Governments should be directly responsible for the conservation of the natural and cultural heritage of their respective countries and people. Nevertheless, what frequently happens in the South is that the authorities act in collusion with powerful internal and external interests, and to the detriment of the country’s biodiversity, and thus against the welfare of the population they are supposed to protect. This is what is going on in Kenya.
Bulletin articles
Liberia hosts the last two significant blocks of the remaining closed canopy tropical rainforest within the upper Guinea Forests of West Africa, which spans Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. The original extent of tropical rainforest in the region is estimated at 727,900km2, but has shrunk to about 92,797km2 - about 12.7% of its original size! Liberian forests account for 44.5% of the remaining 92,797km2 followed by Cote d’Ivoire with 29.1%.
Known by its historical past because of the vast and powerful empire that surprised European visitors in the XIV century, nowadays the Malian territory comprises more than 1,200,000 square kilometres in West Africa, over the Sahara desert in the north, the Sahel grasslands in the centre and the savannah region in the south. In the Sahel, human life as well as that of the flora and fauna follow the Niger River's annual flood cycle, with high water levels between August and November.
Invasion of habitats by alien plants is one of the causes of the extinction of native species. Some plant species have developed the capacity to adapt to new sites and to displace the original vegetation cover. This phenomenon has been widely recorded and it is known as “bioinvasion”. Needless to say that invasive species constitute a threat for biodiversity at the local and regional level, since the spread of newcomers alters the richness and abundance of the flora and fauna of the original ecosystem.
Bangladesh is one of the states signatories of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Nevertheless, the three types of forests existing in the country --the evergreen and semi-evergreen rainforests in the eastern region and at the Chittagong Hill Tracts region, the moist and dry deciduous forests, known as “sal” forests, situated in the central plains and the northeast region, and the tidal mangrove forests along the coast-- are under threat, and little is being done to save them. In the meantime, annual deforestation rate has reached 3.3%.
Forest and biodiversity conservation mean different things to different people. In the case of Cambodia, village people throughout the country depend on farmland, fisheries and forests for their livelihoods. For them, conserving the forest and its biodiversity implies ensuring their present and future means of survival. In recent years, even as peace has returned to rural areas, large scale logging concessions have reduced villagers' access and rights to forests, and caused massive damage to the forests themselves.
Not long ago, the Nakai Plateau and the surrounding forest in central Laos was home to tiger, elephant, otter, rhesus macaque, tawny fish-owl, crested kingfisher, Siamese fireback and brown hornbill. The communities living in the area use 28 different languages. A hunter-gatherer group, unknown outside the Plateau, speaks a language unrelated to any of the five major language groups found in the area. In 1992, a new genus of bovid, the Sao La, was identified in Vietnam. Its habitat also extends into the Nakai-Nam Theun National Biodiversity Conservation Area (NBCA) in Laos.
Vegetation maps published in Geography books still show the archipelago of the Philippines, as covered by dense tropical forests. Unfortunately, this does not correspond to reality any longer. Over the past 50 years almost two thirds of the country's forests --most of them primary-- have been lost, and nowadays forest cover is only 17 % --far below the original 60% of the country area. In 1990 the country's forest was down to only 16 million acres, 1,75 million of which was primary forest and only 50% of the original mangroves remained standing. The situation has since worsened.
Biological corridors are linear strips of vegetation that provide a continuous or near continuous pathway between habitats. They constitute a strategy used in nature conservation to cope with the problem of habitat fragmentation provoked by economic activities such as industrial agriculture and tree plantations, urbanizations and infrastructure works like highways and dams. Based upon modern theories of Ecology applied to conservation --e.g.
In the last issue of our bulletin we included an article on Belize, calling it a country "where forests can still be saved." We should have added: "if the government and a Canadian power company allows it." The fact is that the Canadian based Fortis Inc. -- which also holds a majority stake in Belize Electricity Ltd.-- is planning to build a dam along a branch of the Macal River.
With an area of 2,791,810 square kilometres, Argentina is the second largest country in South America. Due to its extension in latitude --from 22 to 56 º SL-- its territory encompasses a variety of climates, landscapes, flora and fauna. Argentina is included in the group of the 25 most biodiverse countries in the world in terms of sheer numbers of species present. The several types of native forests to be found in that country are strongly linked to such biodiversity levels. Nevertheless, they have been disappearing at an alarming rate.
In international processes related to forests and biodiversity, Brazil is one of the countries with a stronger discourse regarding the defense of countries' sovereignty. Unfortunately, it is only a discourse. In reality, what most of Brazil's different governments have actually done is to open the door wide open to foreign investment and the results have been increased poverty and environmental degradation. Which has nothing to do with defending the country's sovereignty. Quite the opposite.