Is China to blame for the increase in deforestation.?

Question

I read an article on the increase destruction of the forest Yesterday. The article put most of the blame on China, for being the largest consumer of lumber. THe thing I thought was strange, was China was not being blamed for cutting down the trees, and China has a very small domestic market for the wood products. The US and other develop nation are the ones who are recieving the furniture that China makes from the lumber. Who do you think is the most to blame. THe nations responsible for cutting down the trees. The nation who manufacture goods from these trees. Or the nation who recieved the end product.


Personal opinion. We are, we outsource the work to China to avoid getting blame for the environmental damage. We created the demand more so than China did.

I saw the data for the US, but I was refering world wide. Mostly the tropics are suffering from logging now. US has found a happy mean, although environmentalist wants to slow down logging in our old growth forest. My thoughts is if our forest is growing, we could now start cutting down the younger trees and increase the area where we can 't log.

After the long speech you forgot that palm plantation destroy forest by draining their water. And draining the water for palm cultivation dries up the peat bogs, which would cause an increase in the release of CO2. LOL

Answer 1

that is very heartwrenching news:( i think that the manufacturer is to blame the most but all three have some degrees of blame.the consumer is to blame too due to supply and demand.the things that some do to make more money is sickening and pointing fingers or denying wrong doing is even worse.so many u.s. products are made in china that it's difficult to cut back because the u.s. wants the most cost effective way to make products and how to make the most money while china is willing to provide/ship the products at great prices.it's a vicious cycle.man-kind has ruined planet earth and it seems like we want to change our ways by going green but do we really care more about preserving our forests or about money:\

when they say "going green", what they really mean is, "pursuing the GREEN-money."

Answer 2

There's plenty of blame to go around. High-end consumers love exotic wood products. Chinese and other corporations cut third-world forests because it's cheap and they can get around what few environmental regulations there are by paying bribes. Government officials of the countries where logging takes place would rather line their pockets than protect their nations' future.

The only solution is a multinational treaty regulating logging. This is the approach that drastically cut poaching of elephants for their ivory. When corporations can no longer make short-term profits using these methods, they'll invest in more sustainable logging practices.

Answer 3

All countries including India. People are crazy and want to make money by hook or crook.India has a population of more than 1 Billion next only to China.(Today there was news in a News paper that One blind Indian Muslim woman has 9 children ,aged 42 years being divorced by her husband. Muslims and Christians in India do not practice family planning and have more children). So when there is no place to live they cut down the trees and occupy the land for them and their cattle. Industries cut trees. Animals like elephants eat trees. So it is everywhere.

Answer 4

specific!!! it particularly is occurring..... we've accelerated worldwide warming plenty by capacity of all our CO2 emissions... there's no longer elementary data proving that people are the main reason of international warming... whilst the earth warmed up a protracted time in the past its considering that took hundreds of thousands of years to heat up by capacity of clearly occurring CO2ers ha. Its been 2000 years people have been right here and in those 2000 years we've greater effective the CO2 dramatically. It shouldn't ensue this rapid. the individuals who dont think of its genuine merely are selfish reason they dont prefer to help the earth sluggish worldwide warming down because of the fact it in all probability wont effect them too plenty.

Answer 5

I personally think that the demander (consumer) is to blame. The only reason they use a lot is because they produce a lot of wood products. Then, it all gets shipped here.

Answer 6

Yea that's good point. And China don't like others telling them to go green or other things. They just point finger right back at us and they will just tell us 'you guys caused global warming, why should we fix it?'

Kind of like when we tell China to improve human rights situation they point their finger back at us and yell 'Abu Grab! or Guantanamo!'

China came right out on public and said their economy is #1 priority. And not environment. They'll try to burn much as possible, pollute much as possible before the pressure becomes much greater.

Answer 7

I don't get it. China builds just about all their homes out of brick and cement. Wood is only used for furniture and sometimes fancy flooring.

I wonder if this is a case of misinformation, or misinformation, or just plain old misinformation?

You know, China bashing.

Peace

.

Answer 8

deforestation where? There is more forestation in the USA today than there was 50 years ago.

Answer 9

If it was a US or European newspapers, it will always be China's fault.

Answer 10

China cuts in China and they are paying the price ,with massive desertifications

Here is more global destruction that is not done by China

To counter act Global warming they are intending to replace most of the indigenous Forrest's in the world ,with mono cultures for the production of Ethanol,

Non sustainable, chemically grown ,heavily irrigated (with water needed for communities)one specie Forrest's,that have only plagues of insects as fauna which are controlled with pesticides.

Killing all bio diversity,in both flora and fauna ,adding to the destruction and extinction of species ,like nothing we have ever seen before.

All in the quest for alternative energy and to save the Environment ,


The irony here is that the growing eagerness to slow climate change by using biofuels and planting millions of trees for carbon credits has resulted in new major causes of deforestation, say activists. And that is making climate change worse because deforestation puts far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire world's fleet of cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships combined.

"Biofuels are rapidly becoming the main cause of deforestation in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil," said Simone Lovera, managing coordinator of the Global Forest Coalition, an environmental NGO based in Asunción, Paraguay. "We call it 'deforestation diesel'," Lovera told IPS.

Oil from African palm trees is considered to be one of the best and cheapest sources of biodiesel and energy companies are investing billions into acquiring or developing oil-palm plantations in developing countries. Vast tracts of forest in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and many other countries have been cleared to grow oil palms. Oil palm has become the world's number one fruit crop, well ahead of bananas.

Biodiesel offers many environmental benefits over diesel from petroleum, including reductions in air pollutants, but the enormous global thirst means millions more hectares could be converted into monocultures of oil palm. Getting accurate numbers on how much forest is being lost is very difficult.

The FAO's State of the World's Forests 2007 released last week reports that globally, net forest loss is 20,000 hectares per day -- equivalent to an area twice the size of Paris. However, that number includes plantation forests, which masks the actual extent of tropical deforestation, about 40,000 hectares (ha) per day, says Matti Palo, a forest economics expert who is affiliated with the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica.

"The half a million ha per year deforestation of Mexico is covered by the increase of forests in the U.S., for example," Palo told IPS.

National governments provide all the statistics, and countries like Canada do not produce anything reliable, he said. Canada has claimed no net change in its forests for 15 years despite being the largest producer of pulp and paper. "Canada has a moral responsibility to tell the rest of the world what kind of changes have taken place there," he said.

Plantation forests are nothing like natural or native forests. More akin to a field of maize, plantation forests are hostile environments to nearly every animal, bird and even insects. Such forests have been shown to have a negative impact on the water cycle because non-native, fast-growing trees use high volumes of water. Pesticides are also commonly used to suppress competing growth from other plants and to prevent disease outbreaks, also impacting water quality.

Plantation forests also offer very few employment opportunities, resulting in a net loss of jobs. "Plantation forests are a tremendous disaster for biodiversity and local people," Lovera said. Even if farmland or savanna are only used for oil palm or other plantations, it often forces the local people off the land and into nearby forests, including national parks, which they clear to grow crops, pasture animals and collect firewood. That has been the pattern with pulp and timber plantation forests in much of the world, says Lovera.

Ethanol is other major biofuel, which is made from maize, sugar cane or other crops. As prices for biofuels climb, more land is cleared to grow the crops. U.S. farmers are switching from soy to maize to meet the ethanol demand. That is having a knock on effect of pushing up soy prices, which is driving the conversion of the Amazon rainforest into soy, she says. Meanwhile rich countries are starting to plant trees to offset their emissions of carbon dioxide, called carbon sequestration. Most of this planting is taking place in the South in the form of plantations, which are just the latest threat to existing forests. "Europe's carbon credit market could be disastrous," Lovera said.

The multi-billion-euro European carbon market does not permit the use of reforestation projects for carbon credits. But there has been a tremendous surge in private companies offering such credits for tree planting projects. Very little of this money goes to small land holders, she says. Plantation forests also contain much less carbon, notes Palo, citing a recent study that showed carbon content of plantation forests in some Asian tropical countries was only 45 percent of that in the respective natural forests. Nor has the world community been able to properly account for the value of the enormous volumes of carbon stored in existing forests.

One recent estimate found that the northern Boreal forest provided 250 billion dollars a year in ecosystem services such as absorbing carbon emissions from the atmosphere and cleaning water. The good news is that deforestation, even in remote areas, is easily stopped. All it takes is access to some low-cost satellite imagery and governments that actually want to slow or halt deforestation. Costa Rica has nearly eliminated deforestation by making it illegal to convert forest into farmland, says Lovera.

Paraguay enacted similar laws in 2004, and then regularly checked satellite images of its forests, sending forestry officials and police to enforce the law where it was being violated. "Deforestation has been reduced by 85 percent in less than two years in the eastern part of the country," Lovera noted. The other part of the solution is to give control over forests to the local people. This community or model forest concept has proved to be sustainable in many parts of the world. India recently passed a bill returning the bulk of its forests back to local communities for management, she said.

However, economic interests pushing deforestation in countries like Brazil and Indonesia are so powerful, there may eventually be little natural forest left. "Governments are beginning to realize that their natural forests have enormous value left standing," Lovera said. "A moratorium or ban on deforestation is the only way to stop this."


This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ - International Federation of Environmental Journalists.
© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service


Source: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/...