What are the solutions to overcome deforestation?

Answer 1

DEFORESTATION 2 LEAVE GAIA GASPING

trees are coming down all the time ,
in My town trucks loaded with huge logs of exotic timber leave the mountains with permits bought from corupt oficials almost nightly

we can only guess at the exatct amount but from my house we can see many bare patches on the mountains and the river is constantly muddy in the last 3 years ,because topsols with out theprotection of the forrests is washed into the rivers ,
this is just one place and this is happening all over mexico ,the Market for the wood being the USA.
here is a general note on deforestation

CAN DEFORESTATION BE STOPPED
Almost impossible

the Indians or local people would cut everything down and burn the forrest to replace it with harmfull short term farming killing the soil in no time

expanding populations and expanding farming ,that has to keep pace with the expanding populations are very strong forces that encroach upon the rainforest's
clearing them for farming and settlement areas .

that and the giant networks of roads that have exchanged forests for asphalt all over the planet

In Mexico is a famous jungle that the Media has been trying to save for years
the Naturists ,and the government ,keep watch .laws are made for protection the wild and to forbid logging.
TV put out a series of documentaries
there are campaigns in the News papers
and all of this has not made the slightest difference

Rainforest's always are in third world countries and always in third world countries corruption and the need for money s highest

the jungle gets smaller by the day
more and more farmers move in .and burn the trees
it is an impossible situation
as long as there is poverty and an increasing birth rate in these regions the destruction will continue

they are too easily tempted to sell of exotic animals to the unscroupelous people who buy them.for the market that exists in the USA.

we must look for ways to improve economic situations on the edges of Nature .

the only way to preserve the forrest is to devellop eco tourism under strict control that has limited acces ,and use the local people in the concept as guides ,hotel staff and get them to start home industries of artifacts .

eco tourism is the only concept that profits by a healthy back ground with out harming it

IN THE PAST

the sahara used to be forrests
arabia ,irak ,iran used to be fertile lands in biblical times
Ghengas Kahn burned all the forrests here and filled the well with water and so turning vast lands into dessert.
the Spanish Armada deforested Spain
.the Phoenician fleet deforested Lebanon
Madagascar a botanic paradise is now destroyed
the exotic animals sold or killed ,the forest slash and burned for agriculture ,the coastal water poluted by topsoils washed fronm the denuded moutains by the rains.

PRESENT DAY
In Africa (because of poverty and war as well as greedy farming )
Borneo because of the expensive timber
india ,China ,Mexico ,South Americas Amazonia,
Europe because of civilization,USA,Japan because of overpopulation,

And now ETHENOL INSANITY

And now the quest for Ethenol is claiming more than anything else before Source(s) 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/...
REFORESTATION

The world bank pays large subsidies to encourage farmers to replace indigenous forrest with Paulownia but this is also aimed at the production of Ethanol

1000 trees that are replanted do not come anywhere near as producing the same effect or fullfilling the same function ,as far as carbon absorbtion ,production of humidity,climatic effects as the absorbtion or release of heat ,as ONE SINGLE FULLY GROWN TREE.

people say we are good we cut down a thousand trees and replanted 20 thousand more

This means nothing in terms of environmental effects.

it takes at least 10 to 20 years before one of these replanted trees makes the same impact as the ones that are removed

Answer 2

You cannot restore laterite soils, no matter how much fertilizer you use. The rains wash all the nutrients away. Stripping the land of trees makes it worse.

It's easy to say there are more forests in the U.S. now. Oh yeah, are monocultures of pulp trees forests? You will not find a bird, or butterfly, or a mouse living in those places. And so people can read about three pages of the their city paper and throw out the rest? We already have so much paper that the price of stocks doesn't cover the cost of collecting it. Yet they keep cutting trees and planting more pulp deserts.

The good kind of farming in forested areas would be small patches among the trees. But we want to sell tractors and fertilizers to these poor countries and make money. What is the sense of a green revolution that makes poor farmers dependent on Monsanto for fertilizers, fungicides, pesticides, and herbicides? Trees might take longer to grow, but are a more valuable crop than most others. Why not plant hardwoods and nut and fruit trees, and have soybeans or other nitrogen-fixing crop in amongst them?




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Answer 3

Short answer, economic development. Poor people don't have the resources to spend time caring about the environment if they are too worried about crop failure killing their family next season.

In the Western World reforestation started with industrialized farming. When we started using tractors and chemicals to make the land more productive we could use less. Large chunks of the North East US were once stripped for farming and are forest again. According to the UN, the US has more trees today than it did 100 years ago.

In the developing world, they need better fertilizers. The dirt is terrible and the torrential rains wash out nutrients that they need. If they could fertilize their fields they wouldn't have to burn and cultivate new fields as often and would likely begin creating surpluses, ending the starvation and poverty when they export it.

Edit: to add in more mechanization. If they could practice better techniques using small cheap tractors or something that would help to. Right now it's crazy how much manpower it takes to farm in the poorest countries. More mechanization and fertilizers, better harvests, more exports, more surplus money and a rising standard of living for everyone.

Edited to respond to a later post.
It's true that rainforest soil is not good growing soil. The rains generally wash out the nutrients within a couple of seasons leaving useless dirt that takes decades to recover through natural reforestation. But the answer to that is better fertilizers to keep the soil usable longer. The people in these regions are too poor to just import their food from regions with the best soils. Small patches of farm land are find if you are supporting a very modest village however the smaller poor regions in Asia and South America with the most deforestation aren't sparsely populated enough for that to be realistic. They have to farm acres at a time to support their families. With fertilizers they could get better harvests from smaller fields and wouldn't have to rotate off of a plot to fresher soil. When they get to a point where they can break the subsistance cycles they can start working with better crop rotations of trees, fruits and berries. Right now they're trying not to starve to death, and telling a guy with a wife and 3 kids that he needs to postpone this years harvest in favor of a slow growing tree will not happen.

Our forests have regrown quite well. Many of the forests of the North East aren't virgin timberland, many were cut down before for farm land or timber centuries ago. It wasn't until industrial techniques and transport became feasable that those lands were able to go back to nature. Not long ago a congressman was giving a speech in his home state about forestation and protecting the environment, in his rush to decry deforestation and unchecked growth, he didn't realize he was giving his press conference in a forest that was a farm only 100 years ago.

Yes, we do enjoy selling and using tractors, but there is a practical side to it. In the US less than 15% of the population works in agriculture, in the countries with the worst deforestation over half the population works in agriculture. They aren't growing more crops, or exporting any, they're using ineffecient techniques that are impossibly hard on the land and use up much of the countries manpower, limiting it's industrial potential at the same time.

Answer 4

First, almost every Nation outside of Africa now have deforestation regulations and a lot of South American Nations are actually rebuilding their rain forests. All of Europe and North America do sustainable forestry. Nuclear power would be my solution for deforestation in Africa where energy needs are driving the deforestation.

Answer 5

Those who plant crops at a farm can take part in putting a dent in deforestation by rotating crops. It is suggested to replace the habit of using different portions of land every year with using the same portion of land to plant different crops. This practice has proven effective in maintaining soil fertility. Farmers may also embrace many other choices, such as high-yield hybrid crops and hydroponics, which relies on a technique of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions rather than soil.

Answer 6

There is not much you can do now to stop deforestation, It is happening everyday, the only thing to do is, instead of clearcutting all the trees, and causing massive habitat loss, is to practice select cutting only, which actually benefits wildlife habitat! And the trees that are left, have a chance to grow and reproduce through seeds and nuts which provide for squirrels and game, and the regeneration of second growth from the cut trees, will benefit in browsing, nesting sites, etc.

Select cutting practices provide, prime feeding and hiding areas for wildlife such as migratory birds species, deer, gamebirds, etc.

It also results in less erosion, whereas, "Clearcutting" results in massive amounts of silt and mud, logger chemical spills going into vital brook trout stream habitat!

Answer 7

Using less wood & wood products. Using less paper. Plastics and metals can be utilized more. More recycling especially in rural areas. I have to drive 30 miles one-way to the nearest recycling center.
Good conservation techniques help too. I live in an area that's big on logging. They always re-plant tho. The only problem with that is they harvest hardwood and veneers which take a long time to grow, and re-plant with pulp trees like poplar and aspen. But, it's still trees. And trees provide oxygen.

Answer 8

NO MORE JUNK MAIL.
How much crap comes in the mail that I dont even look at, didnt ask for and dont want. It takes a lot to get that crap to your house. Cut a tree. Truck it. This list is just too long to go on with.
But it is ridiculous.
Quit sending me advertisements for products and services that I wont ever use.
No, I dont need you to clean my house. No, my windshield is not cracked. I dont want 3 pizzas for 5,5,5. I dont have a pool, so it doesnt need to be cleaned.
Quit spending your companys money on all this advertising junk. Just lower your price and then if im interested I will find you.
Its not like your company just started and needs to tell me its out there.
Quit calling me, Quit sending me crap.
You do realize that I use your junk mail for cleaning things, as packing materials and other. I use it instead of my new paper towels.
If you really want me to look at your junk mail then send it on some softer paper.
Then maybe i'll read it before I wipe my @ss with it.

Answer 9

Trees

Answer 10

1. Plant more trees.
2. Limit the usage of products or byproducts of trees.
3. Spread the awareness to plant more trees.
4. Educate the people about the Green Revolution.

Answer 11

Burn all the trees so they can't be cut down.