About this site
Providing tropical forest news, statistics, photos, and information, rainforests.mongabay.com is the world's most popular rainforest site. [more]
Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by R. Butler)
CONSUMPTION
Misdirected consumption in wealthier countries contributes to rainforest destruction in tropical countries. For example, during the 1970s and 1980s American demand for cheap beef triggered the clearing of vast stretches of rainforest in Central America and Brazil. Similarly demand for certain forest products like tropical hardwoods and inexpensive particle board gives impetus for companies to exploit forest stocks. Japan converts thousands of acres of tropical rainforest every year into wood framing for cement blocks (discarded after the cement dries) and chopsticks. The cultivation of cassava in Thailand for European cattle feed increased more than ten-fold from 1965 to the mid-1980s, causing extensive deforestation in northeastern Thailand.
The top 20 percent of the wealthiest countries consume 86 percent of world resources, while the bottom 20 percent consumes only 1.3 percent. Excessive energy use and waste in the developed countries means that each person in the north has a much greater impact on the earth's environment than each person in developing countries. Each child in Britain produces as much carbon dioxide and pollution as 30 born in Bangladesh in a given year. Therefore, the 58 million people added to the Earth in developed countries during the 1990s will pollute more than the 915 million people added in developing countries during the same period. In other words, with current consumption patterns, overpopulation in the United States (population growth rate roughly 1 percent) is more of a threat to the Earth's environment than overpopulation in Angola (population growth rate of 3.7 percent).
CONCLUSION
The world's tropical rainforests are threatened by short-term economic exploitation of their resources and pressures from the rural poor. These short-term demands incur long-term costs, which are still largely unrealized and unknown. Because it is easier and appears more economical to clear the forest in the short run, our future quality of life is compromised. The consequences of our actions are the focus of the next chapter.
Is tropical deforestation really occurring?
(1/8/2008) New assessment suggests global deforestation data from the U.N. is deeply flawed and without better monitoring it is impossible to know whether net forest cover in the tropics is expanding or declining.
Rainforest destruction increasingly driven by corporate interests, not poverty
(12/18/2007) Tropical deforestation is increasingly enterprise-driven rather than the result of subsistence agriculture, a trend that has critical implications for the future of the world's forests, says Dr. Thomas Rudel, a researcher from Rutgers University. As urbanization and government-sponsored development programs dwindle in the tropics, industrial logging and conversion for large-scale agriculture -- including oil palm plantations, soy farms, and cattle ranches -- are ever more important causes of forest destruction.
Rainforest destruction continues in tropical Asia
(12/9/2007) Tropical forests in Asia have been rapidly and extensively destroyed over the past generation, with significant implications for the region's biodiversity and global climate. A new study, published in the December volume of Current Science, finds that Asian forest loss has occurred mostly in poor, corrupt countries that have high population density and robust population growth rates.
WSJ inquiry pushes FSC to cancel logging certification in endangered forest
(10/30/2007) An inquiry by The Wall Street Journal prompted the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an environmental body that runs a widely accepted "green" labeling system for forestry products, to revoke certification for a Singapore-based Asia Pulp & Paper Co. (APP) project on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
2007 Amazon fires among worst ever
(10/22/2007) By some measures, forest fires in the Amazon are at near-record levels, according to analysis Brazilian satellite data by mongabay.com. A surge in soy and cattle prices may be contributing to an increase in deforestation since last year. Last year environmentalists and the Brazilian government heralded a sharp fall in deforestation rates, the third consecutive annual decline after a peak in 2004. Forest loss in the 2006-2007 season was the lowest since record-keeping began in the late in 1970s. While the government tried to claim credit for the drop, analysts at the time said that commodity prices were a more likely driver of slow down: both cattle and soy prices had declined significantly over the previous months.
