“The Baltic nation of Latvia is blessed with some of the most beautiful forests in the world, millions of square kilometres of pristine woodland that support a complex biodiversity of rare species of animals and plants. [...] As the UK aims to become one of the greenest countries in Europe, we expose its role in the deforestation of Latvia.”

The clear cutting, which is a total loss not only for biological diversity but also for social and economic reasons, is the result of the current economic crisis in Latvia. It is being fueled by the demand from overseas markets, particularly the UK which has been Latvia’s main export market for over 300 years. Al Jazeera shows how corporations and the Latvian government ignores EU habitat directives, laws and nature reserves to be able to satisfy the market demand for timber. They also question the validation of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certificate which is said to only label timber that is sustainable produced.

“Many of the products of the trade from furniture to wood pulp and paper are sold in the UK under a labelling scheme run by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international NGO that certifies timber is being sustainably produced. Is that really true?”

This episode shows not just the world’s ecological unequal exchange but also how unattainable sustainability is in today’s capitalistic system which is based on a never-ending growth rate.

Tropical rainforests have the largest biodiversity of all ecosystems on Earth. The soil is rather poor, but it sustains a great variety of plants. It is estimated that 65% of the known plant species are found in rainforests.

During the past three decades, rainforests have been decreasing in size for various reasons, though all of them are connected with human activities. Human populations living near rainforests had the impression that the soil must have been really fertile, as it could sustain such a variety of plants. So, when human started to need more fields for cultivation, they choose rainforests’ earth, and thus they set big fires to get rid of big trees and to obtain space. By the time it was understood that the soil wasn’t suitable for agriculture, many square kilometres of rainforests had already gone.

Apart from agricultural reasons, the rainforests are cut down in order to provide wood. Most of the paper, toilet paper or furniture manufactured nowadays is based on wood from tropical rainforests. Deforestation also takes place in order to extend cities and build roads. Increasing human needs, due to overpopulation, lead to mass deforestations all over the globe.

The pace with which it’s been done is so high, that every year an area of the size of half Greece is lost. 50 years ago rainforests would cover double the area they do today. Thousands of species, whether they are animals or plants become extinct and even more face extinction.

Humanity also depends on rainforests. A variety of building materials, food (bananas, vanilla, coffee), and even caoutchouk come from rainforests. Medical science, from the ancient times till today, also depends on substances from plants that grow there.

Quinine, a range of medicine against pain and stress are only some examples of medicine that require substances from rainforests in order to be manufactured. Nowadays, 20% of the medicines found in pharmacies are produced by the use of plants from rainforests.

Researchers have studied less than the 2% of the 100,000 species of plants that grow in rainforests, and are sure that most of them can be really useful in medicine or other fields. Though most of them point out that ”potentials for the future are endless, as long as scientists and pharmacologists reach the rainforests before chainsaws…”

And let us not forget that rainforests produce oxygen. Tropical rainforests produce 40% of Earth’s oxygen. Cutting them down means that oxygen levels decrease, while less CO2 is absorbed by plants and thus increases in the atmosphere, causing the green-house effect. Humanity has to re-examine its needs and reduce them, so that less quantities of substances from rainforests are used. We have to set limits on our activities, otherwise those huge forests will one day belong to history.

According to a newly released study from the FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the deforestation in Burma have exposed coastal communities and worsen the effects of the cyclone.

Jan Heino, the Assistant Director General of the FAO Forestry Department, said in the report that “mangroves have been converted to agricultural land and fish ponds. Settlements have been established closer to the sea and the combination of proximity to coastal hazards and lack of a protective forest buffer has increased the risks to human populations in many countries.”

The mangrove area in the Ayeyarwady Delta, who was severely hit by the cyclone, have lost have of its former size since 1975. It is expected that only about 100 000 hectares remains.

The satellite images below shows the depletion of mangroves in the Ayeyarwady Delta, Myanmar between 1995 (left) and 2000 (right). The dark red colour indicates dense mangroves.

According to the NOAA Satelllite and Information Service the sea surface temperatures were over a full degree Celsius above average in the region where Nargis intensified before landfall.

Sunita Narain, director of the Indian environmental group Center for Science and Environment, said that “while we can never pinpoint one disaster as the result of climate change, there is enough scientific evidence that climate change will lead to intensification of tropical cyclones.”

Mitch Anderson, from the DeSmogBlog, says that “Nargis is a sign of things to come. The victims of these cyclones are climate change victims and their plight should remind the rich world that it is doing too little to contain its greenhouse gas emissions.”

Greenpeace is going after Unilever, the makers of Dove beauty products. According to Greenpeace Unilever “are causing forest destruction, species extinction and climate change.”

The palm oil that is needed in products like those from Dove comes from companies who are irresponsibly destroying Indonesia’s rainforests to make way for their palm oil plantations.

Dove is not the only company that uses palm oil from destroyed rainforests. But they are the biggest single user of palm oil, in the world.

“Unilever pretends to be an environmentally responsible company, but what it is actually responsible for is destroying areas of rainforest, driving species extinction and speeding up global warming. Being one of the biggest users of palm oil on the planet, Unilever must stop buying palm oil from these companies and call for a halt on the destruction of Indonesian forests to grow palm oil.”

Greenpeace wants all companies, and not just Unilever, who are involved in palm oil production to commit to stopping further deforestation by supporting a moratorium on rainforest and peatlands. They have also set uo five criterias the palm oil industry must agree on:

• No new plantations within mapped forest areas
• No plantations resulting in the degradation of peatlands
• No plantations or expansion post November 2005 resulting in deforestation or degradation of high conservation value areas including peatlands
• No plantations or plantation expansion established on indigenous peoples and other forest dependent communities without their free prior and informed consent
• Establish full supply chain traceability and segregation systems which exclude palm oil that fails to meet the above criteria

If you want you can read “Burning up Borneo” (PDF), released April 2008, for more detailed scientific information of the campaign. You can also watch the campaign video (you can find the HD version below) and sign the open letter to Unilever.

Also: Alison Benjamin from the Guardian talks to Greenpeace executive director John Sauven about why Greenpeace are targeting Unilever in their weekly podcast.

Dove Onslaught(er) from Greenpeace on Vimeo.

Image credits: Greenpeace.Italia

For the right-wing opposition in Spain, this should have been crystal clear before they launched their climate saving plans.

The Spanish political party, Partido Popular, have started their election campaign by promising to plant 500 million trees to combat climate change and stop the devastating effects it will have on Spain.

The 500 million (!) trees are planned to be planted under a four years period, if Partido Popular gets elected. That’s ten times more trees than the ruling socialist party PSOE promised to plant when they got elected.

While it is truly a notable campaign promise, for a political party that last year regarded climate changes as “something that will happen in 300 years”, one must wonder how it will be possible. Planting over 14000 trees every hour, 24 hours per day in four years can be a bit, “complicated”.

Image credit: Extranoise. Image licensed under a
Creative-Commons Attribution license.