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特別報導 Feature
 IPCC
Report Op-Ed Jane Goodall Ph.D., DBE
April
10, 2007
To defend against global warming, protect the world's
remaining forests.
Last week
the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued
a report predicting an alarming array of impacts of
climate change around the globe, including drought,
floods, lower crop yields, threatened food security,
wildfire, and ocean acidification. It seems that no
living thing in this web of life we are a part of
will be unaffected by climate change.
As a primatologist,
I am particularly concerned by the prediction that
20-30% of species will face increased risk of extinction.
We know
that a majority of the world's species live in rainforests,
from many flagship species like elephants, tigers
and chimpanzees to smaller species like insects and
algae. Some play a role in curing human diseases,
or may in the future.
These
forests are threatened both by large scale commercial
exploitation, and by rapidly increasing numbers of
poor people who are destroying the forests to make
charcoal or to open the land for subsistence agriculture.
Some of the other impacts of climate change predicted
by the IPCC, such as drought and food insecurity,
will only exacerbate the plight of these people.
A relatively
new danger to these forests is the growing enthusiasm
for biofuels. In Africa, Asia and Latin America, forest
blocks that were previously reserved for conservation
or sustainable forestry are being converted to sugar
cane and palm oil plantations, whose output will be
used as fuel for ethanol or biodiesel plants.
The irony
of cutting down forests for biofuels is that forests
store a significant fraction of the world's stocks
of carbon. If these carbon-capturing trees are felled
and burned—whether as firewood or to clear land—the
oxidation of their carbon will release billions more
tons of carbon dioxide. The tropical rainforests of
Africa, Latin America and South Asia are particularly
important in this regard. Tropical deforestation contributes
2 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere
annually, compared to approximately 6 billion tons
from burning fossil fuels. Saving these forests would
not only prevent the release of carbon currently stored
in them, but it also would allow them to continue
absorbing carbon in the future.
While
population pressures cannot be quickly reversed, nor
the businesses of logging and mining phased-out, there
is much we can do to save these forests. The core
of a successful strategy involves working not only
with national leaders, but also, and most importantly,
with local people to raise living standards, especially
in the areas near the forest preserves. By providing
technical assistance to farmers to raise their incomes,
education to young people, health care to families,
and economic investments in ecotourism, these rural
communities can become the custodians of the forests,
not their destroyers.
These
strategies have other benefits as well: they promote
local stability and security. Rural prosperity, education,
and effective public health systems serve as natural
defenses against outbreaks of pandemic disease, war,
terrorism, and political instability. By working with
local people to save forests, we help to create stable
communities that will surely improve global security.
The governments
of the United States and other developed nations bear
a special responsibility to promote these programs.
Not only are western nations the greatest consumers
of oil, timber, and other carbon generating industries,
they have the wealth to bring about change in poor
developing countries. Relatively small increases in
aid directed toward rural community development, especially
through micro-credit programs, can have an extraordinary
impact on saving wilderness areas, including forests,
and the array of life forms they sustain.
Only a
few centuries ago, each of the developed nations on
the continents of Europe, Asia and North America destroyed
their own forests and many of the species inhabiting
them in an unsustainable scramble toward wealth. Now
only remnant forests remain on those continents.
The developed
nations have an opportunity to enable developing nations
to avoid making the same mistakes. By investing more
in environmentally sustainable development, we can
save valuable species, help prevent the escalation
of global warming, and increase global security. Helping
to preserve the forests of developing nations is in
our interests, as well as theirs.
Jane
Goodall Ph.D., DBE, is Founder of the Jane Goodall
Institute (www.janegoodall.org)
and a UN Messenger of Peace.
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