In Colombia, primary forest loss increased nine per cent between 2017 and 2018, continuing an upward trend since 2016. In Bolivia, most forest loss was related to conversion of forests to large-scale agriculture and pasture. Forest loss in Peru, on the other hand, was generally for small-scale agriculture,
including some illegal cocoa production
Source: Globalforestwatch.org
‘There are still voices in Brazil that are saying it’s not a good idea to roll back reforms’
support, people are largely on their own. That makes it a much harder nut to crack.’
Yet the picture is nuanced, cautions Counsell. Sustainable use of the forest is entirely possible. Much of the Congo basin, he points out, has been inhabited for more than 2,000 years and is subject to sustainable, rotational farming, hunting and gathering. ‘The pygmies have been there even longer. They’ve hunted bushmeat for their protein for all that time without any great impacts.’ Biodiversity has remained high, with more 600 tree species and 10,000 animal species identified.
PALM READING Indonesia, meanwhile, is more of a paradox. Rainforest extends to 110.9m ha but between 2001 and 2017 the country lost 24.4m ha, or 15 per cent of its cover, amounting to 2.44 gigatonnes of CO2. The majority of loss relates to oil palm plantations. Yet according to WRI, the country appears to be making progress, with primary forest loss in Indonesia in 2018 40 per cent lower than the 2002 to 2016 average. Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, has pledged to transfer 127,000 sq km of state land to communities. Following Greenpeace pressure, Wilmar International, the world’s largest palm oil trader, which has a huge presence in Indonesia, last year committed to map and satellite monitor all of its suppliers. Greenpeace says this move has been ignored by other leading palm oil traders.
Some onlookers suggest Indonesia’s political will has yet to be tested. ‘Sumatra alone has 9m ha of cleared forest just sitting there thanks to land speculation,’ says Hansen. ‘If they are going to plant oil palms then they don’t actually need to clear any more rainforest for a while, but their charts will say they’re reducing their deforestation rates.’ Furthermore, says Hansen, the bald figures will find other ways to erroneously imply things are headed in the right direction. ‘They’ve taken out all the easy forests, now they’re going into the swamps and up the mountain sides after what is left – which happens to be harder to reach, there’s less of it and it takes longer – but they can say they are taking out less than they used to.’
However, the WRI’s Seymour identifies real progress. ‘Oil palm plantations have fallen off quite a bit, there’s been a drop in the price of palm oil. But Indonesia has also imposed an escalating series of bans on the use of primary forest and peatlands for oil palm. The government position is definitely part of the picture.’
First-hand experience of deforestation-related catastrophe has also been a driver of reform in Indonesia. ‘The country became serious after the 2015 fires,’ says Seymour. ‘The government quickly understood the implications of deforestation. It wasn’t just the $16bn cost to the nation. You had millions of citizens suffering pulmonary stress as well. If you lose your forests it’s not just the global climate that suffers – without them your cities receive less water and have more extreme temperatures.’ Similar experiences in China, Thailand and the Philippines, where devastating flooding triggered by logging of forests, led to greater controls on deforestation, she adds.
Such action indicates that sustainable solutions will come from forest-rich nations rather than the rich global north. ‘Those governments will drive whether the forests are protected,’ says Seymour. ‘Often it is a catastrophe that is the trigger, whether it is fires or flooding, that has impacted their population.’
GLOBAL CHANGES The torrent of depressing statistics should not let us lose sight of what can be achieved, and how, says Seymour. She points to the actions Brazil took in the first decade of this century, such as meaningful penalties for regional departments, incentives for preferential access to markets for doing the right thing. ‘There are still voices in Brazil in the supply chains that want access to Europe, that are saying it’s not a good idea to roll back reforms,’ she says.
Many of the solutions are well-known and indeed self-evident points out William Baldwin-Cantello global leader on forests for WWF International. These include reducing food waste (one-third of food produced globally is chucked away); society needs to eat less meat; and we need to make greater use of degraded lands for agriculture rather than opening
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