Greenpeace: ‘Ending deforestation is one of the fastest ways to save the climate’

In fact deforestation accounts for approximately one fifth of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
According to Greenpeace, this is more than all of the cars, planes, and trains in the world put together. When trees are cut down or burnt, the carbon dioxide that they had previously absorbed is released into the atmosphere and also, the number of trees that absorb carbon dioxide is reduced.

Greenpeace activists are currently in the Indonesian rainforest in the Climate Defenders Camp in order to bring attention to the role that deforestation plays in climate change.

Please visit Greenpeace’s website for more information on the Greenpeace campaign.
You can also sign a petition to ensure that the new climate change treaty that results from Copenhagen includes a fund to save forests and for opportunities to support Greenpeace campaigns.

Filed under: Deforestation, New campaigns , Climate change, Copenhagen, Deforestation, Rainforest depletion, Rainforest Protection, Rainforests

Short break…

Hi all,

I am sitting exams at university from Monday so I am probably not going to be updating my blog for a couple of weeks. I wish there were more hours in the day to allow me to work on it!

Once I finish, I will catch up with any developments that have occurred in these weeks.

Please feel free to give me feedback on my blog, it will help me improve it. Also, if there is a particular issue related to rainforest depletion that I have not yet mentioned and you think is important, please let me know and I will look into it.

Thank you very much for reading my blog!

Filed under: Uncategorized

The rainforest is an “infinite sea of possibilities”

This is the way Mateus Paciencia, a botanist from São Paulo, describes the rainforest. He spoke to Tom Phillips from the Guardian in an article that highlights the importance of research of the medicinal properties of plants of the rainforest.

Paciencia, along with Drauzio Varella (an Oncologist) and Osmar Ferreira Barbosa, a former chainsaw operator who now works as a forest guide went deep into the Brazilian rainforest to find natural medicines that can provide a cure for cancer and provide economic alternatives to those who once destroyed the rainforest.

Every plant in the rainforests has potential medical uses and since the project first started in 1995, Varella and his team have collected more than 2000 extracts for analysis. The results are telling: over 70 extracts have demonstrated some impact on tumour cells while over 50 have shown results against bacterial infections.

By depleting the rainforests and driving its species to extinction, we are also destrying a goldmine of medicinal agents that are, as yet, unexplored.

Read the full article at the Guardian.co.uk.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Biodiversity, Deforestation, Rainforest Medical Research, Rainforest Protection

Books that are good for the rainforests

Thomas Marent- Rainforest- a Photographic Journey

The book Rainforest- a photographic journey by Thomas Marent assembles over 500 photographs he has taken over 16 years of travel.

Dorling Kindersley Publishers works in association with the Rainforest Foundation who receives a donation for every copy sold.

You can order the book through Amazon by visiting the Rainforest Foundation website or Amazon.

The organisation also recommends books on the rainforest with consumer information and on plants and animals of the rainforest. Check out these books on their website.

Filed under: Deforestation , Books on the rainforests, images of the rainforests

A to Z of endangered species

The New Scientist magazine has an A to Z list of endangered species in the world. Some of these species are native to the rainforests. The orang-utan, for example, is endangered partly due to deforestation and intensive logging.

Filed under: Biodiversity , Biodiversity

Ascertaining the rate of deforestation worldwide

I found it difficult to find statistics of the rate of destruction of the rainforests since the numbers I have found seem to apply to forests all over the world and not exclusively to rainforests.

However I think that analysing the destruction of forests in general will give us a good idea of how much harm human activity is doing to the environment and the need to ensure that the trend is reversed.

I have decided to compare the statistics provided by different organisations (both governmental and non-governmental).

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) publishes information gathered from the Forest Resources Assessment in 2005 that states:

“Each year about 13 million hectares of the world’s forests are lost due to deforestation, but the rate of net forest loss is slowing down, thanks to new planting and natural expansion of existing forests.

From 1990 to 2000, the net forest loss was 8.9 million hectares per year.

From 2000 to 2005, the net forest loss was 7.3 million hectares per year – an area the size of Sierra Leone or Panama and equivalent to 200 km2 per day.

Primary forests are lost or modified at a rate of 6 million hectares per year through deforestation or selective logging.

Thirty-seven countries and territories lost 1 percent or more of their forest area each year between 2000 and 2005, while 20 countries gained more than 1 percent per year due to natural expansion of forests and afforestation.”

The next Forest Resources Assessment to be carried out by the FAO is due in 2010. Using satellite data from 1975, 1990, 2000 and 2005, forest cover will be surveyed across the planet in about 13 500 plots, providing a sampling intensity of 1 percent of the global land surface. This survey will generate unprecedented information on global forest change – deforestation, afforestation and natural forest expansion. It will provide insight into the land uses that are replacing forests. It will identify changes in biomes that transcend national boundaries. And it will improve understanding of the global contributions of forests to greenhouse gas emissions and reductions.

The Assessment will provide the international community with up-to-date information on questions such as how much forest there is; how well it is managed and how much is being lost.

WWF quotes the statistics from the Forest Resources Assessment of 2005 (13 million hectares lost each year).

Greenpeace states that an area the size of a football pitch disappears every two seconds but it is unclear how this is measured.

Since the size of a football pitch is 120m*90m approximately (according to the BBC) this means that:

10800 sq metres are lost every two seconds (*30 for m/minute)

324.000 sq metres every minute (*60 for m/hour)

19.440.000 sq metres every hour (*24 for m/day)

4.66.560.000 sq metres every day (*7 for m/week)

3.265.920.000 sq metres every week (*52 for m/year)

1.69.827.840.000 sq metres every year.

Dividing metres by 1.000 to get hectares, this means that 169.827.840 hectares are lost every year- compared with the FAO estimate of 7.3 million hectares per year.
(Please let me know if you spot a mistake in my calculations!)

Unless I have calculated this incorrectly it seems that the Greenpeace estimate is substantially higher than that of FAO although I do not know for what reason.

Even if FAO was to publish the more accurate figure, 7.3 million hectares is too large an area of forest destructed to ignore.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Deforestation, Rainforests, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation

Report: the State of the World´s Forests 2009

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations has recently published its annual report entitled “The State of the World´s Forests” 2009.
The report acknowledges that some countries are better prepared to face deforestation while others do not have the necessary institutional, legal and economic conditions to manage their forest resources sustainably.
The report highlights the impact of the economic crisis on the world´s forests.  The negative consequences include:

• Reduced investment in sustainable forest management;
• A rise in illegal logging;
• Land dependence raising the risk of agricultural expansion into forests, deforestation and reversal of previous forest gains.

However, there could also be positive consequences to the economic crisis:

• Reduced demand of wood products;
• Conversion of forest for largescale cultivation of commercial crops such as oil-palm,
  soybeans and rubber could slow as their prices fall.

Generally, though, the report considers the future of forests and forestry at a regional and global level.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Economic Crisis, Rainforests, United Nations Fooad and Agriculture Organisation

Deforestation and Biodiversity

Tropical rainforests are being felled to exploit their resources or to make use of land that can bring more revenue as plantations than as a sustainable forest.
According to the BBC, cattle ranching accounts for about 70% of loss of rainforest in Brazil with soya production and illegal logging being the secong cause.

However, the depletion of the rainforests is not only a cause of climate change, it is also leading to a loss of biodiversity. Tropical flora and fauna- which evolved in these specific ecosystems along thousands of years is now disappearing at alarming speed.
According to rain-tree.com, 137 plant, animal and insect species are lost every day due to deforestation which equates to 50.000 species a year.

It is believed that some of the species that have now disappeared could have been analysed for medicinal properties. According to rain-tree.com, around 100 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources and a study cited in the above website carried out by the US National Cancer institute, states that around 3000 plants have been proved active against cancer cells and 70% of these plants are found in the rainforest.
Medicine men and shamans, who possess a wide knowledge of the medicinal properties of the rainforest species, are losing their homelands and sources of medicine to deforestation.

By ensuring that governments take decisive action to protect the rainforests, they are, at the same time safeguarding an invaluable source of medicinal species.

Filed under: Biodiversity, Deforestation , Biodiversity

Seeds for Schools initiative

I think this is a great way to highlight the importance of trees and forests everywhere…

The Forestry Commission of Great Britain is working in partnership with News of the World, Royal Mail and Tesco on a project aimed at getting schools to plant one million trees throughout the UK.

The Forestry Commission will provide schools with Scots Pine, Alder and Silver Birch seeds along with information on how to plant and grow these trees.
The packs will also contain extensive notes for teachers on linking the project into the curriculum, and a special Forests and Climate Change DVD for classroom use.

Schools don’t have to do anything to get their packs but those who sign up early can win £2,000 worth of equipment courtesy of the Tesco for Schools and Clubs initiative.

Teachers can visit the Forestry Commission website for information on how to participate and links to the Seeds for Schools initiative.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Deforestation contributes to climate change

Forests- not only rainforests- play a key role in regulating the climate. Through the process of photosynthesis, trees absorb carbon dioxide and store it as other carbon compounds (trunks, branches, foliage, and roots of trees, and in the soil).

Deforestation leads to the carbon dioxide stored in trees to be immediately released back into the atmosphere. The Forestry Commission explains this process very clearly.

Since carbon dioxide emissions are the main cause of climate change, it follows that deforestation has a direct impact on climate change.

According to UN statistics (World Bank 2004), deforestation accounts for about 20% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that result from human activities. (Note that these statistics vary: the Forestry Commission states that deforestation accounts for 18% of man-made GHG).

The rate of destruction of the world’s forests is therefore particularly worrying. According to UN statistics, an estimated 13 million hectares of the world’s forests are lost every year due to deforestation.

Thankfully, initiatives to replant forests and forest protection mean that the rate of net forest loss is decreasing.

In international law, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change encourages state parties to take part in reforestation. The Kyoto Protocol assigns each of its member state parties reduced carbon dioxide emissions targets for a specified time period (2008-2012). In reducing its carbon emissions, member states can take advantage of the fact that carbon can be accumulated in vegetation (as explained above) in what it refers to as “sinks”.

Through reforestation, state parties to the Kyoto Protocol can offset some of the credits “lost” through carbon emissions which are, in fact, aimed at reducing the impact of GHG emissions on climate change.

Another way of reducing carbon emissions into the atmosphere is by planting young forests. According to the Forestry Commission:

“In young forests, carbon is soaked up quickly. In mature forests the carbon balance reaches a steady state as carbon storage is matched by decomposition. At this point the forest becomes a vast carbon reservoir. The carbon can be harvested in the form of timber thus freeing up space to plant more young trees which will absorb more carbon from the atmosphere. By replanting harvested areas we can ensure that the system is sustainable.”

The importance of planting new forests was referred to in the previous blog entry: Planted forests- an environmentally friendly option to logging in the rainforests.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Climate change, Kyoto Protocol, Rainforest depletion