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TODAY Thursday 14 August 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
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TODAY Thursday 14 August 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD: Up in Flames
The fifth and sixth most-populous countries in the world are besieged by fires. The fires are almost certainly set intentionally. The rainforests of Brazil and Indonesia, the most extensive in the world, are burning at an alarming rate.
In Brazil, environmentalists say (but the government denies) that fires set by farmers and loggers in the Amazon have pushed the rate of deforestation to its highest level. In Indonesia, all agree that fires on Java and Sumatra are burning at pandemic proportions: air traffic and sea traffic are disrupted, and neighboring Malaysia is issuing air pollution alerts. According to Reuters, Indonesian officials say that entrepreneurs are taking advantage of dry conditions to burn away old-growth forests to make way for plantations.
In both countries, the setting of forest fires is illegal without special permits. In both countries, the national governments do not possess the necessary human and technical means to enforce their laws. And in both countries -- as in most tropical places -- the burning of forest cover has been the traditional tool of the homesteader; it will not be given up lightly.
As a short-term measure, burning works well for would-be ranchers and farmers. The soils of most tropical rainforests are, perhaps surprisingly, rather thin and poor; the lushness is almost all aboveground. The ash obtained by burning that lushness confers rich but short-lived fertility on the soil, which then can sponsor profitable pastures and row crops, at least for a few years. The need to renew this fertility prompts landowners either to set new fires or to move on to new forest plots to re-start the cycle. Either way, the losses of natural habitat are great, often irrecoverable, and the emissions of carbon dioxide constitute a significant contribution to the buildup of greenhouse gases.
Just a few factors might be underlined. The first is that the appetite to clear forests is shared widely along the social spectrum. It would be convenient to blame multinational corporations for the devastation -- they are certainly part of the problem, especially in Indonesia -- but the truth is that most of the acreage cleared and most of the fires set are the work of local people, many of them small homesteaders acting out of Jeffersonian impulses. The second factor to consider is the role of the global economy in all this. What the anarchists call the "cash nexus" now connects virtually all the world. Billions still pursue subsistence agriculture, and barter arrangements still characterize much of the exchange in rural villages, but more and more people each day derive their living by earning money. And the most efficient way to get money these days is to enter the planetary capitalist economy. For an undercapitalized but ambitious young Brazilian or Indonesian, that means growing crops (including tree crops) that will fetch good prices as export commodities. There is little evidence that maintaining indigenous tropical ecosystems -- sustainable forestry or no sustainable forestry -- will be a comparably profitable enterprise for all but a small fraction plugged into some fashionable niche markets in the north.
And finally, there is the pressure of population growth, which exerts itself both as a need for more elbow room in the countryside and as a need for more export earnings to stoke the fires of development in the great metropolises of Jakarta and Sao Paolo. In the final analysis, those urban fires of desire -- desire for comfort, choices, conveniences -- are the blazes that burn most hot.
TODAY ON THE SITE:
If you want to preserve the surface of the earth, reasons Fred Hapgood, you have to consider putting human development underneath it. The costs of underground structures have gone down recently, and a number of architects and engineers have shown that they don't necessarily have to be dim, ugly places. For a guided tour of the world of Underground, follow Fred down into the bowels of Cyberworld.
Recent "Today" columns:
8/13: Environmentalism for Grown-Ups
8/12: Right to No
8/11: Cleavage
8/08: The Monsters from 12,000 BC
8/07: A Little More Room
8/06: Big Victory, I Guess
8/05: Necessary Vulgarization
8/04: More Crime, Please
8/01: Wise Use, Smart Use
7/31: DC Blues
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