The Green Lungs of Our Planet Under Threat

UNDER THREAT

The Green Lungs of Our Planet

Our lungs are vital organs of the human body but we tend to forget that forests are the green lungs of our planet. They provide clean air and host an astounding 80% of the planet’s terrestrial biodiversity. According to the World Bank, 1.3 million km² of forests were lost, globally, between 1990 and 2016. To put this into perspective, more than oneand-a-half times the size of Namibia.

The United Nations agency, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimates that the Earth loses about 7,6 million hectares of forest every year. By the time you have finished reading this article, the equivalent of nearly 190 soccer fields would have been destroyed.

Forests have been and are still being destroyed by illegal logging for furniture, paper and other products, forestclearing for cattle ranching and soy plantations. But, alas, forests are also making way for plantations of products that we often use in our daily lives such as cocoa and palm oil, an ingredient in shampoo.

It is hard to believe that the icy wastes of Iceland were once largely covered in forest. Fossil evidence provided proof that between 25% and 40% of Iceland was covered in birchwood forests and woodlands as recently as 1,150 years ago. Along came the Vikings, clearing land for settlement, agriculture, fuel and wood building material. As the population increased, the once extensive birchwood forests were reduced to a mere 1% by the mid-1900s.

Central Europe, too, was once covered in large tracts of forest after they had re-emerged at the end of the last glacial period some 11,700 years ago. Clearing forests for an expanding population, agriculture and the exploitation of trees for construction, furniture and paper took a heavy toll.

Not surprisingly, the forest giants fell first. For the construction of the roof and spire of the famous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, 1,300 oak trees that were between 300 and 400 years old were felled, representing an area of 21 hectares. When the cathedral was ravaged by fire in April this year, the realisation dawned that there are no longer trees tall enough in France to replace its massive oak beams.

Approximately 17% of the Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest rainforest, was destroyed in just the past 50 years. More alarming is that deforestation in the Amazon reached a record high in May this year when 739 km² of the forest was destroyed in just thirty-one days.

Closer to home, let’s look at the scourge of local deforestation. Namibia is the driest country in subSaharan Africa and it is not surprising that woodlands cover less than 20% of its surface. These woodlands occur mainly in the far north of the country, the two Kavango regions and the Zambezi Region, where, until recently, fire posed the greatest threat to the woodlands. Especially damaging are fires set deliberately during the winter months to stimulate new growth. The slash-and-burn use of land for crop production by small-scale farmers, also known as shifting agriculture, not only denuded pockets of woodlands, but fires spread accidentally.

More recently, threats to Namibia’s woodlands, especially in the Kavango East Region, intensified and worsened. An increasing number of unusually overloaded trucks headed to Walvis Bay port from that region to export their valuable cargo of rosewood and other indigenous hardwood to China where the wood is very much in demand for the manufacture of furniture. A local newspaper, The Namibian, reported earlier this year that the number of truck loads with timber increased from 22 in 2015 to 208 in the first two months of this year, while the weight of timber increased from 3,200 tonnes in 2018 to 7,500 tonnes – also in the first two months of this year. Despite a ban on the transportation of timber harvested before 20 November 2018, photos of trucks transporting logs were regularly posted on social media platforms, causing public outcry.

Yes, the situation is depressing but there is hope. Globally, there is greater awareness of the role forests play in sustaining complex ecologies of life on earth. Although the areas replanted by humans are a fraction of the area destroyed every year, progress is being made, albeit slowly.

Reforestation projects are being launched all over the world. The 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Professor Wangari Maathai started the Green Belt Movement in Kenya in 1977. Since then, over 30 million trees have been planted in Kenya. Another initiative, the One Tree Planted Campaign, planted 64,000 trees in the Usumbara Mountains between early 2017 and late last year.

And, if that’s not impressive enough, Ethiopia’s Minister of Innovation and Technology announced recently that more than 350 million trees had been planted in that country in a single day with an eventual aim of 4 billion (yes, four billion) trees. Every citizen was encouraged to plant 40 trees under the country’s national Green Legacy initiative to reduce environmental degradation, the international edition of The Guardian reported. In doing so, Ethiopia broke the previous record for the most trees planted in a single day (60 million) set by India, in 2016.