A rainforest is a hot, thick jungle characterized by
high rainfall, between 250 and 450 centimetres annually. Although they cover
only 6 percent of the earth's surface, rainforests contain more than half of
all the different types of plants and animals on the earth. As many as 30
million species of plants and animals live in tropical rainforests.
Most of the rainforests are located
around the middle of the earth, near the equator. They help clean the air that
we breathe. They are often called the "lungs of the planet'' because of
their role in absorbing carbon dioxide – a greenhouse gas – and producing
oxygen. They stabilize climate and produce rainfall all around the world. They
maintain the recycling of water between the ground and the sky and protect
against flood, drought and soil erosion.
Rainforests are found in Africa,
Asia, Australia, and Central and South America. The world's largest is the
Amazon a rainforest in Brazil and eight neighbouring countries, stretching
across the continent from the Andes mountains to the Atlantic ocean. Over a
thousand herbal medicine plants are situated in these forests. They are called
"the world's largest pharmacy." They are also a huge source of food
and an amazing and beautiful section of our planet. They are the earth's oldest
living ecosystems.
How are rainforests being
destroyed?
Every year an area over 22,000
square kilometres of rainforest is cut down and destroyed. The plants and
animals either die or must find a new forest to live. Human activities –
determined by logic of the movement of capital and its insatiable hunger for
profit – are the main cause of rainforest destruction.
· Extraction of minerals and energy
· Construction of roads and pipelines
· Cutting wood for lumber by big companies – legal and
illegal logging
· Large scale agriculture (usually export crops)
· Clearing the forest to create grazing land for cattle
farming
· Cutting wood to obtain pulp for producing paper
· Land for poor farmers who are pushed out of their
homes due to land grabbing or expansion of cities and shanty towns
Rainforests are also threatened by
climate change, which is contributing to droughts in parts of the Amazon and
South Asia. Drought causes massive die-offs of trees, and dried-out leaf litter
increases the risk of forest fires. Forest fires are also often set by land
developers, ranchers and plantation owners to clear the land.
In 2005 and 2010, the Amazon
experienced the worst droughts ever recorded. Rivers dried up, isolating
communities, and millions of acres burned. The smoke caused widespread health
problems and blocked the formation of rain clouds, while the burning emitted a
huge amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, worsening the effects of
climate change.
Meanwhile Indonesia has experienced
several severe droughts in recent decades. The worst occurred in 1982-1983 and
1997-1998, when millions of acres of forest burned. These precious rainforests
are plundered by logging for timber and cleared for palm oil plantations.
Almost three-quarters of Indonesia's original forest is already gone. According
to the United Nations Environmental Project, at current rates of destruction,
almost all of Indonesia's forests will be gone by 2022.
The destruction and fragmentation
of forests – as well as rainforests and other natural habitats inland and in
seas – could bring about the extinction of many species of plants and animals.
Large-scale pollution and the degradation of the water, air and soil, combined
with the real advance of climate change, is already creating a serious
environmental disaster. Humanity is well on the way to making this planet
literally uninhabitable, meaning the environment and human destiny is on the
brink of disaster. As climate scientist James Hansen has warned, "Our home
planet is now dangerously near a tipping point."
The destruction of the Amazon
rainforest
In the nine years from 1991 to
2000, the total area of the Amazon rainforest cut and burned down rose from
415,000 to 587,000 square kilometres. Most of this land is used for large-scale
cattle farming. Deforestation was accelerated following the opening of highways
deep into the forest, such as the Trans-Amazonian highway built by the
Brazilian government in 1972.
Cattle farming, valuable hardwood
logging and the growing of soya beans (soybeans), often for biofuel production,
the expansion of cities and mining are the main reasons for cutting away the
Amazonian Rainforest. Brazil is the second biggest producer of soya beans after
the U.S. In the Amazon, cleared land is valued between 5-10 times more than
forested land, which of course constitutes an irresistible motivation to cut
down trees on a mass scale. By Brazilian law, clearing land for crops or fields
is considered an ‘'effective use'', which is relevant for asserting land
ownership. This change in land use may alter the region's climate, according to
scientists using NASA satellite data. From 1992 to 1996, Amazonian
deforestation increased by 34 percent By 2005, a 17.1 percent total loss of
rainforest was recorded. Almost the same trend is still continuing.
It has been calculated that in
2006, McDonald's and its suppliers alone were responsible for the deforestation
of 70,000 square kilometres of the Amazon rainforest over the preceding three
years. The need for soya to fed to their chickens, for example, was a major factor.
In addition to the massive deforestation, these suppliers have also been linked
to illegal land grabbing and the use of slave labour on these farms. Tens of
thousands of Brazilians from all over the country have been lured into the
jungle by the promise of jobs and then held at gunpoint and forced to work as
slaves. Even when the slaves eventually escape or end up abandoned, the
plantation owners are almost never punished. The landlords and their gangs of
thugs enjoy impunity from the law.
If deforestation at the rate of
2007 continues, within two decades, the Amazon rainforest will be reduced by 40
percent. Lately there has been slight reduction but the shrinking of the forest
is still continuing.
Can capitalism save the
environment?
In the age of imperialism and
rivalry over world domination, where the imperialist countries ruled by
monopoly capitalists carry out bloody invasions and wars, and commit and
sponsor genocides, one cannot expect these global powers to respect, care for
and sustain our planet. For them, nature is something to be seized and
plundered, and exploited and poured into profit-driven commodity production.
Capitalists or blocs of capital confront one another as competitors; their
relative peace is a preparation period for wars. They must be prepared and
ready to seize on any advantage to undercut their competition, otherwise they
will go under. That's why major powers up to now have failed to agree on a
meaningful action at various international conferences regarding climate change.
That's why capitalism as a system cannot deal with environment in a proper way,
even if an individual capitalist or group of capitalists sincerely wanted to.
The motive force behind any
capitalist production is profit. Their logic is this: everything produced is a
commodity that must be sold at a profit. Regardless of the will of the
capitalists themselves, they must expand or die, and they only take into
account their own profits and losses and not the damages and cost to the
environment, the general population, and so on. In this process of expansion,
capitalism proceeds through imperialist domination of oppressed nations and
strategic rivalry between imperialist powers and their allies. This is carried
out through world wars, regional wars, wars to maintain their rule against
revolutions, brutal violence against native people and so on, as we can see in
the cases of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria… In fact, the U.S. army is not
only the main enforcer of the system that is plundering the earth's environment
and its people, but a major source of carbon dioxide emission. The carbon
emissions generated by the U.S.-led war in Iraq every year was equal to the
emissions created by the addition of 25 million more cars on the roads in the
U.S. annually. If the war was ranked as a country in terms of emissions, it
would emit more carbon dioxide each year than 139 of the worlds' nations do
annually according to a report by Oil Change International.
Often people in the "third world" suffer
qualitatively more from the consequences of global warming than those living in
imperialist countries ruled by the monopoly capitalists. But capitalists will
never put the interests of the preservation of the ecosystems of the entire
planet above their development plans in order to ensure the health of the
planet and the people for the future generations.
What else can we expect from a
system that has used atomic weapons against people in Japan (by the U.S.) and
introduced the use of chemical weapons (both sides used them in World War One,
and the British used it to put down a revolt against their domination of Iraq
in 1920. Italy used poison gas in its attempt to take over Ethiopia in the
1930s). This is without mentioning the massive destruction of people and the
environment in wars to control "third world" countries ever since –
or the massive nuclear arsenals that the major powers and Israel have built up
to maintain and advance their interests. Those who have no respect for human
life will definitely have no respect for our planet. In fact it is this system
that has got us into this situation in the first place, and the situation will
definitely become even worse.
Our survival depends on the natural
world, from green plants that produce oxygen to other living species that
provide food and medicine; we cannot live without fresh water, nutrient-rich
soils and clean air. At the same time we are linked with the natural world
through complex evolutionary chains and through networks of ecosystems that
provide the flow of energy for life to maintain itself.
If we do not move to stem climate
change, to protect and preserve fast vanishing natural ecosystems around the
world, this planet could very well become uninhabitable for billions of people
and possibly all of humanity. The inner workings of capitalism-imperialism, and
the imperialists' history and practice on a global scale, proves beyond doubt
that this system and those who run it are not and cannot be fit to be
caretakers of our planet.
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