While all ecosystems play an important role in the health of our planet, there is none more impactful or more threatened than tropical rainforests—the richest and most biodiverse ecosystem on earth. At one time, a few thousand years ago, tropical rainforests covered approximately 12 percent of the Earth’s land surface, but today less than 5 percent remains—and it’s growing smaller everyday. Although difficult to determine and often debated, an estimated 80,000 acres of rainforest are lost every 24 hours with another 80,000 acres degraded, reports Mongabay.com.
You might think that the rainforest has very little to do with your daily living, but as we discovered, that is far from the truth. Here in the United States and in Europe, we are surprisingly dependent on products and resources from the rainforest, and our consumption of these commodities is having a major impact on tropical ecosystems as well as indigenous people all over the globe. One of the goals of this book is to illuminate the major areas of consumer impact to the rainforest, both destructive and beneficial, so that you are personally empowered to make rainforest-saving choices in the way you shop and live. We have also created steps designed to strengthen the spiritual connection we all share to the rainforest. And of course, we had to include some good old environmental activist steps for those who have the time and inclination to get more involved and committed to the cause.
But before we get started, let’s take a look at where the remaining tropical rainforests are located, why saving them is vital to the planet and the survival of mankind, and what forces are destroying them.
WHERE ARE THE TROPICAL RAINFORESTS LOCATED?
Tropical rainforests are located between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn in the world’s equatorial regions and are found in Mexico, Central America, South America, West Africa, tropical Asia, the tropical Pacific Islands and Australia. About one-third of the world’s tropical forest is found in the Amazon, the largest rainforest on Earth. The Amazon River Basin spans eight South American countries (Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname) as well as French Guiana, a department of France. More than half the Amazon lies in Brazil. The Congo Basin is the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest, occupying about 18 percent of the earth’s tropical forest cover. The Congo spans six countries—Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. After the Congo, Indonesia has the next greatest amount of tropical forest cover and the most extensive in all of Asia. Its 17,000-island archipelago spans the Indomalayan and Australiasian biogeographic realms. The balance of the world’s rainforests are scattered across the globe in tropical regions.
WHY SHOULD WE SAVE THE RAINFORESTS?
There are many good reasons to save tropical rainforests. Here are the ones that are most critical to our survival.
Biodiversity
Tropical rainforests are literally overflowing with life and biodiversity. Twelve hours of intense sunlight daily and 80 inches or more of rain each year infuse the jungle with energy, making it the most biodiverse ecosystem, containing a whopping 50 percent of all the plants and animals on Earth. The Rainforest Action Network reports that a typical four-square-mile patch of rainforest contains as many as 1,500 flowering plants, 750 species of trees, 400 species of birds and 150 species of butterflies. In fact, new species of insects, plants and animals are still being discovered. And conversely, as rainforest is lost, species science has yet to discover are also lost—an estimated 100 species or more each day, according to the World Resources Institute.
Living Pharmacopoeia
As John and Olivia mentioned in our foreword, rainforests are a powerhouse of medicinal botanicals. Many of the prescription drugs used in the Western world have been derived from tropical plants. In fact, 70 percent of the plants identified by the U.S. National Cancer Institute as having anti-cancer characteristics are found only in tropical forests. So far, less than 3 percent of tropical rainforest species have been analyzed for their medicinal value. Imagine what has yet to be discovered.
Climate Stabilization
Tropical rainforests do the world a double service by both absorbing carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and producing oxygen. Acting as the “lungs of the planet,” rainforests produce a significant amount of the world’s oxygen through photosynthesis, which allows mammals, including us humans, to thrive. According to Mongabay.com, some scientists estimate the amount of the Earth’s oxygen produced by the rainforests to be 20 percent. As scientists indicate, climate change is largely the result of excess carbon dioxide emissions from human activities. Tropical rainforests act as carbon sinks. However, when they are destroyed, all that stored carbon is released into the atmosphere, making deforestation a gargantuan liability. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a full 17 percent of carbon emissions comes from deforestation, and surprisingly, that figure is higher than the entire travel sector!
Water Cycle and Weather Patterns
Speaking of climate, tropical rainforests play a critical role in the world’s weather patterns and available water supply. One-fifth of the world’s fresh water supply is held in the Amazon Basin. Through a process of transpiration in which plants release water from their leaves during photosynthesis, tropical rainforests add water to the atmosphere. The moisture then contributes to the formation of clouds, which release water back into the rainforest. Mongabay.com reports that in the western Amazon, 50 to 80 percent of moisture remains in the ecosystem’s water cycle. Yet when deforestation occurs, water does not transpire back into cloud formation— fallen rain simply washes into streams and out to the ocean and is lost forever. This contributes to droughts, and it can lead to permanent drying.
The rainforest water cycle affects areas outside the equatorial regions—far into the Northern Hemisphere, according to a NASA study published in the April 2005 Journal of Hydrometeorology. Researchers examined the effects of tropical forest loss on precipitation patterns around the globe. The study found that deforestation in the Amazon influences rainfall from Mexico to Texas and into the Gulf of Mexico. Central African forest loss affects precipitation in the U.S. Midwest. Southeast Asian forest loss impacts precipitation in China and the Balkan Peninsula. And deforestation of any of these tropical forests—Amazonia, Central Africa or Southeast Asia—"considerably enhances rainfall in the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.” Surprisingly, the effect of forest loss in all three regions combined causes rainfall decline in California during the winter season and further increases precipitation in the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.
Another study published in 2009 in the Journal of Climate simulated the effects of Amazon deforestation on global ocean and atmospheric patterns and found that the reduction of precipitation due to forest loss would cause significant changes and variability, like what we see currently with El Nino.
The main point here is that what happens in the rainforest doesn’t stay in the rainforest—it affects precipitation patterns all over the world, which, certainly in the case of California, could seriously affect world grain and produce supplies.
Erosion Protection
One other critical function rainforest serves, particularly on hillsides, is that it anchors the soil. With so much precipitation, if rainforest is not present securing soil in place, it quickly erodes and washes away into rivers, where it changes the ecosystem. Clouded water and silt-filled spawning grounds affect fish populations, and as more sediment fills riverbeds, the shallower waters make them more difficult to navigate by boat. Even worse, in hilly areas, deforestation makes deadly landslides more likely.
A Home for Millions
Roughly 1.6 billion of the world’s most impoverished people depend to varying degrees on the forests for food, timber, water and medicine. How will these people survive if tropical rainforests disappear? Many of the indigenous people who dwell in tropical forests have disappeared along with the rainforest. As Olivia and John mentioned, at one time millions of indigenous people lived in the Amazon, but today roughly 200,000 remain. The customs, music and artistry of these cultures are slipping away. Medicine men or “shamans” who have vast knowledge of medicinal rainforest botanicals are disappearing too. Preserving the world’s remaining rainforests is essential to the survival of impoverished people and indigenous cultures.
World Commodities
In the West, we are unaware of how much we rely on rainforests for resources and products that enhance our lives every day. Rubber, petroleum, steel, gold, aluminum, copper, energy (hydroelectric dams), biofuels, wood, palm oil, soy, beef, paper, sugar, chocolate, coffee, rayon, biofuels, livestock feed, fruit, nuts and medicines all are products that come from tropical rainforests, and that’s just naming a few. There are many more. We cannot continue extracting these products and destroying rainforests at the same time. What will we do when we completely exhaust the rainforest?
Spirituality
And of course, there are the spiritual gifts we receive from the rainforest. We’re referring to the ones that inspire the imagination and connect us to something greater. How can we measure the awe we feel when gazing at a mighty river such as the Congo or the Amazon? Or the pure delight in spotting monkeys or elephants in the wild? The excitement of simply knowing that archetypal predators such as giant anacondas, jaguars or tigers exist in the wild? There’s no way to place a value on these treasures of the spirit or the sublime peace one feels simply being amid the colors, sounds and vibrant energy of the tropical rainforest.
As you can see, there’s good reason to act now for the rainforest. But in order to do so, we must know exactly what is driving deforestation.
THE DRIVERS OF DEFORESTATION
Despite increased awareness and Herculean efforts on the part of conservation groups, environmental policy makers and activists, the world’s tropical rainforests continue to slip away each day. Currently, world rainforest cover is estimated to be 2.5 million square miles—roughly 5 percent of the Earth’s land surface area, according to figures presented by Mongabay.com.
What’s driving the deforestation? Subsistence farming is the largest driver, followed closely by cattle ranching, commercial agriculture and logging. A small percentage of deforestation is driven by oil drilling, metal extraction and other activities. An ever-increasing world population continually drives demand for these commodities and natural resources too.
Poverty, environmental policy, market fluctuations and political unrest all contribute to deforestation by subsistence farming. Typically, logging or mining roads opens new areas of the forest to poor farmers who cut and burn a section of forest to farm for several years until the soil is depleted. Then they pick up and do the same to a new area of forest. We have included steps that will help impoverished local populations to earn an income sustainably from non-timber forest products and even one that supports a method of enriching tropical soil to increase yields and soil longevity.
Cattle ranching is a complex issue. Supporting tropical commodities that are not rainforest destructive is part of the solution—we have many steps that show you how. And you’ll find a step on reducing your beef consumption or choosing certified beef (for those living in tropical beef-importing countries).
Commercial agriculture such as palm oil and soy cultivation is a massive contributor to deforestation, although sometimes indirectly, as is the case with the Amazon. In Amazonia, large commercial farms occupy land in the cerrado, pushing subsistence farmers and cattle ranchers farther into the rainforest. Roads, ports and railways—the infrastructure that supports these industries—have allowed more access to remote areas, further increasing deforestation. In Malaysia and Indonesia, direct deforestation occurs in order to establish palm oil plantations (as well as eucalyptus and acacia plantations to support pulp and paper mills), destroying habitat for the Sumatran tiger and orangutans and further impoverishing local populations who look to the forest for fresh water and fuelwood. We have included steps that address these issues too.
Logging, particularly illegal logging, continues to be a major problem in tropical areas. The roads created for even minor operations or selective logging open the rainforests up to more destruction such as increased hunting for the bushmeat trade and poaching for animal parts on the black market and more small-scale farming. Consumers have a considerable amount of power when it comes to wood products. We have many steps that underscore exactly how that power can be exercised for the good of the rainforest. We often recommend choosing either wood products certified by the Forest Stewardship Council or wood alternatives.
Many other activities destroy rainforests too, including oil drilling, mining and rubber plantations. We have suggestions to reduce your consumption of these as well.
And of course, there will be a few surprises.
Let the journey begin!