Regional geography and global development patterns

Rainforests - Environmental Challenges in Central and South America

For several decades, many Americans have been aware that the rainforests of Central and South America are shrinking as well as the fact that the lost of significant amounts of rainforest could well have a negative effect on the entire world as well as the immediate areas in and near the former forests.

The Amazonian rainforest, located in South America and drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries, covers an area of three million square miles and includes land in Brazil, Peru, Venezuela and Bolivia. Its ecology is both diverse and important and may contain from 50% - 90% of the world's total species of plants and animals, including important kinds of microscopic life. This rainforest is an important part of the Amazon watershed, and helps regulate such things as rain cycles (Morrison, 2001). People generally hold the view that the rainforests functioned well until humans disrupted their ecological balance, but this explanation is too simple. Humans lived as a noninvasive occupant of the Andean rain forests in Peru for at least 7,000 years, and indigenous tribes lived in the Amazon rainforest without risking its destruction for over 5,000 years (Barnham & Coomes, 1997). It is the combination of humans and what we think of as modern society that have endangered these rainforests.

DEFORESTATION

Pre-industrial human beings may have lived for thousands of years in the rainforests without causing devastating changes, but the species as a whole can no longer make that claim. The massive changes modern society has had on the major rainforests of Central and South America will eventually contribute to global climate change, the loss of genetic diversity among species, and the significant reduction of natural resources (Morrison, 2001). Thus, while the deforestation of rain forests is occurring in other countries, the process is a legitimate concern for the rest of the world.

There are several pressures placed on the rainforests of South and Central America, including commercial logging (both legal and surreptitious), "slash and burn" agriculture affecting larger areas of land, conversion of rainforests to grazing for cattle ranches (Morrison, 2001), modernization such as dam construction, and mining for gold (Barnham & Coomes, 1997). All of these factors have one thing in common: they bring economic gain to those who perform them. This economic gain takes place in areas where there often is little other opportunity to improve one's financial situation.

However, the results large scale deforestation for the planet as a whole can be substantial. Plants utilize carbon dioxide, and the buildup of carbon dioxide contributes to the shrinkage of the ozone layer, a protective layer high in the atmosphere that helps regulate the Earth's climate. Depletion of large forested areas in this way can contribute to worldwide climactic changes (Morrison, 2001).

The loss of large areas of rainforest has a domino effect on other parts of the ecology. The loss of vegetation means that the soil is more easily eroded. This soil erosion clogs rivers and washes away the nutritious top layer of soil leaving behind soil is that of poor quality and that will not support plant life well. Since the lost plant life enriched the soil by replacing nutrients via dropped leaves, tree bodies, fruits and seeds and other organic material, the soil remains poor (Morrison, 2001). This requires those who farm the land to use fertilizers. Because the soil is easily washed away, these fertilizers can pollute the water system.

Often the cleared land is used for cattle grazing, but the poor soil does not even grow grass well, so this use does not protect well against erosion.

Another significantly negative effect is the loss of biodiversity. The rainforests of Central and South America possess great diversity of both plants and animals. The loss of rainforest in these areas has the potential to greatly reduce the biodiversity of the planet. The loss of rainforest in South and Central America is a solvable problem because the environmental difficulties present are caused by the actions shrinking the forests. Thus it is not necessary to work against nature but only modify how human beings interact with the environment to stop the loss.

CULTURAL CONTRIBUTIONS

Consideration of humankind's impact on the rainforests should begin with the people who have the longest histories there. The indigenous peoples of these rainforest lived for millennia without doing unrecoverable ecological damage (Barnham & Coomes, 1997), even though "slash and burn" farming was a traditional way of life. In "slash and burn" agriculture, the people simply cut down the wooded area and/or burn the vegetation off so they can use the land for their own agricultural purposes (Morrison, 2001). When these groups of people farmed in this manner, however, they moved on to new areas when the land became depleted. Gradually, the rainforest reclaimed the disused farmland, reducing the impact of this farming approach (Morrison, 2001).

However, the indigenous peoples of the area have had contact with modern society, and some have changed their approach. Some, for instance, have turned to harvesting trees for sale as lumber (Barnham & Coomes, 1997). As a result of this outside influence, in both Peru and Ecuador most of the mountain forests have been cleared, except for those land set aside for parks or other protected areas (Jokisch & Lair, 2002).bThis process began in earnest in the 1980's and continued well into the 1990's in Ecuador. In eleven years, Ecuador lost nearly 7% of its old growth forest in its eastern mountain areas, and continued (although at a slower rate) into 2002 (Jokisch & Lair, 2002).

The process of deforestation has been economically driven. In the 1990's one community in Ecuador systematically assigned forested land to its members. The community then convinced the Ecuadorian government to build a road through the area. That road allowed the systematic logging of large hardwood trees. The cleared land was then used for pasture (Jokisch & Lair, 2002), which will prevent re-growth of the forest. The Ecuadorian example is a demonstration of just how larger economic and government trends can affect forestation.

The view of tropical rainforests as exploitable, economic opportunity is not new, of course. In the 19th century, the same rainforests were systematically harvested for the sap of the rubber tree (Barnham & Coomes, 1997). In the case of rubber, it is easy to point fingers at the colonial atmosphere of the time and at corporations from outside Central and South America (Morrison, 2001), but local occupants of the rainforest saw rubber as an opportunity to improve themselves financially just as those who log the rainforests today do. However, today, taking advantage of or committing violence against indigenous peoples in the pursuit of economic wealth is recognized as a severe human rights violation. The culture and needs of the people who live in the rainforests are now being considered (Barnham & Coomes, 1997).

Barnham and Coomes (1997) look at specific cultural factors that affect the use or misuse of rainforest assets: the micro-economic and geographic factors that influence the choices indigenous peoples make regarding their use of the rainforest; the effect of social relations on those choices; and the role the people's history and patterns of life play on those choices (Barnham & Coomes, 1997). These organizations, not affiliated with any governments (non-governmental organizations, or NGO's), have developed a variety of strategies to work with the local people of these regions. One of the more effective approaches has been to help the local people find ways to profit from the rainforest without destroying it. One such strategy involves harvesting from the forest, resulting in such products as Rain Forest Crunch ™ and tagua buttons, made from the fruit of a palm tree (Barnham & Coomes, 1997). When the goal is economic progress, people are often open to new ideas regarding how to meet that goal. Another effective strategy has been to make the rainforests valuable as tourist draws. Such ideas make suggestions regarding conservation economically viable.

However, even such economic approaches can oversimplify the groups of people these NGO's desire to work with. The is no one group of people with a shared culture living in the vast rainforests talked about here, and the various groups' uses of natural resources can vary widely. In the Peruvian Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, Peru's largest nature preserve, income levels vary considerably. While a group may be characterized as fishermen, it may be that only 70% fish for their livelihood, leaving 30% to use the environment in some other way. This use of the environment for sustenance, called "extractive practices," (Barnham & Coomes, 1997), sometimes have a deleterious effect on the ecology and sometimes do not. Each situation has to be looked at individually and carefully, and each solution has to be a comfortable fit with the people intended to use them, or the NGO's attempt to protect that ecology is doomed to failure. In the groups studied by Barnham and Coomes (1997), a relatively low percentage of the people survived by hunting and gathering, making any economic opportunity based on that (such as the examples above of food and buttons) possibly unpalatable to them.

Certain traits must be present for any attempt at a shift in use of resources to work. First, the new use must hold the potential for greater income than what the people were doing. There must be some incentive for them to learn new skills

First, such attempts must promise better returns than the alternative practice and second, they need to be evaluated for how they fit into the set of activities pursued by households (Barnham & Coomes, 1997).

Other organizations, such as the Foundation Cordillera Tropical of Ecuador, which was founded by a large landowner, have bought up large tracts of forest in order to protect the area's biodiversity.

The FCT hopes to conserve the region's biodiversity and forests by acquiring and protecting large sections of forest. This organization works to persuade the local people not to log these protected forests (Jokisch & Lair, 2002).

The fact that there area always some people ready to make profits by breaking the law complicates things further. In many countries where logging of rainforests can be profitable, the loggers bribe the government officials and go ahead and remove the valuable trees. The companies that encourage this practice often pay more to the loggers who provide the most wood, encouraging those involved with the practice to cut the forests down more vigorously. These companies often have other ways of working around government regulations designed to protect the rainforests, such as under-declaring the amount of wood they transport out of the country (Stone, 2002). This makes the process of encouraging alternate, nondestructive ways to profit from the presence of the rainforests more difficult. Such facts make it more clear why extensive knowledge of the cultures of the indigenous people involved is so crucial.