Did you hear Charlie on the radio this morning? He must have read this thread already! He was talking about stopping the felling of tropical rain-forests, not only for the reasons that we've already talked about, but because there is so much carbon locked up in rain-forests. Apparently, one fifth of the worlds carbon emissions come from the destruction of rain forests! Plus, I know trivial in comparison, but you can add the carbon cost of transporting the timber after felling ~ it's mind blowing!
I agree with everything said on this thread, in particular the impossibility of accurately tracing wood that travels over any distance. I might add that the same problem is true of diamonds. People like to advertise 'non conflict diamonds' but in fact it is quite impossible to say where a cut diamond has been mined - there is simply no paper trail, at best you simply have trustworthy jewellers who use trustworthy goldsmiths who use trustworth gem cutters who use... you get the picture - plenty of opportunity at each stage for a hard-pressed business to slip a few dodgy stones in and make the books balance that month.
Anyway, my only observation about tropical hardwoods was a few years back travelling in Venezuela. I was in a small coastal village making the akward transition from fishing to tourism (mainly internal tourism). The village was typical of a 3rd world fishing village - not much of anything. One thing it did have was about 10-20 mature mahogay trees dotted around the village streets - each 5-6 feet wide at shoulder height, dead straight, and very tall. Felling them could have supplied the village a new school, paved roads, better electricity, possibly even drinkable mains water. All things that would help them move towards tourism as an industry. The local government was not allowing them to be felled, and this seemed to be creating a degree of resentment among the locals. When you see the situation on a small scale like this (rather than foriegn logging companies clearcutting forests) it seems harder to know what the right action is.
Ultimately, if we in the west want to keep the forests as they are we are going to have to pay for it. Giving a huge financial incentive to keep them standing is the only sustainable answer (which sort-of tallies with what Matthew was saying previously........I just disagreed with the means of paying he advocated).
The difficulties are numerous. Who do you pay? (If it is the government, how can you be sure that the money will get to that village wanting a new school?) How do you structure payments to achieve the ends you seek? How do you enforce? When anyone can buy a chainsaw for $100, how do you get an illiterate local who has no TV, to understand that he can't clear the undergrowth from the end of his garden? How do we argue from the moral high-ground when we have removed 90% of the wild-wood in this country?
Soaring demands for land to be used for farming and producing biofuel is threatening the world's forest.
Reports by the US-based Rights and Resources Initiative, to be unveild at the House Commons today, say an area 12 times the size of Germany could go by 2030- worsening climate change and devastating forest dwellers.
Following on from the report the Sun has a full page article on the devistation of the Amazon rain forests and its effect on the tribes that live in the area, it seems there is a charity that operates to save the forests it is Cool Earth and donations can be made to it on www.coolearth.org or telephone 0800 093 0624, so there is the chance for us to put our money where our mouths are,
Yes we can all do our bit by not using timber illegaly sourced from the rain forest but how do you tell millions of chinese that they cannot have these timbers ? we've been exploiting cheap supplies for years without a thought as to the true cost to the envirioment , China is only going through what we have been through during the industrial revolution, pollution,child labour, poor working condition and housing, any changes have to come from within the country as it has in our country, it will come as the people want a better life style, today with the growth of telivision people can see how the other half live.it takes very brave men and woman to stand up for these changes to happen.
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