Meanwhile, Marina Silva, renowned rainforest defender, has resigned as Brazil's environment minister, because she lacked the necessary political support to protect the Amazon.
Global warming poses huge threats to the rainforest. Higher temperatures and prolonged droughts put already vulnerable parts of the rainforest under severe stress. Illegal logging practices add to the problems by making the rainforest more fireprone. Where the canopy has disappeared, more sunlight reaches the ground, stimulating growth of more flammable vegetation, such as grasses, ferns, and bamboo.Increased subsidies for biofuel have lead to less land being available to grow food. As a result, more rainforest is being cut, in efforts to create futher land for farming. Rising food prices make farmers seek more pasture or crop land in the Brazilian Amazon. In many cases, farmers deliberately burn forest to create soybean farms and cattle ranches. In Indonesia, farmers are keen to grow more palm-oil, threatening to burn further rainforest and thick layers of peat that have accumulated over huge timespans.
Despite the rainforest's lush looks, most tropical soils are nutrient-poor oxisols with high levels of aluminum-toxicity (hence their reddish color) and will only produce crop for a few years. Once the forest is gone, storms, rains and floods will wash away nutrients and soil. In a vicous circle, farmers will then move on and slash-and-burn further rainforest. Loss of rainforest goes hand in hand with loss of biodiversity and further emission of greenhouse gases. An estimated 20% of the world's total emissions comes from slash-and-burn practices.Farmers are best assisted with increased soil fertility through AgriChar, which can end any ill-perceived need for slash-and-burn practices. Adding AgriChar will give soils more fertility and better water retention, reducing the need for polluting and increasingly expensive nitrogen fertilizers.Deforestation, loss of top-soil, desertification, loss of bio-diversity, pollution and other environmental damage can all be reduced this way.Hunger and poverty can be reduced, because of much higher yields as a result of the conversion of acidic tropical soils into fertile, AgriChar-enhanced soils. More people can have farms with lasting fertility and stay there, without having to move deeper and deeper into the rainforest.
Burning biowaste by means of pyrolysis can produce both AgriChar and hydrogen, which can provide energy on demand for local communities, without requiring imports of fossil fuel. Moreover, the whole process of producing AgriChar and adding it to the soil is carbon-negative and can result in huge amounts of carbon dioxide being removed from the atmosphere, to be stored for hundreds, if not thousands of years into the soil.
Politicians, wake up and do your job!
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Comments: 48
I am often amazed by the wealth of data that has in the past ten years exponentially flourished about various ecosystem, like how certain forests are now beginning to be considered one organism, in the way root systems are interconnected via fungus in a rudimentary feedback system.
Biofuel made from sugar is also contributing to the loss of rainforest in Brazil. As more land is demanded for biofuel crops the pressure on the rainforest grows.
Oh, and yes, no one there votes for them.
AN important issue. Thanks for giving it visibility.
i do hope washington would take action
I agree, Don, I hope you saw my article on AgriChar. One problem is that merely writing articles about AgriChar, Terra Preta or biochar don't seem to attract many people, whereas fires always feature on TV, because somehow people seem more attracted to spectacular visuals than to solutions of problems. Let's keep up pointing at solution, Don, and try and do so in ways to spread the word to as many people as possible.
By the way, cap and trade deserves a lot more attention. I'm afraid that most of the money will go to polluters, rather than end up putting more carbon into the soil. I see feebates as the most effective way to tackle emissions and I propose a fee on nitrogen fertilizers, with the proceeds funding rebates on AgriChar.
It's been an important issue for years, for a variety of reasons, and now... more so than ever...
It seems humans are often their own greatest obstacle
As the population of the world continues to escalate, particularly in South America, I can only see the destruction of the rainforest as being inevitable. The more people who are born, the more people will demand a place to live. Unfortunately, the best scenario that I personally believe is possible would be a "slowing down" of the rainforest's demise. As long as the population of South America continues to dramatically increase the way it is, the days of the rainforest are numbered. This is not what I want or hope or wish to see happen, it is only an unavoidable conclusion.
Population growth is just another diversion, a scapegoat cooked up by those who seek to stop governments around the world from taking the action that's really needed, i.e. facilitating a shift to clean and safe technologies, as discussed in Overpopulation?
It might help our global environment to have a United States president who was well acquainted with the problems of Indonesia and the African Congo. Obama is just such a man.
I am reading Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilema" and he talks about many of the non-industrial farming practices you mention. I would recomend that to anyone reading your aritcles.
Very so right on.
Even very brilliant sociologists I've worked with get that one wrong, since they often look at a symptom of a problem as if it were the problem. The multidisciplinary issues around "overpopulation," like even the dengue fever epidemic among Brazil's ghettos, are symptomatic to how the G-8 economic driving forces entirely ignore the human dimension. We have already all the resources including food, science including medicine and the infrastructure ability to multilaterally deliver this to every human being on Earth, and in a "green" way.
Here is a start-off article at overpopulation dot com: Overpopulation... green solutions
Overpopulation is also a symptom of a lack of education. We certainly also have all the resources in this world to provide an education to every human being that wants one... and that is how you control "overpopulation," since it really only works though individual choices. Sex is a primary drive in the brain's reward feedback system. Sex releases all sorts of feel good neurotransmitters, and in a society where there is a huge well of pain lacking basic opportunities or education, we get a lot of babies. Once upon a time, among agricultural societies, a lot of children meant a lot of hands to work the fields... or as somebody above wrote about the catholic Church, makes a lot of baby Catholics to later propagate.
Scott, Biodiesel is not ethanol and while I think it is not the ultimate solution, it still should be part of the interim solution until the industry will be able to use much cleaner renewable sources like solar. It is not necessarily that biodiesel will be produced from corn, it can be produced from algae which has much more vegetable oil in it and grows much faster than corn.
Great article, Sam.
We really need to take stock of just that in order to realize the importance of our thinking relative to our desires and our real needs in this world.
As it stands, we are far too dualistic in that our decisions of choice trend towards selfish extremes rather than moderation ... the greedy rich seek to get ever richer and that often at the expense of the very poor who in turn become ever more impoverished.
In the case of the Amazon Rain Forests, the rich seek to populate the areas with workers and the workers seek to make a living to support their families ... increase of wealth on the one hand and basic survival on the other ... put them together and you have what we have.
The truth of our spiritual inter-connectivity with each other and the entire living universe that most certainly includes our world NEEDS to be realized by everyone ... when done there would be enough compassion and cooperation expressed to completely change the entire world back much closer to the "Garden" it supposedly once was ...
We each need to become self responsible and get down to the basics of our spiritual connection to God and via that with each other so we can all begin again to live by the Golden Rule ...
Interesting and informative!
Please checkout this link
http://nirajpriya.blogspot.com/2008/05/truth-interesting-comparison-rise-in.html
You and many of the comments are also completely right about overpopulation having nothing to do with the slash & burn methods that are destroying the Amazon rain forests, or at least not the population of developing countries. Much of this type of "farming" is done to satisfy US or European needs, not local needs for food, etc. US fruit and other agricultural companies have controlled much of Central and South American policy since before 1900, even leading private armies into Nicaragua on many occasions. It isn't so easy to find this stuff in US history books, but luckily Ernesto Cardenal wrote poetry about it (With Walker in Nicaragua).
Thanks for the valuable post!
I take askance with James B's theory on this style of substance farming being for foreign benefits...how in hell can some poor farmers on 2-5 acres be farming for anything other than his own survival? Its a bit of a stretch to bring up the filibusters of the mid 19th century into this discussion too, never mind how his trite remark on US influence seems to have over the quasi socialists of much of Latin America....
Agrichar is made by burning biomass (typically biowaste) by means of pyrolysis. Adding AgriChar to the soil allows farmers to grow plenty of food for themselves and the local community and thus avoids slash-and-burn of further rainforest.
I agree with James that much rainforest has been cut as a result of companies seeking to grow monocultures such as soy, typically exported as livestock feed. Over time, such farming results in land degradation and decreasing crop yield, despite use of nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. In the end the land is typically used for low-density cattle farming. This is best avoided by implementing a framework of feebates. Additionally, we need international commitment to reduce emissions, backed up by the threat of tariffs on products from polluting nations.
Maybe the world environmental movement needs to go on strike. Maybe we just need to say, go ahead, destroy the planet. You have our phone number, give us a call when you realize you are not going to be happy with the results.