Smoke Signals: Vast Forest Fires Scar the Globe

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

6/18/98

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE

Its always encouraging when the mainstream media takes their heads out

of the sand and notes the demise of the planet. In the attached

article, Time Magazine notes the magnitude of the recent forest fires

and correctly interprets this as an indicator of worse to come. "Fire

storms in the rain forests... have become an unmistakable distress

signal from the developing world."

g.b.

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Title: Smoke Signals

Vast forest fires have scarred the

globe, but the worst may be yet to come

Source: Time Magazine, Vol. 151, No. 24

Date: June 22, 1998

Byline: By EUGENE LINDEN

Why are the world's forests burning? Why did uncontrollable fires cut

a 7,700-sq.-mi. swath of devastation across Indonesia? Why have the

blazes of Mexico sent plumes of smoke across Texas and Louisiana?

Here's the simple answer: El Nino. While that notorious weather system

flooded some regions, it produced horrendous droughts in other areas,

making half the world a tinderbox.

But that's too easy an explanation. Scientists suspect that something

more fundamental--and frightening--is happening. In one country after

another, flames are going where they've never gone before. "These

fires are burning into virgin, humid forests that have evolved without

fire," says Nels Johnson of Washington's World Resources Institute.

"There is no historical precedent for the fires in the cloud forests

of the Lacondon region of Mexico." Fire storms in the rain forests--

the very idea defies common sense--have become an unmistakable

distress signal from the developing world.

Even without the effects of El Nino, forests are increasingly

vulnerable, and the blame lies with human activity. People are

literally paving the way for fire's intrusion. Roads penetrating

tropical forests provide access to loggers, peasant farmers, ranchers

and plantation owners, all of whom use fire to clear land. Logging in

particular creates incendiary conditions by leaving combustible litter

on the forest floor and allowing sunlight to penetrate the forest

canopy and dry out the vegetation.

A rain forest is a self-perpetuating system in that water vapor from

trees energizes rainstorms. Cut the trees and rainfall decreases,

further drying a system that is not adapted to recovering from fire.

Experts wonder if this is why denuded southern China has seen a

decline in rainfall this century, and why West Africa has lost one of

two rainy seasons. Looming over all rain forests is the threat of

global warming caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. Computer

simulations suggest that the greenhouse effect will increase the

frequency of drought in tropical areas.

Belatedly, rains have come to Southeast Asia in recent weeks, and they

are still expected in Mexico, but any relief is likely to be

temporary, and dryer conditions will return later in the year. Experts

are particularly worried about Brazil, where a new dry season is just

starting. Daniel Nepstad, a tropical-forest ecologist at the Woods

Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, notes that "the eastern Amazon

is teetering on the edge." The region has received one-fifth of its

normal rainfall in the past year, and Nepstad says an area 20 times

the size of Massachusetts is at risk.

The tragedy goes far beyond the countries that are burning. Besides

worrying about the loss of tropical forests, with their unmatched

natural resources, policymakers have to be concerned about the clouds

of smoke that have endangered public health from Singapore to Houston.

But so far it's been easier to announce programs to combat the fires

than to get at the causes. In April the United Nations Environment

Program called for a $10 million fund to help Southeast Asia contain

its fires. Washington has contributed $7.5 million to Mexico's

firefighting efforts.

Such meager sums won't even begin to save the forests. In Indonesia

the collapse of the economy has driven many of the urban poor back to

the countryside, and often the only land to cultivate is virgin

forest. So a new round of fires seems unavoidable. Says John Redwood,

a World Bank environmental specialist: "Once small fires get out of

control in remote areas, they become unstoppable until doused by

rains."

Several forces combine to darken the outlook. The industrial world

hasn't curbed its appetite for wood or halted the harvesting of rain

forests by multinational corporations. In many developing countries,

government corruption or mismanagement has allowed indiscriminate

logging and clearing of woodland for agriculture. And efforts to slow

greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S., the biggest offender, continue

to be stymied by a skeptical Congress. The Senate Appropriations

Committee has just slashed $200 million from the Clinton

Administration's proposed program to improve energy efficiency, citing

doubts about "the existence, extent or effects of global climate

change."

What all this adds up to is a cycle of destruction. Chopping down the

forests creates conditions that foster fires. The fires pour carbon

dioxide into the air, which promotes global warming and makes the

forests dryer still. A computer simulation of the effect of climate

change in Mexico has predicted that if temperatures rise as feared,

rainfall might be reduced 40%--a drop that would doom the remaining

rain forests in the state of Chiapas.

The global bonfire of 1998 is a warning, an unsubtle hint that

humanity will have to change its ways or watch its forests disappear.

It is a smoke signal we cannot afford to ignore.

--With Reporting by David Bjerklie /New York, With Other Bureaus

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