An Invisible Chain of our Time
Page 22
minimal set of rules, of a corporate culture and learning, and particularly legal compliance. But many voices are already saying that depending on where they are applied, are no more than a transfer of operating licenses in terms of the image that is achieved, neglecting basics wherever does not exist really monitoring.
First of all, forests have not any base as such a skeleton that could be a standard: the standard is a tool for human interventions or activities. Not all the forests are into the more complex category among ecosystems, but are some of them, and of course, it is right for all those tropical forests in both sides of the Atlantic Sea, included in three biogeographic regions: the Neotropical, Palearctic and the Ethiopian regions. And has been pretended the applying of same standard to all forests.
In both sides, are currently occurring two things simultaneously: there where still remain forests (Central America, the northern of South America, Central Africa and some regions in Southeast Asia), the lands are being again slashed and burned, for the extracting of minerals and cropping of biofuels and intensive forage for livestock; by other side, the mapping of those areas is other intensive and selective activity that support a few number of philanthropic organizations. Due it, therefore, after these two main activities appear the organizations that study and measure the erosion that occurs and extends over these areas, and the increasing problems arising therefrom, that we discussed earlier. In parallel, all what may have lived there, disappears: after all this sorts of events takes place each of them with its convenient “programming and environmental review policy,” what comes is the management, the sustainable forestry, the “well managed forests,” what means in other words, mono-crops, tree farms, industrialized fields of wood. And of course, around all this have been deployed a lot of improvements for the communities, rules, deals, agreements, and more of such things. So ends like having the repopulated forests behind fires, where there is not the slightest interest in recovering the above, and just set up a business.
Manage a forest has costs, and requires a knowledge, but over all this requires a proper use, what is finally the very true, actual management. Surprisingly, the most of original communities which have lived in those places, have had a kind of management accurate, and when we have seen an inadequate management it has belonged to practices introduced by colonizers, the inclusion of these communities in foreign works as mining or drilling, and the dependence from this last. Most troubling is the idea publicized and scattered in all the great reports about the forests, issued subtly, and at the end the only one is listen: is actually completely a blurry notion, false and far from reality
Like so many other times, not saying the whole truth, and saying only a small part, is a huge lie. The advertising tagline is "forests are carbon storage, and stop the climate change." Well, this is true, forests contain and store carbon, but this is not the only “task” that they are accomplishing: so it takes more than a mass of logs monospecific uniform carbon stores. Perhaps, this one is not the most important “task or function” that forests do. Why then do we insist both? Because to effects of the climate change? I do not think so, I prefer think that is because, taking advantage of this matter is possible open a market of forests, that of course with time will be modified and will evolve to other new goals, and thus we have a green card for go everywhere with a green and sustainable aim, and a business.
Following the six maps (obtained from ForestWatch), the map 1 shows the forest concessions when requested (yellow) approved (orange) protected (green) or canceled (gray); on map 2, concessions in violet and purple indicate they are more recent; the map 3 shows the progression of the forest planning (realization); on map 4, the total mining concessions, most of them are families; on map 5, the declining of vegetation cover; on map 6, the red areas show the recent forest loss.
What happens about retention of water? What happens about biomass? What happens with all species living there? What happens with the soils that are under this canopy? What about the regulation of temperatures, the buffer effect over heat, and the attraction of rain? What happens with all plants that are there, and its effects over the nearby fields? It looks that nobody remember this... Currently vast extensions along tropical areas show many surfaces gridded into rows and aisles, which already are a large and monotonous monoculture: you can go in and out throughout easily by that sustainable forest, and even you can choose the SUV vehicle you will drive. Is this a sustainable management? I am sorry, again I must say that: this is a tease, a hoax. Anyway you can follow believing what you like.
Thus, with this manners, so easily, and even with clever and sustainable planning and deep management, the woods are becoming in great crops of a kind of giant maize with trunk. I do not want to tire you, reader, I will show you just one example of map showing how things are done: it belongs to Africa, and you can see how intertwined legal timber holdings, the illegal mining industry of Western companies, mining individual legal or illegal, the immense intensive crops ... and in the midst of all this, small isolated forest fringes that are no longer pristine, from which you can see around, even toxic waste everywhere flooding already half of Africa.
And all this is being called sustainable!
On the other side, the changes realized in Brazil: following the six maps (obtained from ForestWatch/IMazon), the dashed strep (map 1) defines the biome; in the map 2, en yellow the reserves, in white the sustainable areas; in the map 3, the green areas are forest (ten years ago), in gray the deforested, in brown the logging; in the map 4, the human settlements and crops are colored respectively in red and purple; in the map 5, the mining sites are in orange; finally, in the map 5, red and orange colors show respectively the recent and former fires.
I am fearful truly that we could lose wholly and definitely the 85% of natural forests, leaving only a few spots of wildness along the world. Yet worse, I am sure it will come in few years, less than twenty years. And we will hear in spite this that we have afforested many areas, we have achieved our goals. Still more subtle lies. You can ask Google an answer by some key words, using different locations (so different profiles), and you will see that the results are so different. According to your location, you will find a new vision for each point from where you are seeking.
8. Fisheries: there is nothing above, nothing below.
First of all, fishing: and later?
Between the teachings of religions, we could find one that could have been the exact opposite of that what has taken place in the current time: it belongs to Christians, and says that once "man-God multiplied fish and loaves". Currently, we literally have depleted, erased, razed, scared, weakened, persecuted, have made life tense, risky and impossible to fish. To be a fish is an unlikely life and risky life. Is a trending topic to talk about this issue in all mouths; the large decreasing of fisheries. That is something that someone someday will solve, we can be calm and continue watching the movie. Do not forget the popcorn.
At first glance, the sea might seem a thin cord of dancing waters surrounding the coast, and away ahead be nothing more except a passing whales occasionally. Your feet touch the smooth waves gliding over the shore sandy; your eyes discover a friendly world through your water glasses, but not more. If you have tried the taste of diving, you know something of what awaits below. You unfortunately do not see more because your life is on land usually, but eventually is possible to gaze at the world that is underwater. Those things are basically following the same rules, but the ways are other. The currents, temperatures, the gathering of large numbers of tiny organisms, the travel of shoals and the yearly changes in the amounts of algae, draw that we see as one ecosystem, and actually is an important number of differentiated ecosystems. However currently we see the sea as a single pool, as one element uniform.
At least, by one hand the sea is a huge chamber which transports the energy in various ways (changing its temperature, varying its salinity, by the growing of algae, releasing heat and steam, transporting conditions and nutrients, keeping min
erals in its floors, adjusting oxygen and carbon dioxide, and containing a huge biomass of beings which are as susceptible as can be those on land.
On the other hand, is great the inertia that has such a huge body of water it is, has a high heat capacity, its currents are slow for the planetary scale, the whole acts as a controller buffer, but all this set at the same time makes it becomes a long-term storage of problems that we have led and stored -I should say discharged and thrown- into the seas.
Currently, it results very easy to gather in few lines the threats that has the sea as living system, and as a resource: constant releasing of chemicals, increase of salinization, unbalance of nutrients into currents, physical imbalance of nutrients vertically, storage of debris moving, depletion of fisheries, illness of sea prairies, decreasing of coral and reef systems, break of the trophic chain, intermittent spilling of oils, long-term storage of highly toxic residues... and some more that are under study, gaining medals to reach the first position. Seeing it from another side, there are two sources of “big problems,” none of them natural: the human models of