Bulletin Issue 85 - August 2004

For centuries, forest and forest-dependent peoples were able to carry out agricultural and cattle-raising activities in a way that was compatible with forest ecosystem conservation. What was later described in pejorative terms by Western experts as "slash-and-burn" agriculture was in fact a system that had proven to have minor and reversible impacts on the forest while providing livelihoods to the communities involved. A system that in today's language would be termed "sustainable".

Tropical forests have been inhabited for thousands of years by communities that made use of them for subsistence in many ways, including agricultural activities. It was a type of agricultural production that took into account crop interactions and was carried out in such a way that not only did it prevent destruction of the forest but was able to be in harmony with it. The communities promoted areas where a diversity of species useful for human consumption were concentrated, within a diverse scenario, but which did not undermine the forest’s biological bases. Some studies indicate that approximately 12 per cent of the Amazon forests are the “result of prolonged management by pre-historic populations.”

In 1944, the Rockefeller Foundation funded the introduction of a series of technologies in Mexican agricultural production. This gave rise to an agricultural production model known as the “Green Revolution” with a central concept of “high yielding varieties” developed in the framework of monoculture crops supported by a technological package including mechanization, irrigation, chemical fertilization and the use of toxic chemicals to control pests. Throughout the sixties and seventies, FAO disseminated these technologies all over the world, announcing that the Green Revolution science was a “miraculous” recipe to achieve prosperity, solve hunger in the world and secure peace.

From the 15th century onwards, technological progress enabled Europe to take an enormous lead in charting the whole world through the invasion of the American continent, the almost total annihilation of the native population, and the unrestricted take-over of political and economic power. America's economy was restructured and oriented according to European requirements. A diverse agriculture was replaced by a system of large plantations to grow sugar, cotton and tobacco for the European market, under a monoculture system which was usually harmful to the soils after repeated use and left the countries vulnerable to plant diseases sweeping through the entire crop. Local biodiversity was degraded or lost and forests were cleared.

Agriculture and cattle-raising are direct causes of deforestation. However they should be looked at in depth in order to be able to understand what promotes them, who benefits from them, how they arise. It may be said that it is a funnel-like process. What is most visible is on the outside, the disappearance of the forest as a consequence of these activities. Delving deeper, a series of policies and programmes promoting them may be identified, together with the actors who apply them and benefit from them, even deforestation actors who are not necessarily the beneficiaries, but rather the victims of such policies.

Deforestation of tropical forests took place at a rate of 10–16 million hectare per annum during the last two decades, and is showing no signs of slowing down. 16% of the whole Amazon forest has already disappeared and every day, another 7,000 hectares of forest is lost – a surface of 10 kilometers by 7 kilometers. The causes are complex and often interrelated, but among them is the role of large-scale commercial agriculture.

As has been the case with most Southern countries, Côte d’Ivoire inherited from the colonial period the role of exporter of tropical agricultural products. Apart from the ivory from which the country was named, prior to colonization Côte d’Ivoire had less to offer for trading compared to its eastern neighboring country Ghana, more endowed with gold. So, when the French arrived in the area in the 1880s they found it simple to use the vast fertile land of dense tropical forest for agricultural production.

Even by conservative estimates, less than a quarter of Ghana’s pre-colonial forest remains. Loggers and politicians caused most deforestation, though they like to shift the blame to farmers. But the fact is that throughout the Twentieth Century farmers have had little control over the trees on their land. British colonialists gave timber rights to chiefs, who promptly sold them to loggers, or ordered them cleared and replaced with cacao plantations. After independence, the government claimed ownership of all trees and land, and sold most of it off to loggers. Cocoa farmers followed the loggers, settling in the newly cleared areas. Because cacao trees grow better under shade, small farmers usually conserve forest cover.

Senegalese exposure to European trade started in 1444 when the Portuguese established trading posts along the coast on the river Senegal: Goree (which eventually became a major slave transit post), Rufisque and along the south as a whole.

I was part of a filming crew of seven members who were on June 4 in the Modhupur forest in order to make a documentary film on the forest destruction with special attention to the effects of plantations —mostly commercial and industrial— on public forestland. The Modhupur forest is now thoroughly plundered. We were in our third and final round of filming in Modhupur, and we focused our last shots on a suddenly discovered spot where green vegetation was being thoroughly cut. The spot is very near to Lohoria Beat between Rasulpur and Dokhola Ranges.

Two years ago, China's State Forestry Administration approved genetically modified (GM) poplar trees for commercial planting. Well over one million insect resistant GM poplars have now been planted in China. Also two years ago, China launched the world's largest tree planting project. By 2012 the government aims to have covered an area of 44 million hectares with trees. Decades of deforestation have left China facing serious environmental problems, including droughts and deadly floods. Sandstorms from the Gobi Desert frequently turn the air in Beijing yellowish brown reducing visibility to a few metres. The desert is creeping relentlessly towards China's capital city.

Between 1990 and 2002 the global planted oil palm area increased by 43%. Most of this growth occurred in Indonesia and Malaysia. In Indonesia, between 1990-2000, the total area planted with oil palm almost tripled from 1.1 to 3 Mha (million hectares). In 2002, overcoming the 1997-1999 financial crisis, the total mature oil palm plantation area reached 3.5 Mha. Assuming recent planting rates, the total area of oil palm plantations in Indonesia is set to increase to 11.2 Mha in 2020.

Bananas, in terms of gross value of production, are the world’s fourth most important food crop after rice, wheat and maize. Latin America dominates the world banana economy, where they are cultivated mostly in large mono-crop plantations.

According to a recent official report, Argentina has lost 70 per cent of its native forests: out of 105 million hectares of forests, only 33 million are left today. Those most affected are the native forests in the northern and central regions of Argentina in the Provinces of Santiago del Estero, Salta, Chaco, Formosa, Misiones, Entre Rios and Santa Fe. It should be stressed that in a sector of the Province of Salta, the annual deforestation rate is three times higher than the world average.

Between 1950 and 1975, the area of human-established pasture lands in Central America doubled, almost entirely at the expense of primary rainforests. The numbers of cattle also doubled, although the average beef consumption by Central American citizens dropped. Beef production was exported to markets in the United States and in other Northern countries. Between 1966 and 1978 in Brazil 80,000 km2 of Amazon forests were destroyed to give way to 336 cattle ranches carrying 6 million head of cattle under the auspices of the Superintendency for Amazon Development (SUDAM).