Groups Say Forest Fires Speed Global Warming
10/12/97
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Headline: Groups Say Forest Fires Speed Global Warming
Source: The Associate Press
Date: 10/12/97
Author: Bryan Brumley
Copyright 1997: The Miami Herald
A worldwide curb on logging is urged
LONDON -- Forest fires in Indonesia and Brazil are speeding
global warming by pouring greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Two practices -- destructive logging and the clearing of land
with fire -- are accelerating the disappearance of native
forests around the globe, fund officials said last week as
they launched a campaign to curb the logging behind the
blazes.
``Two-thirds of the world's forests have been lost forever,''
said Francis Sullivan, director of the fund's Forests for Life
campaign. The fund is trying to persuade governments around
the world to protect those forests that remain.
Four countries together have more than half the remaining
original forests -- the United States, Russia, Indonesia and
Brazil. Widespread logging and fires are jeopardizing the
forests of Brazil and Indonesia, Sullivan said.
Those fires, he said, are causing ``spectacular'' damage to
the environment.
``It definitely accelerates global warming'' by releasing
carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases, Sullivan
said.
Conservationists estimate the fires burning now in Indonesia
are yielding between 100 and 500 million tons of carbon
dioxide -- at least half of Indonesia's annual carbon dioxide
emission.
Increase in diseases
The situation is much the same in the more thinly populated
Amazon basin, said Garo Batmanian, the fund's executive
director for Brazil.
``This year, unlike other years, we have started to notice
problems on the health side,'' said Batmanian.
A cloud of smoke now hangs over the Amazon River port of
Manaus, and health officials there report a 40 percent
increase in respiratory diseases, he said.
The smog has been so dense at times that airplanes have needed
instruments to use the Manaus airport, he added.
Elsewhere in the Amazon Basin, ``airports in Porto Velho and
Rio Branco have closed down between 20 and 30 times in the
last month alone because of the smoke,'' he said.
The fires cause water pollution as well as air pollution. The
only thing that could quench the flames would be prolonged
heavy rains, but they would wash ash, debris and mud from
denuded hillsides.
``The second ecological disaster will be when soil and ash
begin to flow into the rivers,'' Sullivan said.
A new survey released by the fund showed that of the 20
billion acres of forest existing worldwide 8,000 years ago,
only 7.5 billion acres remain.
Destruction continues
Tropical forests continue to be destroyed at a rate of 42
million acres per year, and there are similar losses across
the temperate and northern forests of Canada, Europe, Russia
and the United States, the study found.
``The frightening thing is that the pace of forest destruction
has accelerated dramatically over the past five years and
continues to rise,'' Sullivan said.
At the U.N. Earth Summit in June, the fund and the World Bank
announced a conservation plan that would bring 247 million
acres of northern forests and 247 million acres of tropical
rain forests under ``sustainable management'' by 2005.
The Europeans, Canadians and others have proposed a treaty
that would, among other steps, introduce new standards in the
timber trade.
The United States opposes the idea -- as do many
environmentalists, who would prefer to first see existing
agreements better enforced to slow deforestation.
In conjunction with the World Conservation Monitoring Center,
the fund studied forests in Africa, the Asia-Pacific region,
Europe, Latin America, North America and Russia.
The study showed that the Asia-Pacific region already has lost
88 percent of its original forest cover, and only 5 percent of
the remaining forest is protected.
It predicted that within the next 25 years, only 10 percent of
the region's original forests will be left.
Worldwide, countries such as El Salvador, Ghana, Madagascar
and Pakistan already have fallen below 10 percent, the study
said.