Mongabay.com is considered a leading source of information on tropical forests by some of the world's top ecologists and conservationists. TROPICAL RAINFORESTS: Imperiled Riches—Threatened Rainforests
Human skulls in cave at Londa Nanggala
Human skulls in cave at Londa Nanggala, Sulawesi, Indonesia (Photo by R. Butler)

THE IMPACT OF WAR ON DEFORESTATION

By Rhett Butler  |  Last updated July 22, 2012

War can be a blessing in disguise or a curse to the rainforest, depending on the course of events that surrounds the war, and the situation before the outbreak of the war.

War brings panic, disorganization, and concerns of survival above most commercial activities—circumstances that can help protect the rainforest by keeping people from destroying it. War may bring the downfall of governments that sell rainforests assets to service debt payments and finance for weapons purchases, as well as the departure of foreign investors from the country, leaving operations at a standstill. Such was the case with the civil war in Liberia during the late 1990s, where wealthy businessmen fled the country, resulting in the shutdown of commercial exploitation activities in the forests. Continuous warfare, like that of Mozambique from 1977-1992, also has the effect of keeping foreign investors uninterested in risking their capital in investment schemes that could use the forests for economic returns.

Fighting and safety may preoccupy people more than hunting, the collection of fuelwood, and slash-and-burn agriculture, so forest can benefit from the absence of these activities. Many times, rural areas are evacuated and poor farmers crowd into urban areas or refugee camps, relieving some of the pressure on forests. Another deterrent to rainforest exploitation is the guerrillas who sometimes hide out in the rainforest. In places like Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Mozambique, and Angola, so many land mines were laid that people were at risk of detonating them each time they set forth in the forest. So people who might have exploited it usually avoided the forest. Forests are generally safest during wars when the country has a low population density and thus few human population threats to the forest.

However, in countries where population puts pressures on the natural resources, rainforests and wildlife may be decimated by war. Where governments may have worked to preserve forests through some form of park structure, the disappearance of structure can result in the total failure of parks. For example, in Rwanda, where the appalling Tutsi-Hutu ethnic civil war resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, wildlife suffered from the movement of refugees. While the actual warfare did little damage to the forest, subsistence hunting and fuelwood collection from refugee camps devastated Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). More than 750,000 refugees who were crowded into an unsanitary camp put tremendous pressures on park resources and more than 20,000 acres of protected area were deforested. Four out of the five habituated mountain silverback gorillas in the park were killed while other wildlife was hunted with machine-guns. Exiled Tutsis returned with livestock to graze the countryside, further damaging sensitive areas.

The chaos of the late 1990s in the Democratic Republic of the Congo seriously impacted the conservation institutions and national parks of the country. Four world heritage sites—Virunga National Park, Garamba N.P., Kahuzi-Biega N.P., and the Okapi Wildlife Reserve—were affected by the rebels, and park facilities were looted by fleeing government troops. Still wildlife fared pretty well in some places due to heroic efforts by rangers. For example, in 2005 Corneille Ewango of the Wildlife Conservation Society was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for risking his life to protect the Okapi Faunal Reserve from incursions by rebel militias.


    Conservation heroes >>



Another "guerrilla" poses problems for rainforest conservation


The presence of guerrilla fighters in the rainforest sometimes causes the government to take steps to destroy their refuge, using defoliants and clear-cutting to expose their strongholds. Such is the case in Burma and Sri Lanka where rainforest is destroyed for this purpose. At other times, fighting is carried out in the rainforest, resulting in damage from gunfire, explosives, and soldier movement, as in the forested Chiapas state of Mexico during the early and mid-1990's.

In some countries, like Thailand and Colombia, forestry officials were actively targeted by rebels. Here, where logging was often carried out illegally for timber barons, any government employee is seen as the enemy. For example, in Thailand, where logging of native forests was banned in 1988, timber barons in the 1990s and early 2000s were known to hire armed gangs to illegally harvest trees from reserves. After a series of shootings, unarmed forestry officials avoided confrontation by staying out of these areas. The situation in Thailand illustrates a problem facing park rangers and forestry officials worldwide: how to confront heavily armed bands of illegal loggers and poachers. Is protecting a forest worth your life?

Guerrillas and rebel groups also target oil installations, pipelines, and mining operations. The resulting oil and chemical spills can have serious environmental consequences, polluting local streams and rivers and affecting wildlife. For example, the the Caño Limon-Covenas oil pipeline in eastern Colombia was attacked 498 times in its first 11 years of operation, while oil operations are routinely damaged in the Niger River delta in Nigeria.

Military outposts constructed to establish a physical presence deep in the rainforest can also result in forest clearing. Roads linking outposts to urban areas can trigger settlement by colonists seeking land for subsistence agriculture.

Finally, in some places guerrilla movements have deterred activities that drive deforestation. The FARC insurgency in Colombia was a major reason why vast parts of Colombia has not been logged or converted for industrial agriculture from the 1980s until the mid-2000s. During that period Colombia had one of the lowest deforestation rates in Latin America. Yet aerial coca-eradication spraying programs had other negative effects on forests, killing all vegetation and posing long-term health risks to farmers.





Review questions:

  • What is the impact of war on deforestation?
  • How can war result in more deforestation? Less deforestation?

Other versions of this page

print version | spanish | french | portuguese | chinese | japanese



Continued / Next:

Commercial Agriculture




Other pages in this section:

Deforestation
Threats from Humankind
Economic restructuring
Logging
Mining
War
Cattle ranching
Pollution
Hunting
Roads
Fragmentation
Debt
Consumption
- - - - -
References
References
References
References
References
Natural Threats
Subsistence Agriculture
Oil Extraction
Paper production
Fires
Industrial Agriculture
Dams
Urbanization
Tourism
Fuelwood Harvesting
Climate Change
Population and Poverty

- - - - -
Kids version of this section
- Why are rainforests disappearing?
- Logging
- Agriculture
- Cattle
- Roads
- Poverty





For kids

Tour: the Amazon

Rainforest news

Tour: Indonesia's rainforests

 Home
 What's New
 About
 Rainforests
   Mission
   Introduction
   Characteristics
   Biodiversity
   The Canopy
   Forest Floor
   Forest Waters
   Indigenous People
   Deforestation
   Consequences
   Saving Rainforests
   Amazon
   Borneo
   Congo
   New Guinea
   Sulawesi
   REDD
   Country Profiles
   Statistics
   Works Cited
   For Kids
   For Teachers
   Photos/Images
   Expert Interviews
   Rainforest News
  Forest data
   Global deforestation
   Tropical deforestation
   By country
   Deforestation charts
   Regional forest data
   Deforestation drivers
 XML Feeds
 Pictures
 Books
 Education
 Newsletter
 Contact



 CONTENTS
Rainforests
Tropical Fish
News
Madagascar
Pictures
Kids' Site
Languages
TCS Journal
About
Archives
Topics | RSS
Newsletter




 Other languages
Arabic
Bengali
Chinese (CN) (expanded)
Chinese (TW)
Croatian
Danish
Dutch
Farsi
French (expanded)
German (expanded)
Greek
Hindi
Hungarian
Indonesian
Italian
Japanese (expanded)
Javanese
Korean
Malagasy
Malay
Marathi
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese (expanded)
Russian
Slovak
Spanish (expanded)
Swahili
Swedish
Ukrainian



 WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
 Email:


 INTERACT
Facebook
Twitter
Contact
Help
Photo store
Mongabay gear




Recent news

U.S. Admiral: climate change, not North Korea, biggest threat in the Pacific
(03/13/2013) This week, Admiral Samuel J. Locklear II, the head of U.S. military forces in the Pacific, told The Boston Globe that climate change was the gravest threat in the region. While such an assessment may be surprising, given North Korea's recent nuclear tests, the U.S. military has long viewed climate change as a massive destabilizing force on global security.


As a tiny island nation makes a big sacrifice, will the rest of the world follow suit?
(09/15/2010) Kiribati, a small nation consisting of 33 Pacific island atolls, is forecast to be among the first countries swamped by rising sea levels. Nevertheless, the country recently made an astounding commitment: it closed over 150,000 square miles of its territory to fishing, an activity that accounts for nearly half the government's tax revenue. What moved the tiny country to take this monumental action? President Anote Tong, says Kiribati is sending a message to the world: 'We need to make sacrifices to provide a future for our children and grandchildren.'


Kenyan community displaced by nature reserve seeks justice
(09/22/2008) Lake Bogoria is a fascinating nature reserve in Kenya's Rift Valley. Set in a strange arid landscape, the lake attracts tens of thousands of flamingos. The multitudes of bright pink birds contrast with the grayish-blue landscape. The lake itself is shallow and saline; boiling hot springs and geysers can be found along its western shore. Fish eagles and marabou storks haunt the waters, seeking out flamingo for dinner. Antelope, even the greater kudu, can sometimes be seen, while hyraxes make their homes in the surrounding bare rock. However, the strange beauty of this reserve comes with a grim reality not shown to tourists.


Climate change may increase global conflict
(08/25/2008) The signs of a warming world are everywhere: birds are migrating with changing temperatures; coral reefs are dying out due to bleaching; warmer winters are allowing beetles to devour Canadian forests; and the Northwest Passage has opened for the second year in a row. While scientists work to understand how climate change is affecting the worldÕs ecosystems, others are attempting to predict how societies may respond. Jurgen Scheffran, a scientist with the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security at the University of Illinois, believes a warmer world will lead to an increase in armed conflicts. He concludes that societies stressed by increased competition for natural resources are more likely to engage in warfare.


Could carbon credits-for-forest conservation (REDD) reduce terrorism and global warming?
(12/20/2007) Schemes to offer carbon credits for reducing deforestation rates in developing countries could improve American security by providing stable income to disaffected rural groups, argues a new Council on Foreign Relations report on the impact of climate change on U.S. national security.



More news on environmental refugees


More rainforest news



what's new | rainforests home | for kids | help | madagascar | search | about | languages | contact

Copyright Rhett Butler 1994-2011

"Rainforest" is used interchangeably with "rain forest" on this site. "Jungle" is generally not used.