growth are privately owned.
However, the survey also revealed a number of problems:
China's forest coverage rate is only 61.5 percent of the global average, and its world ranking in terms of coverage is 130. The average forested area per person is only 1,320 square meters, less than one-fourth of the global average, and the country's world ranking in this regard is 134.
Distribution is unbalanced. The coverage rate in eastern China is 34.3 percent; in the central region, 27.1 percent; and in western China, just 12.5 percent. The five northwestern provinces and autonomous regions account for 32.2 percent of China's total land area, but contain only 5.9 percent of the nation's forests.
Deforestation remains a big problem, with 10.1 million hectares being improperly used or used as non-forest land. An average of 739,400 hectares are converted into non-forest land every year.
Uncontrolled logging occurs frequently, with some 75.5 million cubic meters of trees cut illegally every year.
(China.org.cn by Wang Sining and Li Shen, January 19, 2005)
The data come from a five-year study that ran from 1999 to 2003. It was the nation's most complete survey of forestry ever conducted, although five less comprehensive surveys had been completed in the past.
More than 20,000 scientists and forestry workers were mobilized to conduct a nationwide inventory of forest coverage, using satellite imaging and monitoring technologies as well as on-site observations. The government budgeted 610.0 million yuan (US$73.7 million) to gather data concerning accumulation, composition, distribution, growth and consumption as well as the influence of forests on the environment.
In 2003, the total forest coverage rate was 18.2 percent, up from 16.6 percent in 2000.
Forest quality also improved. The average number of plants per hectare increased by 72, and broadleaf and broadleaf-conifer mixed areas increased 3 percent. The area of shelterbelt and special-purpose forest increased 21 percent.
Some 20.3 percent of forested areas and 41.1 percent of young growth are privately owned.
However, the survey also revealed a number of problems:
China's forest coverage rate is only 61.5 percent of the global average, and its world ranking in terms of coverage is 130. The average forested area per person is only 1,320 square meters, less than one-fourth of the global average, and the country's world ranking in this regard is 134.
Distribution is unbalanced. The coverage rate in eastern China is 34.3 percent; in the central region, 27.1 percent; and in western China, just 12.5 percent. The five northwestern provinces and autonomous regions account for 32.2 percent of China's total land area, but contain only 5.9 percent of the nation's forests.
Deforestation remains a big problem, with 10.1 million hectares being improperly used or used as non-forest land. An average of 739,400 hectares are converted into non-forest land every year.
Uncontrolled logging occurs frequently, with some 75.5 million cubic meters of trees cut illegally every year.
(China.org.cn by Wang Sining and Li Shen, January 19, 2005)
Deforestation in China
Currently around 14 percent of China is covered by forests. Most of these are in the northern, southern and mountainous central parts of the country. There are some tropical rain forests in Yunnan Province in southern China and in other provinces along the southern coast.
Illegal logging and slash and burn agricultures consume up to 5,000 square kilometers of virgin forest every year. In northern and central China forest cover has been reduced by half in the last two decades. The mountains in southwest China have suffered serious deforestation, logging, hunting and collection of plants and animals for traditional medicines.
The last remaining large stands of forest are in northeast Manchuria. Even these are being cut down at an alarming rate to be "made into chopsticks, toothpicks and Ping Pong paddles." Most of China's rain forests along southern coast are threatened although a few areas are protected.
The furniture industry in China gobbles up large amounts of Chinese timber as well as illegally-logged tropical rain forest timber from Indonesia and other places. The use of disposable chopsticks uses up 1.3 million cubic meters of timber a year according to China’s environment ministry.
Between the mid 1990s and mid 2000s China went from being a country that imported much of its wood products to one of the world’s leading exporters of furniture, plywood and flooring. China is also a leading consumer of paper. While many paper products are made with recycled paper China still has built a number of new pulp mills and in the future they will need trees to keep them going.
Chinese demand for wood is consuming foorests around the globe. The rain forest of the Congo and Cameroon in central Africa, the Amazon basin and the islands of Indonesia are all being heavily logged to supply China’s growing demand for wood and its rapidly-growing furniture industry.
Affects of Deforestation in China
Clear cutting and overgrazing have turned large areas of Qinghai province into a desert. Large tracts of forest also being cut down in Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces have threatened the home of the giant panda.
Logging and resulting erosion in the Yangtze River basin and along other rivers are believed to have caused devastating floods, landslides and mudslides that have killed thousands of people, washed away roads and caused billions of dollars in damage
Deforestation is blamed for the 4 percent decline in rainfall, 15 percent in the dry season, in the Xishuangbanna area of Yunnan, where 50 percent of local forest have been deforested
Deforestation in Tibet
In the 1980s and early 1990s, the Chinese logged the forested areas of Tibet very intensively. The film Cutting Down Tibet, made secretly by a Tibetan, shows huge logging camps in southern Tibet and trucks loaded with trees10 feet in diameter.
Deforestation has turned once clear streams muddy brown. An increase in the number of livestock animals and a rising demand for fuel is threatening to strip the valleys of vegetation. Run-off from denuded mountain slopes is believed to have been a factor in excessive flooding of the Yangtze River in 1998.
Deforestation has been slowed since the 1998 Yangtze flood. Logging has been banned in Omda, Markam and Gonjo counties in Tibet in part to prevent erosion from filling in the Three Gorges Dam reservoir on the Yangtze. Large reforestation projects are being carried out.
Combating of Deforestation in China
China has banned logging in natural forests, earmarked $10 billion for reforestation projects and plans to spend $1 billion a year over 30 year to expand protected areas.
To reduce consumption of wood China has imposed a five percent tax on wooden flooring and even chopsticks.
The Min River valley, near panda habitats in Sichuan, is focus of ant-logging efforts. Lumber jacks are being trained as tree planters, logging is banned in some areas of Sichuan and Hubei provinces.
Illegal logging and slash and burn agricultures consume up to 5,000 square kilometers of virgin forest every year. In northern and central China forest cover has been reduced by half in the last two decades. The mountains in southwest China have suffered serious deforestation, logging, hunting and collection of plants and animals for traditional medicines.
The last remaining large stands of forest are in northeast Manchuria. Even these are being cut down at an alarming rate to be "made into chopsticks, toothpicks and Ping Pong paddles." Most of China's rain forests along southern coast are threatened although a few areas are protected.
The furniture industry in China gobbles up large amounts of Chinese timber as well as illegally-logged tropical rain forest timber from Indonesia and other places. The use of disposable chopsticks uses up 1.3 million cubic meters of timber a year according to China’s environment ministry.
Between the mid 1990s and mid 2000s China went from being a country that imported much of its wood products to one of the world’s leading exporters of furniture, plywood and flooring. China is also a leading consumer of paper. While many paper products are made with recycled paper China still has built a number of new pulp mills and in the future they will need trees to keep them going.
Chinese demand for wood is consuming foorests around the globe. The rain forest of the Congo and Cameroon in central Africa, the Amazon basin and the islands of Indonesia are all being heavily logged to supply China’s growing demand for wood and its rapidly-growing furniture industry.
Affects of Deforestation in China
Clear cutting and overgrazing have turned large areas of Qinghai province into a desert. Large tracts of forest also being cut down in Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces have threatened the home of the giant panda.
Logging and resulting erosion in the Yangtze River basin and along other rivers are believed to have caused devastating floods, landslides and mudslides that have killed thousands of people, washed away roads and caused billions of dollars in damage
Deforestation is blamed for the 4 percent decline in rainfall, 15 percent in the dry season, in the Xishuangbanna area of Yunnan, where 50 percent of local forest have been deforested
Deforestation in Tibet
In the 1980s and early 1990s, the Chinese logged the forested areas of Tibet very intensively. The film Cutting Down Tibet, made secretly by a Tibetan, shows huge logging camps in southern Tibet and trucks loaded with trees10 feet in diameter.
Deforestation has turned once clear streams muddy brown. An increase in the number of livestock animals and a rising demand for fuel is threatening to strip the valleys of vegetation. Run-off from denuded mountain slopes is believed to have been a factor in excessive flooding of the Yangtze River in 1998.
Deforestation has been slowed since the 1998 Yangtze flood. Logging has been banned in Omda, Markam and Gonjo counties in Tibet in part to prevent erosion from filling in the Three Gorges Dam reservoir on the Yangtze. Large reforestation projects are being carried out.
Combating of Deforestation in China
China has banned logging in natural forests, earmarked $10 billion for reforestation projects and plans to spend $1 billion a year over 30 year to expand protected areas.
To reduce consumption of wood China has imposed a five percent tax on wooden flooring and even chopsticks.
The Min River valley, near panda habitats in Sichuan, is focus of ant-logging efforts. Lumber jacks are being trained as tree planters, logging is banned in some areas of Sichuan and Hubei provinces.
Battling China's deforestation
New figures reveal that billions of trees have been planted since 1981. It is still not enough, says John Gittings
Most people in China have planted trees at some time or another, especially if they are officials doing their civic duty on national tree planting day. When the day was celebrated this month for the 20th successive year, an unbelievable figure was released for the number of trees planted since the first year in 1981.
The total, said the national greening commission (whose remit is to "greenify" China) amounted to some 35bn trees. Forest coverage had now reached 16.55% of China's land mass, as against only 12% two decades ago.
There were also encouraging figures for the length of windbreaks planted to prevent the desert from encroaching and to preserve soil and water in upland regions.
This should be a success story, yet everyone knows it is the reverse. Lakes and marshlands are drying up at an alarming rate in the watersheds of the Tibet-Qinghai plateau; Beijing is hit every year by more severe sandstorms; severe summer floods in central China are blamed on the denuded hills upstream. Indeed the commission's own report ended on a very different note from the one with which it began.
"Due to various factors," it concluded according to the China Daily's summary, "desertification, soil erosion, flooding, drought and other kinds of natural disasters still occur in China, and they are sometimes very harmful."
"The report shows that every year, an average of 2,460sq km [950sq miles] of vegetated land in China deteriorates into desert and another one million hectares of land suffers from serious land erosion."
So where have all those billions of trees gone?
As the environment become a more topical and politically acceptable subject, more people are posing the question. It was discussed at length during the National People's Congress in Beijing this month, particularly by specialists in the advisory body (the Chinese people's political consultative conference or CPPCC) which meets at the same time.
There is more than one answer, says one of the experts who attended the discussions.
"It may be true that they have planted those billions, but whether the trees will survive is another matter. They need care and attention over a long period of time, and they will only get it if there is proper management or an economic incentive to do so."
Windbreaks which surround commercial crops in inner Mongolia are much more likely to be properly maintained than those built in nonproductive areas to keep the encroaching desert at bay.
Hillsides where local farmers have a commercial stake in long-term forestry will also do better than those over which the community forages for firewood. Second, even where the new planting is properly maintained, it will take years - probably decades - before it can produce the same climatic benefits as the timber which it has replaced.
A third problem until recently has been a lack of forethought in planting. "They go in for monoculture and do not plant indigenous trees," says the expert. "A lot of eucalyptus is planted in the south but its leaves will not degrade."
Where timber is planted for periodic renewal, it is often felled on a wholesale basis so that vast areas are cut at the same time leaving the ground once again perilously denuded.
Anyone who travels in the west of China will soon encounter entire hillsides where the timber has been razed to the ground, or travel on roads where the tree cover on both sides has been felled for tens of kilometres.
China's richer communities may even pillage the tree resources of their rural interiors. Shanghai now boasts of its success in having transplanted 70,000 mature trees from its suburbs and from neighbouring provinces.
They include magnolias weighing ten tons and aged between 80 and a hundred years old, transported up to 700km from Anhui province.
Another 150,000 trees, says the city's gardening bureau, will be imported in the next two years.
Shanghai is another world in every sense from Tibet, where an experimental project has been launched to seed parts of the plateau by helicopter with grass and shrubs as well as trees. People are becoming more aware that in the headwaters of the river systems a mixed cover is more efficient.
Even if this works, the benefits should be set against exploitation of timber elsewhere in Tibet - a balance sheet which for political reasons is difficult to strike.
It is an uphill task in both senses of the phrase. There are, however, encouraging signs of a greater understanding on the need to plant and maintain trees on a long-term basis, says the CPPCC expert. Tree planting, after all, has deep roots in Chinese culture.
"Still planting trees at seventy!", wrote the 18th century poet Yuan Mei. "Yet mock not at my 'foolishness', dear neighbours. / It's true that mortals must die, / But fortunately no one can foretell when."
Most people in China have planted trees at some time or another, especially if they are officials doing their civic duty on national tree planting day. When the day was celebrated this month for the 20th successive year, an unbelievable figure was released for the number of trees planted since the first year in 1981.
The total, said the national greening commission (whose remit is to "greenify" China) amounted to some 35bn trees. Forest coverage had now reached 16.55% of China's land mass, as against only 12% two decades ago.
There were also encouraging figures for the length of windbreaks planted to prevent the desert from encroaching and to preserve soil and water in upland regions.
This should be a success story, yet everyone knows it is the reverse. Lakes and marshlands are drying up at an alarming rate in the watersheds of the Tibet-Qinghai plateau; Beijing is hit every year by more severe sandstorms; severe summer floods in central China are blamed on the denuded hills upstream. Indeed the commission's own report ended on a very different note from the one with which it began.
"Due to various factors," it concluded according to the China Daily's summary, "desertification, soil erosion, flooding, drought and other kinds of natural disasters still occur in China, and they are sometimes very harmful."
"The report shows that every year, an average of 2,460sq km [950sq miles] of vegetated land in China deteriorates into desert and another one million hectares of land suffers from serious land erosion."
So where have all those billions of trees gone?
As the environment become a more topical and politically acceptable subject, more people are posing the question. It was discussed at length during the National People's Congress in Beijing this month, particularly by specialists in the advisory body (the Chinese people's political consultative conference or CPPCC) which meets at the same time.
There is more than one answer, says one of the experts who attended the discussions.
"It may be true that they have planted those billions, but whether the trees will survive is another matter. They need care and attention over a long period of time, and they will only get it if there is proper management or an economic incentive to do so."
Windbreaks which surround commercial crops in inner Mongolia are much more likely to be properly maintained than those built in nonproductive areas to keep the encroaching desert at bay.
Hillsides where local farmers have a commercial stake in long-term forestry will also do better than those over which the community forages for firewood. Second, even where the new planting is properly maintained, it will take years - probably decades - before it can produce the same climatic benefits as the timber which it has replaced.
A third problem until recently has been a lack of forethought in planting. "They go in for monoculture and do not plant indigenous trees," says the expert. "A lot of eucalyptus is planted in the south but its leaves will not degrade."
Where timber is planted for periodic renewal, it is often felled on a wholesale basis so that vast areas are cut at the same time leaving the ground once again perilously denuded.
Anyone who travels in the west of China will soon encounter entire hillsides where the timber has been razed to the ground, or travel on roads where the tree cover on both sides has been felled for tens of kilometres.
China's richer communities may even pillage the tree resources of their rural interiors. Shanghai now boasts of its success in having transplanted 70,000 mature trees from its suburbs and from neighbouring provinces.
They include magnolias weighing ten tons and aged between 80 and a hundred years old, transported up to 700km from Anhui province.
Another 150,000 trees, says the city's gardening bureau, will be imported in the next two years.
Shanghai is another world in every sense from Tibet, where an experimental project has been launched to seed parts of the plateau by helicopter with grass and shrubs as well as trees. People are becoming more aware that in the headwaters of the river systems a mixed cover is more efficient.
Even if this works, the benefits should be set against exploitation of timber elsewhere in Tibet - a balance sheet which for political reasons is difficult to strike.
It is an uphill task in both senses of the phrase. There are, however, encouraging signs of a greater understanding on the need to plant and maintain trees on a long-term basis, says the CPPCC expert. Tree planting, after all, has deep roots in Chinese culture.
"Still planting trees at seventy!", wrote the 18th century poet Yuan Mei. "Yet mock not at my 'foolishness', dear neighbours. / It's true that mortals must die, / But fortunately no one can foretell when."
Ireland
Forests in Ireland today cover 470,000 hectares or 7% of Ireland's landmass. At the turn of the century, Ireland was just like Scotland, even worse; it was covering only 1% of the landmass. Today, 80% of Ireland’s forests are owned publicly, just like most countries in Europe. The Irish Forestry Board has been responsible for the management of these forests since 1989 and 20% of forests are currently in private hands. Reforestation is a major current issue in Ireland and includes many problems out of which mainly are government concerns which are that due to Ireland’s extensive use of land, forestry is likely to take in archaeological importance. Today, Ireland produces only 55% of its wood needs.
Scotland
Scotland used to cover 80% of the land 2000 years ago, but several causes lead the country towards deforestation. After World War I, the forest covering rate fell down to 5% and in 1918 the British government faced with national security suggestion of a tree less country to re-establish tree plantations. By the end of 1980, the government published specific and clear environmental guidelines, but they showed no effect. The original plant bio-diversity of Scotland was a lot more than what it is today. Below woods and above the rivers there used to be Elm, Ash, Oak, Guelder Rose, Spindle, Gean, Raspberry, Bramble, Elder, tree Willows and Osier. On the high-level ground there were many native woods of Holly, Hazel, Sessile Oak, Hawthorn, Bird Cherry, Aspen, Pendulous Birch, Goat Willow, Ash, and Common Alder. In the direction of liven up this listing of species, a Scottish Natural Heritage Ranger gave the following statement in 1997: "Much of the forest would have been tangled and irregular due to the natural wastage, disease and physical forces of wind, fire, and floodwaters. From what we know of northern Canada, Russia, and Poland, at any time up to 60% of the forest trees and bushes would be dead or dying, providing a habitat for thousands of different kinds of fungi, ferns and flowering plants, insects and other invertebrates, mammals and birds."
Finland
Finland is facing deforestation just like other countries and causes are pretty much same as other countries. One different cause which is causing damage to forests, buildings, soil, fish and other wildlife is Acid Rain, and just like Russia, sulphur and air pollutants are damaging the environment. The government is playing a relevant role to control the timber industries to maintain the country’s valuable forest resources and the good thing about Finland now is that it has a very low deforestation rate which is just 0.10%. If we have a rate of this in every country, we could prevent deforestation. Finland is facing other environmental issues, such as air pollution, loss of biodiversity, climate change, whaling and many more.
Russia
During the Soviet period, land and water resources went through a lot of degradation. Areas, like the Kuznetsk Basin, and the lower Volga River, were poorly degraded, and nuclear weapons caused permanent damage in Southern Siberia, and Ural Mountains. Another cause is airborne-pollutants which have affected vegetation in many areas of Russia, and once again Sulphur is one of the deadly pollutants causing damages around the country. Winds spread these pollutants all over the country and countries bordering it and damage the environment. Besides just air- pollutants, forests in some areas are facing deforestation due to logging and since the rate has increased foreign logging operation activities have been formed. Besides just the damaging of trees, air pollutants have accumulated in lakes, rivers, and oceans damaging the water and killing the animals.
Austria
Austria tend to cover forests all over the country including the mountainous side 13, 00 years ago, but time changed and deforestation began to occur. The Neolithic farmers began the clearance of in low land areas, and in the middle ages, the upland areas started to get clear, which decrease tree lines. In prehistoric period, forests were used by its communities, but since the middle ages, they have been taken over by the government and other private owners. Most of the forests were taken advantage of by industries and salt works. The revolution of 1848 changed that by giving ownership to aristocrats, farmers, partly to the state, and villages and towns. Currently 1% of 214,000 forest owners hold area more than 200 hectors, and 65% holds are lot less than 5 hectors, but still 80% of the forests are in private hands and the rest 20% is in state owned.
Today, only 47% of the country is covered with trees, out of which 3% is old forest, 22% semi natural and 8% artificial plantations. Forest clearance is not a major problem for Austria because of the strict laws, but forest degradation is a major conflict. Industrial pollution including Sulphur and nitrogen oxides is widely spread and is causing a gargantuan amount of damage to plant life, ecosystem, and mainly forests. It is estimated that today 93% of Sulphur pollutants come from Austrian borders and that is causing danger to all the countries surrounding Austria. Since hunting is a very famous sport in Austria, it is leading to deforestation including damage to forests, loss of biodiversity, and a decrease in soil quality.
Today, only 47% of the country is covered with trees, out of which 3% is old forest, 22% semi natural and 8% artificial plantations. Forest clearance is not a major problem for Austria because of the strict laws, but forest degradation is a major conflict. Industrial pollution including Sulphur and nitrogen oxides is widely spread and is causing a gargantuan amount of damage to plant life, ecosystem, and mainly forests. It is estimated that today 93% of Sulphur pollutants come from Austrian borders and that is causing danger to all the countries surrounding Austria. Since hunting is a very famous sport in Austria, it is leading to deforestation including damage to forests, loss of biodiversity, and a decrease in soil quality.
The United Kingdom
The United Kingdom is less deforested than most countries in Europe. According to history, woodland would have predominated much of the country, but trees such as oak, ash and lime have dominated most forests. On the other hand, 90% of this cover has been lost from past 5,000 years due to the need of firewood, clearance for agriculture, and due to terrible management by humans. Total woodland makes up 2.5% of the land area of Great Britain, since 45% of the ancient and semi natural woodland that existed in 1945, has been lost since that time.
Currently government of UK has a policy aiming to increase woodland cover, plantations of exotic species, and native woodland for production and environmental purposes. Each year they have different forest creation projects that tend to plant 5,000 hectors of new native woodland. Some of the forest creation projects are the National Forest, Central Scotland Forest, and the Millennium Forest.
Forests in the UK are divided between private and public. Government owned forests service manages about 35% of the country’s woodland, 10% is owned by public voluntary bodies, 20% is owned by farmers, and the rest 35% is owned by other private industries.
Currently the UK produces around 15% of its timber needs from domestic forests, and efforts have brought and increase in the timber industry. It is expected that the volume of wood will be increase from a 9 million cubic meters per year today to 15 million cubic meters per year by the year 2020.
Since, more animals and plants depend on woodland, which includes about 300 vascular plants and 5,000 animal species, the nation’s biodiversity is deeply affected. An important portion of woodland that remains today is under poor management and biodiversity has decrease many times. In 1990, a government survey was taken and it showed a drop of almost 20% in species diversity.
Road building in the UK has brought a major threat to its woodland. There are many causes behind this, which include lack of protection and essential value given to nature, road building policy, priority of economic interests, and political structures and relations.
Currently government of UK has a policy aiming to increase woodland cover, plantations of exotic species, and native woodland for production and environmental purposes. Each year they have different forest creation projects that tend to plant 5,000 hectors of new native woodland. Some of the forest creation projects are the National Forest, Central Scotland Forest, and the Millennium Forest.
Forests in the UK are divided between private and public. Government owned forests service manages about 35% of the country’s woodland, 10% is owned by public voluntary bodies, 20% is owned by farmers, and the rest 35% is owned by other private industries.
Currently the UK produces around 15% of its timber needs from domestic forests, and efforts have brought and increase in the timber industry. It is expected that the volume of wood will be increase from a 9 million cubic meters per year today to 15 million cubic meters per year by the year 2020.
Since, more animals and plants depend on woodland, which includes about 300 vascular plants and 5,000 animal species, the nation’s biodiversity is deeply affected. An important portion of woodland that remains today is under poor management and biodiversity has decrease many times. In 1990, a government survey was taken and it showed a drop of almost 20% in species diversity.
Road building in the UK has brought a major threat to its woodland. There are many causes behind this, which include lack of protection and essential value given to nature, road building policy, priority of economic interests, and political structures and relations.
Romania
Romania is another largely deforested country in Europe . Just like Hungary, it once had forests covering three quarters of Romania, but currently it has been reduced down to 27%. Out of that, 2% are plantations and 25% are natural forests and managed woodland. Romania has lost basically 5 million hectares of its forests in the last three centuries. Half were lost due to end of World War I. Currently the country is trying its best to save the forests, but half of them are owned by private owners. Even today these forests are facing many problems, and the causes are same as they were which are extended droughts, industrial pollution, and over grazing and damage brought by mechanization. Pine tree species have been planting beech and oak for over 60 years and today they constitute 30% tree cover. The government recently had planned to have 27% forests under conifers. Most people are trying to simplify forests for production, but they don’t know that it is leading the forests in danger to be damaged by cockroaches, rats, wind, and snow.
Hungary
There are 8 deforested countries in Europe and they all have different causes and effects leading them. Hungary once had forests covering over 85% of national territory, and it was reduced due to clearance of agriculture in the 1930s. Wars have always been a major cause for deforestation and since World War II forest covering are reducing and forests are ruining and this is causing natural forest degradation. Native tree species have difficulty growing and the cause for this is the agricultural growth in the lowlands which is serviced by the intensive water management system. Another underlying cause of deforestation is air pollution resulting from industries and transportation boundaries which is causing a lot of damage to natural species including trees. Oriented forest management systems have given very little priority to biodiversity or ecological values and that is leading into more ruination of forests. Harvesting and mechanization has reduced biological diversity and this has caused forests to be scrappy.
Today 40% of Hungary ’s forests have been passed in private hands. Since, they are now owned mostly by people who don’t know what they are going to do with it or how they are going to use it and manage it will result in more deforestation which will lead to that about 20% of country’s forest are unmanaged. By having an openness situation, the weakness of these forests has been increased a lot in illegal harvesting and mechanization. Current forests owners have little knowledge of how to handle and manage the forests and this is increasing the risk of forest quality that it will be soon damaged.
Nowadays, marketing and financing are the underlying causes of forest loss in Hungary and new markets and new values are increasing this pressure. Non-timber forest products use is now heading for supplying foreign markets and is becoming unsustainable. People in Hungary today don’t really care much about their forests and how much damage and problems they are bringing to their environment, “people want a wealthy society and not a healthy society.”
Today 40% of Hungary ’s forests have been passed in private hands. Since, they are now owned mostly by people who don’t know what they are going to do with it or how they are going to use it and manage it will result in more deforestation which will lead to that about 20% of country’s forest are unmanaged. By having an openness situation, the weakness of these forests has been increased a lot in illegal harvesting and mechanization. Current forests owners have little knowledge of how to handle and manage the forests and this is increasing the risk of forest quality that it will be soon damaged.
Nowadays, marketing and financing are the underlying causes of forest loss in Hungary and new markets and new values are increasing this pressure. Non-timber forest products use is now heading for supplying foreign markets and is becoming unsustainable. People in Hungary today don’t really care much about their forests and how much damage and problems they are bringing to their environment, “people want a wealthy society and not a healthy society.”
Deforestation in Europe
Introduction
Europe has a vast amount of deforested area. Hungary , Romania , The U.K, Austria , Ireland , Scotland , Russia , Finland , and Poland are all deforested countries in Europe . The UK is one of the least forested countries of Europe . The average European country has 24% of its land area covered by forests. Deforestation in these areas is leading to destruction all over the country, and if the government, and the society doesn’t do anything about it, chances are that all trees would be damaged and people will die and the world will come to an end.
Deforestation Figures for Europe
Forest Cover Statistics for 2000
Total Forest Area (‘000 ha)
1,039,251
Forest Cover (% of land)
46.0
Plantations (‘000 ha)
32,015
Tropical Forest Cover (% of land)
0%
Tropical Forest Cover ('000 ha)
-
Subtropical Forest Cover (% of land)
5%
Subtropical Forest Cover ('000 ha)
51,963
Temperate Forest Cover (% of land)
22%
Temperate Forest Cover ('000 ha)
228,635
Boreal/polar (% of land)
73%
Boreal/polar ('000 ha)
758,653
Europe has a vast amount of deforested area. Hungary , Romania , The U.K, Austria , Ireland , Scotland , Russia , Finland , and Poland are all deforested countries in Europe . The UK is one of the least forested countries of Europe . The average European country has 24% of its land area covered by forests. Deforestation in these areas is leading to destruction all over the country, and if the government, and the society doesn’t do anything about it, chances are that all trees would be damaged and people will die and the world will come to an end.
Deforestation Figures for Europe
Forest Cover Statistics for 2000
Total Forest Area (‘000 ha)
1,039,251
Forest Cover (% of land)
46.0
Plantations (‘000 ha)
32,015
Tropical Forest Cover (% of land)
0%
Tropical Forest Cover ('000 ha)
-
Subtropical Forest Cover (% of land)
5%
Subtropical Forest Cover ('000 ha)
51,963
Temperate Forest Cover (% of land)
22%
Temperate Forest Cover ('000 ha)
228,635
Boreal/polar (% of land)
73%
Boreal/polar ('000 ha)
758,653
Tropical forest vegetation of Xishuangbanna, SW China and its secondary changes, with special reference to some problems in local nature conservation
The primary forest vegetation and the secondary plant communities in Xishuangbanna, an important region for the conservation of biodiversity in China, are discussed with comments and suggestions for nature conservation.
Tropical seasonal rainforest, tropical montane rainforest, monsoon forest on river banks, monsoon forest over limestone and south-subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forest are the main primary forest vegetation types in Xishuangbanna. They demonstrate a diversified species composition and complicated community structure and support many species of economic significance. Due to agricultural exploitation over the last 30 years, primary forests in the areas have been greatly changed. Some have been denuded and some converted into farmlands for rubber plantations or other tropical cash crops, or for shifting cultivation. As a result secondary vegetation consisting of deciduous monsoon forest, savanna woodland, bamboo Dendrocalamus membranaceus forest, grassland and Chromolaena odoratum community has developed on the abandoned lands on a large scale. The depletion of primary forest by the excessive harvest of useful plants threatens the gene resource. To protect local tropical forests effectively and utilize forest resources rationally, a systematic conservation strategy and more scientific effort are urgently needed. To reduce pressure upon the forests, plantations should be set up for fuel wood and diverse agroforestry systems and multispecies plantations should be introduced and developed.
By Jianhou Zhang and Min Cao
Tropical seasonal rainforest, tropical montane rainforest, monsoon forest on river banks, monsoon forest over limestone and south-subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forest are the main primary forest vegetation types in Xishuangbanna. They demonstrate a diversified species composition and complicated community structure and support many species of economic significance. Due to agricultural exploitation over the last 30 years, primary forests in the areas have been greatly changed. Some have been denuded and some converted into farmlands for rubber plantations or other tropical cash crops, or for shifting cultivation. As a result secondary vegetation consisting of deciduous monsoon forest, savanna woodland, bamboo Dendrocalamus membranaceus forest, grassland and Chromolaena odoratum community has developed on the abandoned lands on a large scale. The depletion of primary forest by the excessive harvest of useful plants threatens the gene resource. To protect local tropical forests effectively and utilize forest resources rationally, a systematic conservation strategy and more scientific effort are urgently needed. To reduce pressure upon the forests, plantations should be set up for fuel wood and diverse agroforestry systems and multispecies plantations should be introduced and developed.
By Jianhou Zhang and Min Cao
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