EARTH MEANDERS: The Rainforest Movement Is Dead… Long Live the Old Forest Revolution
By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk
Old forests including tropical rainforests [search] are the ultimate expression of life, evolution and ecology. Here untold co-evolved species and genetic diversity exist and interact with each other and their environment to provide ecosystem services – water, nutrient and energy cycling – required for a habitable Earth. All intact terrestrial, aquatic and marine ecosystems are important, yet rainforests are disproportionately so, given their tremendous species numbers and carbon stores. Few rainforest activists fully understand their ecological importance to continued being, or they would work only for full old forest protection and restoration.
When primary rainforests are lost, it is inevitable that local ecological and social conditions deteriorate, regional weather and species distributions deviate, and the global biosphere and its ability to maintain conditions for life are weakened. Rarely if ever do viable ecosystems remain to provide the same amount of ecological and development benefits as the intact standing old forests that were destroyed for the profit of the national and global elite. Virtually no one benefits from rainforest logging other than small numbers of loggers and “green logging apologists” who falsely say it can be done well.
The rainforest movement is dangerously underperforming. For some 25 years efforts made to reduce both rainforest deforestation and diminishment have achieved precious little. What started out as a grassroots movement to fully maintain intact rainforest ecosystems and societies has degenerated into a business based upon rhetoric suggesting that ancient rainforest cathedrals can and should be “sustainably” logged and otherwise brought into markets. By the same logic, if we just cut little pieces off the Mona-Lisa, this work of art remains intact too. Sadly, that is not how the biosphere, global ecology or art works. For these, truth and beauty lies largely in the whole.
In the 1990s, as a global ban on the tropical timber trade appeared possible, leading NGOs and foundations decided “certified” industrial first-time logging of primary forests could in fact save them. If just we log these tens of millions of year old ecosystems more carefully, we can have our money and old forests too. We now find ourselves in the position where there are not enough intact old rainforests to power the global ecosystem and meet local needs, yet virtually every conservation organization in the world espouses “certified, sustainable” logging of 500 year old trees found in primary and old-growth forests.
In general the existing political actors advocating for rainforests are more concerned with money than ecology – to fund bureaucratized NGOs, and to create a well-paying market for ancient timbers. The status quo rainforest movement engaged in such activities lacks a sense of urgency, and are playing it safe building empires, rather than responding with ecologically adequate policies to an emergency situation. There is little to suggest in the rainforest movement’s rhetoric that if we fail, and large intact, contiguous and connected expanses of primeval rainforest cease to exist; that the global Earth System will collapse. Yet this is exactly what is happening.
Rainforest loss and diminishment is simply scraping Earth of its life-giving mantle, meaning no amount of market driven rhetoric makes it less ecocidal. That’s why I and others think it is so important that the forest/environment/climate/ecological sustainability movement commit itself to ending primary forest logging and protecting and restoring old forests. Slogans like “protect and restore old forests” are so much more meaningful, and able to be easily elaborated upon, than certification’s talk of “well-managed, sustainable forest management”. Besides being more ecologically truthful, an emergent old forest revolution differs from the dying rainforest movement in the following ways.
RAINFORESTS NOT A BUSINESS, BEWARE OF MARKETS
Large, intact primary rainforests will only continue to exist to the extent they are kept out of global markets. The corporate market based rainforest campaign model continues to fail and is inappropriate, for both organizing the movement and proposing solutions. Rainforests have been here for tens of millions of years, capital markets for a few hundred. Those touting market campaigns that name and shame a company’s actions, while leaving the targeted company’s and society’s systematic context of over-exploitation and consumption of everything mostly unchallenged, are greenwashing the larger rainforest destroying mindset. Such market campaign victories are essentially useless as there is very little improvement in the state and condition of standing rainforests. Markets are based upon endless growth which can only destroy itself. The growth based industrial economic system is the greatest threat to rainforests, not in any manner their savior.
LOCAL LIVELIHOODS FROM STANDING FORESTS
It is critical that the old forest revolution get out and work with rainforest communities, to help find ways to improve lives from standing primary and regenerating forests. Many rainforest peoples now being pushed into industrial development of their rainforest legacy would very much like to maintain their forests intact, if only they could find alternative means to meet basic needs such as food, education and a road to carry local produce. We need a global old forest movement that links local advancement with protecting and restoring standing old forests over entire bioregions. Given business enterprises have become the primary cause of rainforest loss, this is going to require standing with rainforest dwellers in opposition to well-known rainforest destroyers. We must build local and global networked “people forest power”, while being willing to take to the forests to take revolutionary action.
OPENNESS, DIALOGUE AND COMMITMENT
Those espousing rainforest or any type of ecological policies have to be willing to defend them. Secrecy, lack of openness, and refusal to dialogue with critics has no place in an old forest revolution that is equally committed to justice, equity and sustainability. Many rainforest organizations entering their third decade of existence have shown they are unable to change with the times and revealed ecological knowledge. There needs to be mechanisms to allow these big NGOs to change strategies without necessarily considering their efforts to date as being a failure. And we all, myself included, would benefit from less polarization and long-time-ago personal vendettas. We must unite around ecologically sustainable, just and equitable rainforest solutions sufficient to keep old forests standing and expanding.
PROTECTING AND RESTORING OLD FORESTS
Having been a rainforest activist for over 20 years, I have concluded the rainforest movement is not radical, ambitious or well-enough ecologically informed to ever have even a chance of stopping the global growth machine from destroying rainforests and other old forests. What has and is being done is largely cosmetic, do-good tinkering that has little impact upon underlying trends. The old forest revolution needs to have an ecologically sufficient end-game – protecting and restoring old forests – while making sure funding is getting out there to live, work with and organize rainforest communities to make good livings from standing intact rainforests.
We must raise our game, and pursue strategies and tactics commensurate with the degree of the threat posed to our survival. Rainforest loss and diminishment is every bit as important as coal in causing climate and other global ecological changes. As such, rainforests are worthy of organizations and strategies that work exclusively on their behalf to end ancient forest logging and other industrial developments. And for those engaged in multiple issues, any environmental organization’s position upon old forests is a bellwether, indicative of the degree to which threats to global ecological sustainability have been adequately assessed and diagnosed.
Without old forests, being ends. It is unbecoming to a rainforest organization to hide from such a fundamental issue. The only rainforest movement worth having is one that works vigorously to end old forest logging and other industrial development. I am willing to debate anyone, anytime on these matters – and will continue to vigorously protest those unwilling to stop their old-forest greenwashing.
Comments
Dear Glenn,
hopefully you don’t lose the spirit to continue. We, Amazon Fund do our best. Just yesterday 28 Dutch Indigenous Rights NGO's had a meeting and decided to combine forces to support Indigenous people, who can be seen as the keepers of our rainforests.
For 2016, when the Olympics are held in Brazil, www.amazonfund.eu/olympic_brazil.html we have a big campaign planned. Hopefully you and many others will join this campaign.
Best wishes,
Fred Opdam
Chairman Amazon Fund (eu)
Posted by: Fred Opdam (Amazon Fund) | February 21, 2010 11:46 AM
Fantastic essay Dr Barry. You are completely correct. And the movie
Avatar brings this point home beautifully. I bet movie director James
Cameron could buy protection for much of the world's rainforests if he
wanted to by paying local governments to protect them. I would be
curious to know what you think of Prince Charles's efforts?? Is there
any forest protection organization anywhere in the world that is
trying to do as you suggest? What about Sting's Rainforest Foundation?
Haven't they advocated working with local peoples for many years?
Best,
Emily Fano
New York City
Posted by: Emily Fano | February 21, 2010 3:55 PM
EXCELLENT Feature! and underlining a CRITICAL renewed urgency for New Paradigms to make Forest Conservation much more effective than what is afforded by the current Movement. Inspiration for us at HEP to slide our Nepalese Forest Protection Action Initiative up the Projects priority list! Will be on the ground in Nepal next week so will be able to explore and analyse the most effective model via a Needs Analysis next week!
Thank you for this!
Posted by: Jonathan R Cort | February 21, 2010 3:56 PM
Good one, Glen. But super sad. I'll try to run it next time.
Iona
Posted by: Iona | February 21, 2010 4:48 PM
Hello Dr. Glen Barry thank you for your stewardship in the tropical rainforests.
I support you 100% and I too ! am fighting the Liberal govt in B.C. ,to stop liquidating the cedar and old growth forest in B.C., especially on Vancouver island, and recently joined a new group called the "Ancient Rainforest Alliance." to protect the last remaining old growth Coastal Temperate Rainforest
left on the island, between 80 -90 % of this forest type has been lost and it is sad, that all the other old growth dependant species will have to move on, or be lost too!
Thanks for your, efforts! and i wish you all the success in this new year.!
sincerely yours: John Prentice
P.S. we have a good thing in common! i too have been an environmental activists and conservationists for 25 plus years, my dad instilled in my heart at a early age from all or wilderness car camping trips in my youth, the appreciation for our wilderness, intact in the whole.
Posted by: John Prentice | February 21, 2010 4:50 PM
Sorry. Lost my job--outsourced. However, please include me when you want a signature to help save "old forests". I read your lengthy and elaborate essay--Bravo! So true! Best to you, Kathryn
Posted by: Kathnry | February 21, 2010 5:09 PM
The Role of Sacramental Plants in Sustainable Communities in the Western Amazon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpvoV6BKxis
Presented by Paulo Roberto Silva e Souza.
The Amazon rainforest is an ancient and highly diverse ecosystem that provides essential benefits for our entire planet and everything that lives on it, breathes air and depends on water. This ecosystem is being destroyed and its existence is being threatened by unthinking greed in the form of cattle ranchers, the agriculture industry, logging, and the infrastructure required for these encroachments. The talk tells the stories of three communities living in the forest in sustainable ways as stewards with respect and emerging understanding of natures principles using the spiritual teachings transmitted through the use of sacramental plants: the Yawanawa tribe and the Santo Daime communities in Ceu do Mapia and Ceu do Mar. The common thread through the talk is the necessity for the social expansion of environmental consciousness and the ways that this can be facilitated in the minds and hearts of people living in the style of the Western World with its focus on acquisition and domination.
Posted by: Greg Jalbert | February 21, 2010 6:31 PM
"Another example is the dramatic restoration of denuded rainforest in Borneo after only six years: “Planting finishes this year [2008], but already [Willie] Smits [the Indonesian forestry expert who led the replanting] and his team from the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation charity claim the forest is ‘mature’, with trees up to 35 metres high. Cloud cover has increased by 12 per cent, rainfall by a quarter, and temperatures have dropped 3-5°C, helping people and wildlife to thrive, says Smits. Nine species of primate have also returned, including the threatened orangutans. ‘If you walk there now, 116 bird species have found a place to live, there are more than 30 types of mammal, insects are there. The whole system is coming to life. I knew what I was trying to do, but the force of nature has totally surprised me. ... The place became the scene of an ecological miracle, a fairytale come true,’ says Smits, who has written a book about the project.”"
what's your take?
Posted by: Richard | February 22, 2010 12:05 AM
Definitely rainforest ecological restoration is possible and desirable. Alghout yu have a diminished forest genetically, biodiversity, and ecosystems; what you can do is essentially speed up natural succession, to get many of the canopy species which are important. A MAJOR influence on success is the adjacency and connectivity of protected forests as seed and wildlife sources. I am very well-versed on this topic, and am trying to make it part of the "protect and RESTORE old forests" message because we have already lost more than we can afford too.
gb
Posted by: Dr. Glen Barry
|
February 22, 2010 12:11 AM
Glen, what you write is chilling. In spite of all the education on the horrors of rainforest destruction ....it continues.
I suppose all politics is local. I wish there was a way to lead and implement a change in consciousness regarding monies being made from rainforests whether end products or farms. We do not learn from history and we are disconnected from the National Geographic view of the forests and putting decking in your back yard.
Oy!!! What do you suggest. Its an existential crisis; knowing and doing. The whole culture of addiction to rainforest wood has to be changed......
You, for one, have been doing yoeman's work. Without your efforts and a handful of people in the movement it would all be over for the forests.
Thank you and I will keep doing whatever I can do in my own small part of the world.
In solidarity,
georgina
Posted by: Georgina | February 22, 2010 8:41 AM
Dear Dr Barry - once again you have hit the nail on the head. The world has been deceived by people who have no appreciation or knowledge of what constitutes a rainforest and it has taken to "make" one. Politicians have no idea what an ancient woodland when they see one in Britain! It has taken and still does take us, a lot of effort to save even a small woodland of great diversity here. How can we hope to save a whole rainforest when the politicians elsewhere are as dumb.
Can you name those organisations who are out-of-touch with reality? I support Word Land Trust and the project in Sumatra that the British RSPB is undertaking (Harapan) and the WWF Heart of Borneo one.
Greer Hart, Glasgow Scotland - the Scottish Tree Trust
Posted by: Greer | February 22, 2010 8:43 AM
Hi Glenn,
The following part of your piece stood out to me.
"That’s why I and others think it is so important that the forest/environment/climate/ecological sustainability movement commit itself to ending primary forest logging and protecting and restoring old forests."
I would just like to make a couple of points on this. Firstly, and most importantly, I think that it is vital that all of us who consider ourselves to be part of the growing global environmental movement, see the issue of the devastating effects of human behaviour on the natural integrity of the earth, in a properly holistic way, whilst taking into account all those identifiable areas that make up the whole.
Ocean acidification caused by sulpher emissions from coal firewd power stations is threating planckton development, and thus the whole marine ecosystem which is also the basis of all life on land. In addition this sulpher is rained onto forests causing terrible damage to them.
The growing of soy is a major cause of deforestation, ninety seven percent of this soy grown as animal feed and not for human consumption. Tree farms also devastate old growth forests for food additives and energy provision.
All these things I know that you know. So what really is the issue for us? Is it any one of these issues, or the causes of them all? I would say the latter. If we can tackle the causes, we can affect the consequences. But we must do this as an increasingly recognisable global movement of activists for the earth.
My current area of activity is persuading the global environmental movement of the paramount necessity of moving to a vegan diet. To reduce GHG emissions, (it is now thought that as much as fifty one percent of these emissions are caused by the livestock industry who "process" fifty five billion animals a year) and to maintain integrity as activists. This is not a cruelty issue except for those who wish to address it that way, it is an issue of life and death for the planet, affecting deforestation, water depletion and degradation, GHG emissions and much else besides. It is also not a personal comment as I have no idea of your views on this issue.
To sum up, all the issues we address are part of one and the same thing. We must work together as well as separately, and recognise our common identities as activists for the earth. Only in this way have we a chance of succeeding.
Best Wishes,
Matt Clowes
www.veganfortheearth.net
Posted by: Matt Clowes | February 22, 2010 12:06 PM
Hello,
In New Zealand, Native Forest Action are very proud of the fact that logging
of old growth forest on Crown land was stopped completely in the 1990s
(thanks to a hard and long campaign). The region that the logging was
occurring in was paid out by the government to the tune of $92 000 000.
Certification of old growth logging is better than illegal logging, but
Native Frorest Action (New Zealand) and supporters acknowledge that it is
not ideal, and that illegal logs get through as well.
The Greens Party in NZ have been working to ensure that all old growth
timber (especially qwila for outdoor furniture and decking) comes from
certified sources. Maybe after that, pressure can be laid to end old growth
logging completely - ride on that day! Public perception has to change too
though - getting too much change all at once begs for a complete
turn-around, losing all that campaigns have ever put into place. The grass
roots level is one of the most important places, where interaction with
friends, and friends of friends, spreads the word that using old growth
timber in chique outdoor settings is not on.
Cheers,
Frida Inta,
Seddonville,
Buller,
West Coast,
South Island,
New Zealand.
Posted by: Frida Inta | February 22, 2010 2:29 PM
right on!
working to help contribute to such a movement (adequate to the need for an end-game).
rob
Posted by: rob | February 22, 2010 2:59 PM
Glen, have you ever thought about all the amazing work you could get done if you spent the same amount of time targeting the people destroying the rainforests as you do the people trying to save them?
Posted by: Veronica Martin | February 25, 2010 8:55 AM
Dear dr. Barry,
What you write is really inspiring and I genuinely have a lot of respect for what you're doing. It's sad to see that not everybody is like-minded. Imagine the world when that would be the case.
Best wishes.
Posted by: Kún | March 10, 2010 5:29 AM
Very nice essay, a true eye-opener. It seems that their are hundreds of activist groups yet their inspiring work comes up short time after time. I hope the future proves you wrong Dr. Barry...
Posted by: Marc | March 10, 2010 6:44 AM
Great blog, we need to do more things like this on a global level. If anyone is interested in Jobs in this area see http://www.cleantechjobs.de
Posted by: Thomas | March 11, 2010 11:43 AM
Glen, what you write is chilling. In spite of all the education on the horrors of rainforest destruction ....it continues.
I suppose all politics is local. I wish there was a way to lead and implement a change in consciousness regarding monies being made from rainforests whether end products or farms. We do not learn from history and we are disconnected from the National Geographic view of the forests and putting decking in your back yard.
Oy!!! What do you suggest. Its an existential crisis; knowing and doing. The whole culture of addiction to rainforest wood has to be changed......
You, for one, have been doing yoeman's work. Without your efforts and a handful of people in the movement it would all be over for the forests.
Thank you and I will keep doing whatever I can do in my own small part of the world.
In solidarity,
georgina
Posted by: Georgina | March 29, 2010 9:40 AM
Glen,
Well put.
These companies trying to push "sustainable logging" are so far beyond an ecologically aware mindset. I'm sure they don't realize, or care to hear, that damn near all logging is unsustainable - at least as it is currently practiced for the sake of greed.
Your message reaches me loud and clear. I agree it is beyond ignorance to cut 500 year old trees down and stamp them with a sustainable label. I'm glad to see you call it out for the scam it is.
As for the new tactics to fight deforestation...? I'll be thinking about that too.
Dave
Posted by: Dave | March 29, 2010 10:29 AM
Dear Dr. Berry,
I'm a student in an environmental monitoring/conservation mentoring program. I'm thrilled with your efforts and completely agree with you. Our rainforests are where Earth gets a significant amount of oxygen, and without oxygen, Earth in a sense will die. Our worldly addictions to exotic woods need to cease. Loggers log and fail to replant, thus, rainforests around the world are being diminished to mere farmland. Your message is concise and I agree that cutting down old forests is beyond ignorance.
Despite all the educational programs, such as "Life" on Discovery, showing the rich and vast diversity of rainforests and their delicate ecosystems, destruction sadly still continues.
Posted by: Sam | April 16, 2010 7:07 PM
Hi Dr. Berry, I am at a bit of a loss as to who to support that will be the most effective out of the given options. I would like to help funnel donations to a group, but how can I really know which is working? It seems like you are saying none of them are, but do you have any suggestions? I don't want to give up at this impasse...
Thanks:)
Posted by: Meghan | April 26, 2010 1:00 AM
Help save our old forest growth in Whistler BC.
Our Muncipality of Whistler BC has agreed to have old growth forest cut in Sept 9th 2010. They change the date because they have no permits but all the artea is being cut so we have no recourse.to have a say please help Whistler save the forest send your emails to the above email so we can let our Muncipality know it is not what the people want.
Posted by: Sonya McCarthy | September 2, 2010 1:33 AM