30 September 2013. A World to Win News Service. A rainforest is a hot, thick jungle characterized by high rainfall, between 250 and 450 centimetres annually. Although they cover only 6 percent of the earth's surface, rainforests contain more than half of all the different types of plants and animals on the earth. As many as 30 million species of plants and animals live in tropical rainforests.
Most of the
rainforests are located around the middle of the earth, near the equator. They
help clean the air that we breathe. They are often called the "lungs of the
planet'' because of their role in absorbing carbon dioxide – a greenhouse gas –
and producing oxygen. They stabilize climate and produce rainfall all around the
world. They maintain the recycling of water between the ground and the sky and
protect against flood, drought and soil erosion.
Rainforests are
found in Africa, Asia, Australia, and Central and South America. The world's
largest is the Amazon a rainforest in Brazil and eight neighbouring countries,
stretching across the continent from the Andes mountains to the Atlantic ocean.
Over a thousand herbal medicine plants are situated in these forests. They are
called "the world's largest pharmacy." They are also a huge source of food and
an amazing and beautiful section of our planet. They are the earth's oldest
living ecosystems.
How are
rainforests being destroyed?
Every year an area
over 22,000 square kilometres of rainforest is cut down and destroyed. The
plants and animals either die or must find a new forest to live. Human
activities – determined by logic of the movement of capital and its insatiable
hunger for profit – are the main cause of rainforest
destruction.
· Extraction of
minerals and energy
· Construction of
roads and pipelines
· Cutting wood for
lumber by big companies – legal and illegal logging
· Large scale
agriculture (usually export crops)
· Clearing the
forest to create grazing land for cattle farming
· Cutting wood to
obtain pulp for producing paper
· Land for poor
farmers who are pushed out of their homes due to land grabbing or expansion of
cities and shanty towns
Rainforests are
also threatened by climate change, which is contributing to droughts in parts of
the Amazon and South Asia. Drought causes massive die-offs of trees, and
dried-out leaf litter increases the risk of forest fires. Forest fires are also
often set by land developers, ranchers and plantation owners to clear the
land.
In 2005 and 2010,
the Amazon experienced the worst droughts ever recorded. Rivers dried up,
isolating communities, and millions of acres burned. The smoke caused widespread
health problems and blocked the formation of rain clouds, while the burning
emitted a huge amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, worsening the
effects of climate change.
Meanwhile
Indonesia has experienced several severe droughts in recent decades. The worst
occurred in 1982-1983 and 1997-1998, when millions of acres of forest burned.
These precious rainforests are plundered by logging for timber and cleared for
palm oil plantations. Almost three-quarters of Indonesia's original forest is
already gone. According to the United Nations Environmental Project, at current
rates of destruction, almost all of Indonesia's forests will be gone by
2022.
The destruction
and fragmentation of forests – as well as rainforests and other natural habitats
inland and in seas – could bring about the extinction of many species of plants
and animals. Large-scale pollution and the degradation of the water, air and
soil, combined with the real advance of climate change, is already creating a
serious environmental disaster. Humanity is well on the way to making this
planet literally uninhabitable, meaning the environment and human destiny is on
the brink of disaster. As climate scientist James Hansen has warned, "Our home
planet is now dangerously near a tipping point."
The destruction of
the Amazon rainforest
In the nine years
from 1991 to 2000, the total area of the Amazon rainforest cut and burned down
rose from 415,000 to 587,000 square kilometres. Most of this land is used for
large-scale cattle farming. Deforestation was accelerated following the opening
of highways deep into the forest, such as the Trans-Amazonian highway built by
the Brazilian government in 1972.
Cattle farming,
valuable hardwood logging and the growing of soya beans (soybeans), often for
biofuel production, the expansion of cities and mining are the main reasons for
cutting away the Amazonian Rainforest. Brazil is the second biggest producer of
soya beans after the U.S. In the Amazon, cleared land is valued between 5-10
times more than forested land, which of course constitutes an irresistible
motivation to cut down trees on a mass scale. By Brazilian law, clearing land
for crops or fields is considered an ‘'effective use'', which is relevant for
asserting land ownership. This change in land use may alter the region's
climate, according to scientists using NASA satellite data. From 1992 to 1996,
Amazonian deforestation increased by 34 percent By 2005, a 17.1 percent total
loss of rainforest was recorded. Almost the same trend is still
continuing.
It has been
calculated that in 2006, McDonald's and its suppliers alone were responsible for
the deforestation of 70,000 square kilometres of the Amazon rainforest over the
preceding three years. The need for soya to fed to their chickens, for example,
was a major factor. In addition to the massive deforestation, these suppliers
have also been linked to illegal land grabbing and the use of slave labour on
these farms. Tens of thousands of Brazilians from all over the country have been
lured into the jungle by the promise of jobs and then held at gunpoint and
forced to work as slaves. Even when the slaves eventually escape or end up
abandoned, the plantation owners are almost never punished. The landlords and
their gangs of thugs enjoy impunity from the law.
If deforestation
at the rate of 2007 continues, within two decades, the Amazon rainforest will be
reduced by 40 percent. Lately there has been slight reduction but the shrinking
of the forest is still continuing.
Can capitalism
save the environment?
In the age of
imperialism and rivalry over world domination, where the imperialist countries
ruled by monopoly capitalists carry out bloody invasions and wars, and commit
and sponsor genocides, one cannot expect these global powers to respect, care
for and sustain our planet. For them, nature is something to be seized and
plundered, and exploited and poured into profit-driven commodity production.
Capitalists or blocs of capital confront one another as competitors; their
relative peace is a preparation period for wars. They must be prepared and ready
to seize on any advantage to undercut their competition, otherwise they will go
under. That's why major powers up to now have failed to agree on a meaningful
action at various international conferences regarding climate change. That's why
capitalism as a system cannot deal with environment in a proper way, even if an
individual capitalist or group of capitalists sincerely wanted
to.
The motive force
behind any capitalist production is profit. Their logic is this: everything
produced is a commodity that must be sold at a profit. Regardless of the will of
the capitalists themselves, they must expand or die, and they only take into
account their own profits and losses and not the damages and cost to the
environment, the general population, and so on. In this process of expansion,
capitalism proceeds through imperialist domination of oppressed nations and
strategic rivalry between imperialist powers and their allies. This is carried
out through world wars, regional wars, wars to maintain their rule against
revolutions, brutal violence against native people and so on, as we can see in
the cases of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria… In fact, the U.S. army is not only
the main enforcer of the system that is plundering the earth's environment and
its people, but a major source of carbon dioxide emission. The carbon emissions
generated by the U.S.-led war in Iraq every year was equal to the emissions
created by the addition of 25 million more cars on the roads in the U.S.
annually. If the war was ranked as a country in terms of emissions, it would
emit more carbon dioxide each year than 139 of the worlds' nations do annually
according to a report by Oil Change International.
Often
people in the "third world" suffer qualitatively more from the
consequences of global warming than those living in imperialist countries ruled
by the monopoly capitalists. But capitalists will never put the interests of the
preservation of the ecosystems of the entire planet above their development
plans in order to ensure the health of the planet and the people for the future
generations.
What else can we
expect from a system that has used atomic weapons against people in Japan (by
the U.S.) and introduced the use of chemical weapons (both sides used them in
World War One, and the British used it to put down a revolt against their
domination of Iraq in 1920. Italy used poison gas in its attempt to take over
Ethiopia in the 1930s). This is without mentioning the massive destruction of
people and the environment in wars to control "third world" countries ever since
– or the massive nuclear arsenals that the major powers and Israel have built up
to maintain and advance their interests. Those who have no respect for human
life will definitely have no respect for our planet. In fact it is this system
that has got us into this situation in the first place, and the situation will
definitely become even worse.
Our survival
depends on the natural world, from green plants that produce oxygen to other
living species that provide food and medicine; we cannot live without fresh
water, nutrient-rich soils and clean air. At the same time we are linked with
the natural world through complex evolutionary chains and through networks of
ecosystems that provide the flow of energy for life to maintain
itself.
If we do not move
to stem climate change, to protect and preserve fast vanishing natural
ecosystems around the world, this planet could very well become uninhabitable
for billions of people and possibly all of humanity. The inner workings of
capitalism-imperialism, and the imperialists' history and practice on a global
scale, proves beyond doubt that this system and those who run it are not and
cannot be fit to be caretakers of our planet.
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