Deforestation - What Landslides, Hurricanes, and Global Warming Have in Common

Whether environmental issues surrounding rainforests are of interest to western people or not, nevertheless the average westerner has been learning how deforestation affects them with regards to global warming and climate change. Average westerners might also know that deforestation is threatening many species with extinction, from obscure frogs and beetles to popular zoo animals like orangutans.

But did you also know that deforestation makes landslides more likely, hurricanes more devastating, and flooding more damaging? Maybe a butterfly flapping its wings in the South Pacific can't cause a hurricane in the Keys, but deforestation in the South Pacific just might cause governmental spending in Washington. Considering that western countries frequently come to the financial aid of countries that have been affected by these sorts of disasters, we westerners should learn the lesson that the deforestation is not just dangerous in terms of its affects on the climate, but also that the deforestation that causes a landslide in Java also comes with a price for western nations.

A landslide in Java caused by deforestation

"This is no longer a hypothesis" says the West Java governor Ahmed Heryawan about the landslide in an Indonesian village's connection to deforestation (Source: The Jakarta Post, 11/15/08). The islands that make up the nation of Indonesia have experienced serious deforestation in the past two decades. In fact, due to the slash-and-burn approach to their rainforests and peat swamp forests, an approach which has cut the forests' density nearly in half on the island of Borneo, Indonesia is the third largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world, trailing only the United States and China (Source: National Geographic Magazine, 11/08).

Despite landslides caused locally by deforestation, and the impact of deforestation on global warming, the Indonesians don't seem much inclined to slow down: logging or burning rainforests (to make room for palm oil plantations) is central to the economic well-being of the people on these remote islands. Will deforestation stop any time soon? Not unless there's a good economic reason for it to stop.

Will eco-tourism save Indonesia's rainforests?

Meanwhile, Nusakambangan Island, which is not far from Central Java, is having its own debate about deforestation. While four hundred species of rare flowers and plants can be found on the island's rainforests, and while 5,000 of 16,000 hectares of rainforest have already disappeared, still more legal and illegal logging and burning of rainforests contribute to its deforestation. Some in the tourism industry want to preserve what's left of the rainforests to make Nusakambangan a destination for eco-tourists, but getting the illegal logging and illegal conversion of rainforests to farmland is proving to be a headache (Source: The Jakarta Post, 11/17/08)

Eco-tourism, it turns out, will take time and development; logging and burning are a much faster way to make money.

Guerillas, gorillas, and charcoal in the Congo

In July 2008, National Geographic Magazine asked the question, "Who Killed the Virunga Gorillas?" (Source: National Geographic Magazine, 7/08) Beloved by many of the native people, the rare mountain gorillas were nonetheless murdered, their bodies left to rot, and outrage swept over the area. Although this eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo is embroiled in civil war, National Geographic concluded that the murderers weren't the rebels nor the government soldiers: rather, the trail led back to charcoal makers, responsible for the deforestation of Virunga National Park - one of the last big rainforests in Africa - and the corrupt park officials who are supposed to stop the illegal charcoal and poaching trades.

Charcoal production has already destroyed a full quarter of the old growth hardwoods in Virunga, and considering that nation's current instability, the deforestation will probably continue at a similarly high rate. In ten years, one official interviewed by National Geographic estimates, the whole southern part of the park could go up in smoke. With so many of the officials who are supposed to be protecting the park taking bribes from charcoal producers, who in turn cause the deforestation to line their own pockets, it becomes apparent once again that it is local economics rather than global ideologies that drive deforestation.

Haiti's hurt by hurricanes

Half a world away, the impoverished island of Haiti suffers severely every time a moderately strong hurricane passes through. Why are hurricanes so destructive in Haiti? Deforestation is at least partially to blame. A September 5, 2008, news story on National Public Radio reporting on hurricanes Gustav and Hanna's effects on the island pointed out that "this is an area has seen massive deforestation... This has been a constant problem here because so much land has been cleared to make charcoal and to grow crops, whenever there's a heavy rainstorm here, the water quickly saturates the ground - you get erosion, you get mudslides" and the flooding is nearly uncontrollable. These sorts of environmental effects resulting from Haiti's deforestation are part of what keeps Haitians in poverty - and keeps the US pouring in dollars to try to fix Haiti's problems. Despite the billions of dollars in US aid, the poverty continues - at least in part due to rape of the land over many decades.

The barren island of Haiti may be a grim forecaster of what will happen to other nations who similarly so utterly destroy their forests.

Deforestation's future

As long as it is the most economically viable solution, deforestation in developing nations such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and the DRC are bound to continue. The price to the west is beyond measure: deforestation will cost more and more as time goes on, whether it is through pouring money into areas devastated by the environmental side-effects of deforestation, or in combating global warming. As it was primarily western nations, whose nearly insatiable appetites for fuel, food, and wood, started the crisis in the world's rainforests, hopefully it will also be the west who can provide economic alternatives and incentives for the turnaround of deforestation. Otherwise, the effects of flapping wings in the South Pacific might soon be headed our way.