Berhe W.aregay
8 August 2007
Addis Ababa — One wonders why, given their manifold munificence to us, we continue to consider forests as something easily dispensable and worthy only of our divided attention, merely worthy as photo op for dignitary's spouses during publicized seedling plantings.
Let's have a look at the largess which by no means is exhaustive, of course, and perhaps realize once again, what we are missing out on every time we cut forests. We can start with the seemingly mundane; charcoal and firewood that we harvest from forests and burn. Without felled trees, how would millions cook their meals?
From the mundane we go to the sublime. Forest environs are reputed to sooth your nerves and enhance your spirituality. A walk in the forest, some say, makes one admire nature and whoever was responsible for its being, if one have a religious bent. It makes one appreciate more one's country too. That is, as opposed to a walk in a busy street, that reminds you of car manufacturers and rising prices.
In between the mundane and the sublime, you have so many things that trees are famous for. For starters, they give you your mahogany office furniture. They protect farmlands from being washed away. They make clean water possible. They increase evaporation. Increase evaporation, is that good? You bet. The more evaporation, the more likelihood for rain to occur and the whole system becomes wet as a result.
If you are, however, reluctant to buy the suggestion above, that forests are good rain makers, what you can't possibly doubt is the fact they are the biggest hoarders of moisture underground once it has fallen as rain. In a way, they save the water in the soil for people to use it later in whatever form---- spring, river, and subterranean water.
Forests are the ideal haven for animals that find themselves fugitives from man. Forests comprise biodiversity and in a way shelter it. Clear forests and you invite assured extinction. Let's not forget too that millions of aborigine people live entirely dependent on forests both within and on peripheries.
You may ask, what is new? Have we not been there and heard all that before? Well, you are right but what is new is this: Forests have been under attack for as long as history has been recorded. Now, a brand-new nemesis is on the offing. It comes in the form of what people call biofuel. It is the growing of huge mass of known staple crops and converting them to usable, mainstream energy, similar to fossil fuels. But how much and where to grow them is what makes it niggling.
With petroleum prices destined to go nowhere but up in absolute terms and cutthroat competition between countries to control oil at the sources, who would not do anything to see it replaced with some home grown form of energy?
No wonder then that biofuels have been highly hyped: Grow crops, which we do anyway, and produce fuel. It sounds so simple, does it not? But no, it is not as simple as it seems; when we take the environmental ramifications.
Vast agricultural lands are required to produce all the biofuel that we need and that come from fossil fuels today. If you opt to produce them from new or virgin lands, you will need to get rid of vast swaths of forests worldwide and change them into industrial farms.
The implications of that are immense, environmentally. Even if we hope (against hope?) that countries will know better than decimate their forests for oil, it would still mean the end of fresh plantings or afforesting even in countries that actually need forests more than oil.
Even if the technology of biofuel makes a leap and makes it possible to make biofuel from shrubs such as castor plants as opposed to crop, you still have to cut real forests to make way.
So if people till now have been destructing their forests for all sorts of reasons, including the most mundane of reasons, now with the arrival of biofuel we will lay waste for petrodollar reasons, an unbeatable proposition.
The other option of growing crops on the existing farmlands of the world may not be a real solution, either. It has problems of its own, one of which could be that organizations like the WFP could run out of stock.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 The Daily Monitor. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
