1.2: Global Deforestation.

1.2.1: Deforestation by Country.

Oomans are increasingly scalping the Earth of its Forest cover. All over the world, deforestation is being carried out at a frighteningly fast rate, which is likely to have an increasingly significant impact on the global climate.[1]

Australia.

“Since the first settlements in Australia at the end of the 18thC about half of the original forests have been destroyed.”[2]; “When European settlers first arrived (in australia) in the mid-19thc there were approximately 200 million acres of forest. 150 years later, 100 million acres had been removed. A third of the original 160 million acres of scrubland was also wiped out.”[3]; “Japanese loggers are preparing to move in on almost all of Australia's remaining forests. At present approximately 20,000 hectares of Australian forest are logged every year. The one million hectares of forested land not currently protected in declared reserves would become ‘permanent production zones’.”[4]; “In the south-west corner of Western Australia lie the world’s last 125,000 ha of ancient karri and marri forests. Each year 2,000 ha are being clearfelled for woodchipping ...”[5]; "Australia is a country which in just 200 years of its existence has destroyed half of its forests and woodlands."[6]; (Early ooman colonizers decimated wildlife). “It is possible that early humans inflicted similar changes on vegetation.  .. fire has been a part of human culture for at least a million years. It may be that early humans created the barren centre of australia.”[7]

1.2.1: Deforestation by Country.

Oomans are increasingly scalping the Earth of its Forest cover. All over the world, deforestation is being carried out at a frighteningly fast rate, which is likely to have an increasingly significant impact on the global climate.[1]

Australia.

“Since the first settlements in Australia at the end of the 18thC about half of the original forests have been destroyed.”[2]; “When European settlers first arrived (in australia) in the mid-19thc there were approximately 200 million acres of forest. 150 years later, 100 million acres had been removed. A third of the original 160 million acres of scrubland was also wiped out.”[3]; “Japanese loggers are preparing to move in on almost all of Australia's remaining forests. At present approximately 20,000 hectares of Australian forest are logged every year. The one million hectares of forested land not currently protected in declared reserves would become ‘permanent production zones’.”[4]; “In the south-west corner of Western Australia lie the world’s last 125,000 ha of ancient karri and marri forests. Each year 2,000 ha are being clearfelled for woodchipping ...”[5]; "Australia is a country which in just 200 years of its existence has destroyed half of its forests and woodlands."[6]; (Early ooman colonizers decimated wildlife). “It is possible that early humans inflicted similar changes on vegetation.  .. fire has been a part of human culture for at least a million years. It may be that early humans created the barren centre of australia.”[7]

Bangladesh.

“All the primary rainforests in .. bangladesh .. have been destroyed already.”[8]

Bolivia.

"In Bolivia .. approximately 200,000 hectares of lowland forest are cleared annually by upland farmers attempting to establish permanent holdings, with cocoa as a principal crop. These farmers are driven into the forest by poverty ..."[9]

Brazil.

“The Brazilian Carajas project [is] one of the greatest man-made ecological disasters this century. All the evidence shows that an area of Amazonian rainforest larger than Europe has been deforested or flooded in the last 10 years partly to provide EC industry - including British Steel - with cheap ore.”[10]; “The Grande Carajas project in the north east of Brazil will affect one-sixth of the Brazilian Amazon (an area the size of Britain and France combined) with a series of plantations, ranches, mines and heavy industry. 11,500 square miles of forest will be cleared for cattle ranching and 21,000 square miles for plantations to grow export crops. A bauxite mine will produce 8 million tons a year (mainly for Japan) and the estimated 18 million tons of iron ore in the region (some of the highest grade left in the world) will form the basis for an iron-smelting industry. No pollution controls are planned and the smelters will be fuelled by cutting down the forest to make charcoal - an estimated 10 million acres every year.”[11]; “The urgent issue is how to check the worst fires in the region’s (brazil’s northern amazon rainforest) recent memory, which have eaten into a million hectares of highland savannah, an area the size of south-east england. Most of brazil’s fires have been started deliberately in the savannah country and spread to the forest. Local people have given up trying to control them and are pinning their hopes on rain.”[12]; “Burning and logging destroyed more rainforest in brazil in 1995 than in any previous year, according to figures released last week by the country’s national space research institute. The area lost, 29,059 square kilometres, was almost twice the area deforested in 1994. High rainfall reduced the damage in 1996 to 18,161 square kilometres, and the brazilian government expects the 1997 figure to be lower still, at around 13,000 square kilometres. But observers are sceptical of the claim ...”[13]; “The basis of president cardoso’s plan, known as ‘brazil action’, is the building of a massive trade infrastructure to expedite the exploitation of brazil’s natural resources. Brazil is moving quickly to privatize 39 of its national Forests ...”[14]; “Current estimates indicate that as much as 17 million hectares of tropical forests are being destroyed each year, with up to 6 million hectares alone of that destruction taking place in the brazilian amazon .. .”[15]

Brutland - see also England.

"Government figures show that England has over 960,000 hectares of woodlands and forests, equivalent to about 7% of the land surface. This compares with 10% for Great Britain ..."[16]; “Britain is one of the most deforested countries in the world in terms of natural forests. Native forests, which once covered 80% of Britain, have dwindled to about 1.5%. Virtually no primary Forest remains ...”[17]; .. “nearly half of the tiny amount of remaining ancient woodlands has been cleared since the 1940s and over the same period, 109,000 miles of hedgerow. More damage has been done to the British countryside in the last 50 years than in the previous 500, most of it by farmers of meat and dairy products.”[18]; “Over the past 50 years, some 45% of Britain's remaining semi-natural woodland has been cleared or replaced by plantations. Between 1978 and 1984, some 24,700 hectares of British deciduous woodland were destroyed and another 11,200 hectares underplanted with conifers.”[19]; “The u.k. has some 224 national nature reserves (nnr) which are owned, held by agreement or leased by the n.c.c. These cover about 160,000 hectares .. In addition there are nearly 5,000 ssis, covering over one and a half million hectares .. In short, the percentage of land in britain whose primary purpose is nature conservation is tiny.”[20]; .. “britain has the smallest proportion of forest by surface area of almost any country in the world, and its forests currently soak up only 2% of the nation’s CO₂ emissions.”[21]

Burkina Faso.

“Forests enable Soils to soak up rainfall but when Forests are razed rainwater runs straight off the land causing floods. The inability to retain any of this water eventually results in droughts, “In burkina faso, a landlocked country in western africa, drought has forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee rural areas to become low wage workers in the cities. According to peter sage, from amurt, the northern part of burkina faso has lost about 50% of its Forests due to deforestation: “When the Forest cover is lost, the land is no longer able to absorb the rainfall. The soil is exposed to warm winds from the sahara desert which gradually remove the topsoil.””[22]

Cambodia.

“Ongoing logging of Cambodia’s tropical forests, both legal and illegal, could leave that country deforested in only a few years. Until 1989, war-torn Cambodia possessed more intact forests than most other countries in Indochina. Now all four of Cambodia’s warring factions are earning fast money by selling off raw logs to neighbouring countries making timber Cambodia’s largest export item.”[23]; “So bad is the illegal logging (in cambodia) that in july 1994, a senior government official reported that cambodia’s forests could be eradicated within five years.”[24]

Cameroon.

“Cameroon has some 220,000 sq km of forest, roughly half of what it had a few decades ago.”[25]

Canada.

“In Canada, 14.6 million hectares of forestland have been cleared and converted to farmland since the arrival of the Europeans .. .”[26]; "The canadian boreal forest covers nearly 3.5 million square miles - almost the size of the Brazilian Amazon. Almost all of Canada's most productive forests are locked up in twenty year logging leases. Clearcutting, the method used on 90% of Canada's annual harvest, is devastatingly efficient. The remaining 10% of Canada's forests are the temperate rainforests of British Colombia. Over 250,000 hectares are cut every year. There are around 6 million hectares of temperate rainforest left in British Colombia."[27]; "A recent analysis of the forest-carbon balance in Canada has found that logging companies are cutting more than the net increase in forest biomass, thereby reducing the forest's capacity to absorb carbon. Exposed soil on clearcut land may decompose more rapidly, releasing yet more carbon."[28]; “The size of Canada's boreal forest is 1.5 million square miles (compared to brazil's amazon rainforest of 1.59 million square miles. The amount of forests cleared annually in canada is 5,500 square miles (compared to 15,900 square miles in the brazilian amazon).”[29]; In the james bay hydro-electric complex, “Over 10,000 square kilometres of Forests and river courses have disappeared beneath the reservoirs.”[30]; "Sixty per cent of Canadian forest has been 'clear-cut' since 1945 to provide timber and pulp for the paper industry, and replaced (if at all) with artificial monocultural plantations."[31]; “Canada is losing 200,000 ha of forest a year.”[32]

“The 1989 canada-u.s. trade agreement (custa) brought canadian forests under the discipline of binding international trade rules, creating a significant departure from the imperatives that guided past management practices. Deregulation, privatization of public resources, government subsidies, and liberalized trade have together given rise to a huge export-driven wood products industry.”[33]

Chile.

“According to the chilean bank’s natural accounts programme, if the government maintains its “business as usual” policies, logging will completely deplete the country’s native Forests by the year 2025.”[34]

China.

“In China .. it is estimated that natural Forests originally covered three quarters of the land. By the early 20thC Forests were restricted to the inaccessible and mountainous areas and now cover not much more than 5% of the country - about 50 million acres were deforested between 1950 and 1980.”[35]; “China has lost 3/4 of its forest.”[36]; “Three quarters of the land was once forested, now most has been destroyed, with 50 million acres deforested in the 30 years after the communist revolution in 1949 alone. Although 38 million ha. have been reforested since 1949, forest cover has still declined at a rate of 0.9% p.a.”[37]; Whilst a few million Trees were lost as a result of the storm in england in october 1987 .. “the fire of 1987 in china and the neighbouring soviet union destroyed around 5 million hectares over the same length of time (three weeks).”[38]; "Desertification is spreading at a rate of 1,000 sq. km annually. Each year, 5 billion metric tons of topsoil is washed away. 33% of the country's farmland has been lost in the past 40 years.”[39]; “China was once 75% forested, now most has been destroyed, with 50 million acres deforested in the 30 years after the Communist revolution in 1949 alone.”[40]

Colombia.

“In Colombia 350,000 hectares of forest are felled every year.”[41]; “There were 7,000 forest fires in 1997; they reached the outskirts of main cities such as Cali. This year El Nino is increasing the risk.”[42]

Costa Rica.

“Costa Rica was once almost completely cloaked in tropical forest. By 1983, after two decades of explosive growth in the cattle industry, pastures covered roughly half the nation’s arable land.”[43]; “At current rates of destruction, costa rica’s commercially productive forests will disappear over the next decade.”[44]; “The massive expansion of the banana industry and of heavily subsidized Cattle ranching (in costa rica) greatly facilitated the increase of exports. But the expansion took place at the cost of self-sufficient small scale agriculture and of the country’s Forest cover, which dropped from 50% in 1970 to 37% in 1987 and still further since.”[45]

Czechoslavakia.

“As the political upheavals in eastern Europe reveal the frightening extent of environmental pollution, the western world is quick to document the scale of the problem. Seventy per cent of Czechoslavakia’s forests are poisoned, and years of heavy industrial emissions have led to a life expectancy seven years lower than for people in Western European countries.”[46]

Dominican Republic.

“In the Dominican Republic, only 10% of the original forest remains.”[47]

Ecuador.

“In Ecuador 350,000 hectares of forest are felled every year.”[48]

El Salvador.

There has been an ecological calamity in El Salvador because of the civil war, “For a country that depends on firewood for 60% of all its energy needs, the deforestation of the country is a crisis far more profound than the carnage of the civil war. From the coastal mangrove swamps to the heights of the mountain cloud forests, virtually every vestige of El Salvador’s original ecology has been destroyed. The guerillas take refuge under forest cover so the military has tried to crush them by burning the forests down with phosphorus incendiary bombs and napalm.”[49]

England - see also Brutland.

"Government figures show that England has over 960,000 hectares of woodlands and forests, equivalent to about 7% of the land surface."[50]

Ethiopia.

“One hundred years ago in Ethiopia, 40% of the land could be classified as wooded; today only 3% can be designated that way.”[51]; “It was estimated before world war II that over 40% of ethiopia was Forested; now under 4% of the country is covered by Trees.”[52]

Ghana.

“Ghana’s forests consist almost only of forest reserves that have been so severely depleted of commercial species as not to be able to attract large foreign investors.”[53]; “The Forest Department of Ghana believes that in that country, where 80% of the forests have disappeared, only 15% of them were harvested before the land was cleared.”[54]

Guyana.

"Barama, a joint company formed by Korea's Sunkyong and Malaysia's Samling Timbers, has bought the rights to over 4,000,000 acres of forest (in Guyana) on the Venezualan border."[55]; “In 1989 only 2.4 m ha of Guyana’s 14 m ha of loggable forests were under exploitation but today contracts for more than 8 m ha have been signed and a further 4 m ha are in the pipeline.”[56]

Haiti.

“On haiti .. less than 10% of the original Forests remains.”[57]

Honduras.

“Having lost 34% of its pine and deciduous forest through logging between 1964 and 1990, Honduras is still continuing to destroy its native upland forests at the rate of 80,000 hectares each year.”[58]

India.

“India’s Forests have decreased by 50% since independence.”[59]; “By the end of the century India .. could be treeless.”[60]; “Official figures show huge forests emerging while the earth remains barren and degraded.”[61]; “In India, satellite pictures have shown that the country has been losing forests at the rate of 3.25 million acres a year. 45% of its land surface is officially classed as wasteland suitable for reforestation.”[62]; “Of India’s total waste land of nearly 160 million hectares, the share of degraded forest is about 40mha with a crown density of less than 20%.”[63]; "Continuous grazing not only suppresses all regeneration of trees but also reduces the productivity and the quality of the grasslands. In fact this is why vast tracts of India have today come to be called wastelands."[64]; “India, which once contained over 16 million hectares of forest, now has less than 700,000 hectares remaining.”[65]; “In the khaniara area of india’s himachal pradesh, nearly 1,000 small to medium sized slate mines have stripped up to 60% of the Forest cover .. ”[66]; “In India, for example, where forests can sustain an annual harvest of only 39 million metric tons of wood, the annual demand is for 133 million metric tons."[67]

Northern India.

“Cherrapunji, a town in northern india, receives the highest precipitation on the Planet - an astounding 1,000 inches of rain annually. But the people of this himalayan town often walk long distances to get drinking water, limit their baths to once a week and have trouble irrigating their crops. According to peter sage, from amurt, the northern part of burkina faso has lost about 50% of its Forests due to deforestation: “When the Forest cover is lost, the land is no longer able to absorb the rainfall. The soil is exposed to warm winds from the sahara desert which gradually remove the topsoil.” The paradoxical situation in cherrapunji - that the wettest place on Earth is becoming a desert - is also caused by deforestation. Growing road works, increasing population and the spread of modern education have led tribals to abandon belief in the Forest’s sacredness. Trees are disappearing at an alarming rate. As a result, cherrapunji now suffers drought like conditions. Without Forest protection, the rains scour away the soil, and the remaining limestone bedrock sheds water like an umbrella. in the dry season, villagers must walk far to collect drinking water from streams reduced to trickles.”[68]; “Soil erosion increases dramatically when Forest cover is removed, particularly on steep slopes and in hill districts. Soil erosion has direct effects on hydrological cycles and watersheds, increasing the siltation of lakes and reservoirs and downstream flooding. About 60 million hectares of india are now vulnerable to flooding; this is more than twice as much as 30 years ago, as deforestation has intensified.”[69]

Indonesia.

1982-83.

“Forest fires are nothing new to indonesia. During 1982-83, fires swept through 3.6 million hectares of kalimantan. Smoke shrouded the area for more than four weeks, and the cost in lost timber stocks was estimated at more than $5 billion.”[70]

1991.

“As a result of an unusually long drought, over 72,000 hectares of Forests and woodlands burnt in indonesia in fall 1991..”[71]; “Asia’s worst fires have engulfed more than 250,000 acres of tropical rain forest in indonesia. 74% of the 360 million acres of Indonesia’s sprawling archipeligo are covered by Rainforests. The fires appear to have begun in intensively logged places which are strewn with highly inflammable debris.”[72]

1997-98.

“Fire is a key traditional tool for land clearance in indonesia. In kailmantan up to 500,000 of the poorest households depend on shifting cultivation. Together these farmers burn between 300,000 and 500,000 hectares of mostly disturbed Forest .. each year on a rotational basis .. About a third of kalimantan and a quarter of sumatra is managed by timber companies, whose logging activities  dramatically increase the risk of fire. More than 500,000 hectares (of Tree plantations) were established in 1995, but the government hopes to see 2.3 million hectares established by 2000, most of which will be cleared by fire. It is this unprecedented demand for land - representing the aspirations of several million poor farmers, hundreds of logging and plantation companies and their employees, not to mention the oil and mining industries - coinciding with one of the most intense droughts on record, that has fanned the flames of this year’s fires in indonesia.”[73]; “The forests of indonesia are burning again. Last year’s conflagration was briefly doused by monsoon rains in december. But with the rains faltering early in the new year, the country’s farmers and plantation owners have wasted no time in resuming their torching of the world’s second largest region of rainforest. .. the fires in the el nino years of 1982 and 1983 burnt more forest than last year’s and yet produced much less smoke .. It was the burning of these peatbogs, rather than the overall extent of the fires, that led to the intense smoke in neighbouring countries. These massive stores of organic material can burn for years, producing much more smoke than a conventional forest fire.”[74]; “Meanwhile the indonesian government has acknowldeged losing a further 75,000 hectares of tropical forest this year, in new outbreaks which have cost the economy an estimated £2 billion. These and nearby sudden flare ups in nearby sarawak are not new fires: they are a continuation of last year’s disaster, which had been smouldering away in the peat on the forest floor during the rainy season and have broken out anew as the rain stopped. This burning season, officially still even to begin, looks likely to repeat or surpass the appalling record of 1997, which environmentalists consider the worst year yet for tropical forest fires. Almost all of them were set by man and made worse by logging practices and mismanagement of vital resources. Nigel dudley, who wrote a report on forest fires last year for the wwf, says: “El Nino has undoubtedly made a bad problem worse, and climate change appears to be making el nino more severe and more frequent so we have to do something.””[75]

“Indonesia contains the most rainforest after brazil and World bank officials estimate that the country is destroying about 2.4 million acres of forest a year. Indonesia's exports of timber products is the country's major earner after oil and gas. Last year, Indonesia exported about one million cubic metres (10.7 million cubic feet) of hardwood plywood to the US. One of the major users of tropical plywood (known as meranti) in Los Angeles is the entertainment industry which consumes approximately 250,000 sheets of rainforest plywood every year. While several independent producers have started using alternatives, no major studios have as yet switched over to existing alternatives.”[76]; “Fao studies suggest that the country was being deforested at a rate of 5,500 square kilomeres by 1980 and 7,000 by the mid-1980s. According to norman myers, the figure now stands at around 12,000 square kilometres per year. This is more Forest than is being destroyed in any other single country except brazil.”[77]; “In Indonesia, the country with the second greatest extent of tropical Forests in the world, vanishing at the rate of some 1.2 million hectares a year, no fewer than 305,370 square kilometres - 16% of all the country’s Forests - are slated for clearance.”[78]; “Indonesia’s minister of forestry admitted there were only 113m ha of natural Forest cover left in indonesia, as opposed to earlier claims of 141mha.”[79]; “One million families are clearing about half a hectare of Indonesia’s forests apiece every year; they have already turned some 16 million hectares of former forests into a useless wasteland.”[80]; “Indonesia’s forgotten fires, which burnt on the island of borneo as the country’s economic and political systems went into meltdown this year, destroyed 30,000 square kilometres of forest - an area the size of belgium. This is almost six times the extent of previous official estimates, and bigger than the area burnt on the island during last summer’s heavily publicized fires. Some coal seams and peat bogs are still burning underground.”[81]

Indonesian Borneo.

“Loggers have torn through a `natural laboratory' the size of the Isle of Wight, wrecking the efforts of international researchers to monitor tropical peat-swamp forests. The broken forest is criss-crossed by ramshackle wooden railways and canals, installed by the loggers as they push ever deeper into the swamp. Welcome to Central Kalimantan, the most remote province in Indonesian Borneo. It's the size of England with a population less than that of Essex and the local phone book lists six times as many sawmills as taxi firms. Why should we on the other side of the world really care? The answer is the peat-swamps' role in slowing global warming. They are soaking up carbon dioxide - the gas that causes global warming - as effectively as they soak up water. They also hold masses of carbon that will swill right back into the atmosphere if they are destroyed. A square kilometre of swamp contains as much carbon as is emitted each year by pollution from a city of 100,000 people. The swamps may hold more carbon than the world's fossil fuel burning emits in four years. A loss of five centimetres a year from the peat layer will release more than 100 million tonnes of carbon a year into the atmosphere. Despite the ravages of forest fires 18 months ago, Central Kalimantan is still the most heavily forested part of Borneo. Many of the forests sit on top of the largest, oldest and deepest tropical peat-swamps in the world, covering an area a quarter the size of England. Once, this boggy terrain was ignored. But the nine months since the Indonesian economy went into free-fall have seen an orgy of illegal logging. `There appears to be a conspiracy in Central Kalimantan to extract all the saleable timber as quickly as possible,' says Rieley. Mafia-style organisations are shipping in thousands of unemployed men from neighbouring islands. `Groups of up to 200 men are living in small sections of the forest, felling trees,' says Rieley. The tropical peat-swamps are small compared with the great peat-swamp wastes of northern Canada or Siberia. But they are ecologically very different. Cold-land peat is made from moss; tropical peat is made from forest debris that cannot decompose in the stagnant swamp water and is thick with bits of ancient wood. At least half of the world's tropical peat-swamps are in Indonesia. And, with the eclipse of many of President Suharto's cronies who ran the old legal concessions, a new generation of mafia-style operators is in charge. The formation of tropical peat-swamps may have trapped enough carbon to help trigger ice ages. To release that carbon now, as the world struggles to counter global warming, seems folly indeed.” (Fred Pearce ‘Borneo's chainsaw massacre’ Guardian 18.2.99 p.8).

Iran.

The Gareh Bygone Plain, a 6000-hectare sandy desert in southern Iran ... had been covered with wild almond, wild pistachio, a close relative of Christ’s thorn and a few associated species prior to the 1950s. The “jungle” provided a tranquil haven for herds of gazelles and flocks of hubara bustards, see partridges, black-bellied sand grouses and many more bird species. The advent of the farm tractor and Willy’s Jeep changed the picture completely. Systematic clear cutting of the scrubland for conversion to farms, and the wholesale hunting of the gazelles and hubara bustards while riding in Jeeps, left a denuded expanse reminiscent of a lunar landscape.”[82]

Ivory Coast.

Aside from highly depleted Forest reserves .. “there will soon be no significant forested areas left in .. Cote d’Ivoire.”[83]; “The Ivory Coast, where forest cover has decreased by 76% since 1960.”[84]; “When the ivory coast in the two decades following independence sacrificed much of its natural treasures to the production of cash crops, and other export commodities, the young nation became a hero of the international banking community. Well, soon enough, the party was over. What has remained are skyscrapers, fancy hotels and an élite habituated to western consumption styles, but otherwise widespread destitution, a devastated natural environment and political instability. Neighbouring ghana is going down the same track.”[85]; “The Philippines and Cote d’Ivoire have lost their once luxuriant stands of tropical hardwoods .. ”[86]

Japan.

During the second world war the allies managed to reduce japan’s oil supplies to a trickle and this forced the japanese government to log most of the country’s timber to provide an alternative fuel supply. The japanese have not forgotten this lesson. The extensive Tree cover which now exists in japan has more to do with military considerations than it does with a national love of Forests, “Nearly three quarters of Japan’s land shelters beneath forests of pine, cedar and beech.”[87]

Liberia.

Aside from highly depleted Forest reserves, “there will soon be no significant forested areas left in .. Liberia.”[88]

Madagascar.

"Over the past decades, Madagascar has lost more than four-fifths of its rainforest to land clearance for cattle rangeland, cropland, timber and fuel-wood."[89]; “According to the unfao, in the 1980s .. madagascar lost 11% (of its Forests).”[90]; Madagascar .. “where the greater part of the tropical rainforest has been cleared for farming.”[91]

Malaysia.

Peninsula Malaysia.

“Around 1945, peninsula malaysia was 70-80% forested. Today the Trees are mostly gone. The result is escalating soil erosion, the fall of the water table in many areas, and a general increase in droughts and floods. The malaysian states of sarawak and sabah are being stripped so rapidly by tnvs that in a few years all but the most inaccessible Forests will be destroyed ...”[92]; “Peninsula malaysia was 70-80% forested 50 years ago. Today, mainly because of the export trade, it has been largely deforested.”[93]; “Peninsula malaysia was 70-80% forested 50 years ago. Today, mainly because of the export trade, it has been largely deforested.”[94]

Sarawak.

“At current rates of logging the whole of Sarawak will be denuded by 1997.”[95];

Sabah.

“The malaysian state of sabah - in north borneo - by 1990 virtually nothing remained of the once endless sea of leaves and branches.”[96]

Malaysian Federation.

“At the turn of the century, the area now covered by the federation of malaysia had nearly 320,000 sq.km (125,000 sq miles) of Forest. In 1950 the majority of the country was still forested. By 1989 only 80,000 sq.km (over 30,000 sq miles) of virgin Forest remained.”[97]

Mali.

“In mali about 40 million pastoral animals forage on whatever greens they can find. The ensuing deforestation has caused droughts and desertification problems; groundwater levels have sunk as much as 75 feet and are contuining to sink.”[98]

Mexico.

“According to the unfao, in the 1980s mexico lost 18% of its forest ...”[99]; “In september 1988, hurricane gilbert swept aross over 1 million hectares of tropical Forest in mexico’s yucatan peninsula. .. the volume of combustible fuel created by the debris increased the risk of wildfire. During the following year, over 120,000 ha of mexico’s largest area of tropical Forest burned.”[100]; “The climate phenomenon known as el nino has contributed to the worst drought in memory. Combined with negligence and - in some cases - arson, it has made 1998 the worst year for fires since records began. In the first five months, there were more than 10,000 fires covering almost 1 million acreas. Mexico, one of the three most biodiverse countries in the world, has already lost more than 95% of its tropical forest. The mountainous 1.5 million acres of the chimalapas are among the few remaining pockets. What no one can explain is how fires began in remote jungle, as much as a week’s walking from the nearest communities.”[101]; “It’s now against the law to chop down a tree in mexico city: Trees, a counter to air pollution, covered 21% of the city in 1950 but only 2% now.”[102]

Nepal.

“Nepal has lost perhaps half of its forests during the last 20 years.”[103]; In the terai region of nepal .. “dense forest with malaria ridden marshlands served to deter human settlement until after world war II - where upon medical teams, with ddt sprays, made short work of the malarial mosquitoes and there followed a rush to occupy the area. As a result the forests were speedily felled ..”[104]; “Cherrapunjee, one of the wettest spots on Earth and once covered with lush Forests, is today a virtual desert, with practically no topsoil on its barren hillsides.”[105]; “Nepal is believed to have lost 2.7 hectares of woodland between 1964 and 1975 alone, and total forest cover has declined from 57% to around 23% in 1980.”[106]

New Zealand.

“When New Zealand officially became part of the British empire in 1840, over half the country was forested. By the 1980s half the country’s virgin natural forests had been destroyed.”[107]; “In 1840, when the first big wave of white settlers reached New Zealand, 53% of the country was forested. Now the area is only 23%, much of it logged over secondary growth.”[108]

Nicaragua.

“The situation is even worse in nicaragua .. The country has lost nearly 60% of its forest cover in the last fifty years.”[109]

Nigeria.

“In Nigeria, forest reserves .. are practically the only forests left in the country today. .. deforestation continues at the rate of 350-400 square miles a year and mainly affects forest reserves.”[110]; “In Nigeria 400,000 hectares a year were deforested in the 1980s ..”[111]

Pakistan.

“What is now the Thar desert in Rajasthan and the Punjab, an area extending over about 100,000 square miles, was still an impenetrable jungle 2,000 years ago.”[112]

Papua New Guinea.

"Japan imports more than 60% of all Papua New Guinea's exports and Japanese controlled companies are responsible for more than one million of the 1,900,000 hectares of forest presently being logged. Barnett (the author of a Papua New Guinea government inquiry into logging) found that subsidiaries of Mitsubishi and Nissho Iwai - were involved in widespread bribery, transfer pricing (secretly transferring logging profits to offshore banks), false declarations of tree species, illegal logging, cheating landowners and dodgy accounting. Mitsubishi made nearly £900,000 on under-priced timber from United Timbers, a company wholly owned by Mitsubishi. In 1989, Stettin Bay Lumber Company, a subsidiary of Nissho Iwai, was found to have been logging in West New Britain for seven years, "on no legal basis whatsoever, exporting 240,000 cubic metres of raw logs and 40,000 cubic metres of sawn wood a year. Japan plays a leading role in rainforest destruction, consuming over 35% of tropical timber worldwide. In 1987, 96% Japan's timber came from Sarawak, Sabah, and Papua New Guinea."[113]

Peru.

“In Peru 300,000 hectares of forest are felled every year.”[114]; “American Drug enforcement agencies are spraying 50,000 acres of peru with biocides to stop the drugs trade.”[115]; 200,000 hectares of the peruvian amazon (have been turned into) the herbicide poisoned heartland of the world's cocaine industry. Secret cocaine laboratories in the jungle spilled millions of gallons of kerosene, sulphuric acid, acetone, and toluene into the valley's watersheds."[116]; “In peru, the government has made huge investments in the amazon since the fifties to establish a Cattle herd of 228,000 that today produces about 9,000 tons of meat annually, 5.7% of the nation’s total consumption. During this process, more than 8.5 million hectares of Forest have been replaced by marginally productive agriculture and grasslands, most of which has now been abandoned.”[117]; “Between 1979 and 1987, peruvian cocaine producers cleared some 180,000 hectares, about one-tenth of the deforestation during that period.”[118]

Philippines.

.. “in the early 1980s the philippines government claimed that 58% of its land was covered by tropical forest, but satellite imagery showed the true figure to be nearer 38%.”[119]; “In 1934, more than 17 million hectares, or 57% of the entire land area, was forested, with virgin forests covering about 11 million hectares. Today .. it is estimated that only 6.5 million hectares of forest remain covering a mere 21.5% of the country. According to some reports, less than 800,000 hectares of this is old growth.”[120]; “The Philippines and Cote d’Ivoire have lost their once luxuriant stands of tropical hardwoods .. ”[121]

Negros.

“In the philippines, the island of negros - once a carpet of Forests - is now little more than a vast sugar estate. Meanwhile, those who previously farmed the land have been forced to clear upland Forests, which are currently being lost at the rate of more than 20,000 hectares a year.”[122]

Russia.

“Dr Norman Myers observes that as much as 400 billion tons of carbon could be sequestered in the 4.3 million square miles (three Europes) of boreal forest, and these are being logged and burnt apace. Some 70% of these forests are in Siberia, where logging has reached 15,500 square miles per year, and where some 4,000 square miles are being eliminated in forest fires each year.”[123]; “The logging companies have now set their sights on Russia which contains 95% of the timber reserves of the former Soviet Union and 42% of the world’s temperate forests. Several multinational timber companies including mitsubishi of japan and hyundai of south korea are already active in Russia.”[124]; "Weyerhaeuser Timber Company of Seattle is nearing a joint venture agreement with Lesoidom, the Russian Far East Timber Company, to log 360,000 hectares (890,000 acres) of the Botcha River Basin area of the primorsky krai. Weyerhaeuser has already built a large loading dock near the city of khabarovsk in anticipation of the agreement, which would yield 415,000 cubic meters annually."[125]; “Forest fires as large as those that have been burning in indonesia or brazil over the past 18 months are raging out of control in the far east of russia. Since april, fire has consumed two million hectares in the khabarovsk district on the pacific coast and on the island of sakhalin, and is still spreading.”[126]

Rwanda.

After the Rwandan civil war, "The two million returnees must live somewhere: 600,000 cattle farmers with more than 700,000 cattle are waiting in transit camps to be allotted parts of Akagera national Park, a former hunting park in the east. The remains of the vast Gishwati forest - mostly felled in a disasterous World Bank project in the 1980s - will almost certainly be cut to make more room. Politicians also have their eyes on remnants of forests in the south."[127]

Slovakia.

“Slovakia, the eastern part of the former Czechoslavakia, covers 49,000 square kilometres with about 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of forest .. Slovakia currently logs over 4.5 million cubic metres of wood (1.9 MMBF), exporting about 5%. Under the world bank loan proposal, logging would increase to between 9 and 13 million cubic meters (3.8 to 5.5 MMBF) annually, rapidly depleting Slovak forests.”[128]

Solomon Islands.

“If logging continues at the present accelerated rate, it is estimated that all viable forests in the Solomon Islands will be gone in eight to fifteen years. The volume of logs exported from the Solomon Islands has almost doubled in ony the last two years, going from 302,000m³ to 591,000m³ in 1993. Japan and South Korea are the number one and number two log importers, responsible for up to 90% of the timber that leaves the Solomons.”[129]

Somalia.

“A history of rapid population growth has hit that country hard (somalia) as its soils are heavily eroded, and overgrazed and its Forests are mostly gone, with deforestation so severe that even fuelwood is scarce in many areas.”[130]; “About 60 per cent of Somalia’s population are nomads and their dependence on pasture land is obvious. Most Somalis depend on livestock for their livelihoods and for food. Livestock depends on plants. If the current rate of desertification is not stopped, plants, livestock and humans will die together and there will be little life left on the land for many generations to come. Hundreds of square kilometres are cleared every month by the charcoal industry. This results in hundreds of square kilometres of burned land that no longer hosts any life.”[131]

Sri Lanka.

“All the primary rainforests in .. sri lanka .. have been destroyed already.”[132]

Taiwan.

“In the case of taiwan .. forests have been cleared to accommodate industrial and residential developments and plantations of fast-growing conifers. The virgin broadleaf forests that once covered the entire eastern coast have now been almost completely destroyed. The vast network of roads built to open up the forests to logging, agriculture and development, has caused serious soil erosion, especially in the mountain areas where whole slopes of bare soil slid away.”[133]

Thailand.

Prior to the 20thC Thailand was .. “three-quarters forested, and at the time of the Second world war, two-thirds. Since the 1950s, however, forest cover has declined rapidly, and now stands at perhaps 15%.”[134]; “The existing forest area in Thailand is less than 30% of the total land area and most of the forest is protected. Thailand has set a target of maintaining 40% of its total area of forest. Of this, 25% would be conserved forests and the remaining economic forests.”[135]; "In Thailand .. there are 8 million landless people, a proportion of whom are attempting to establish usufructuary rights (rights to use the forest short of degradation or waste) within the government forest estate. The people have few resources for investment, and consequently the planting of sago is widespread, for it requires low capital. Yet, without adequate inputs, sago exhausts soils within four to five years, and the people are forced to move further into the forest, leaving unproductive grassland behind."[136]

United States of America.

“In 1790 .. forests covered about one million miles of the united states. By 1990 about 6% was left.”[137]; “The united states has lost 1/3 of its Forest cover and 85% of its primary Forest.”[138]; “More than one million acres a year are being brutally clearcut. In the process, 360,000 miles of roads have been built in the Forests. No other government or government agency in the world is responsible for such a huge road system. Over $2 billion a year in taxpayers' money is spent building and maintaining logging roads and cleaning up after logging operations.”[139]; "From the establishment of the first permanent english colony at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, the first two centuries of our country's history were a time of widespread environmental destruction. The great forests of the north east were leveled within a few generations, and soon after the civil war in the 1860s, loggers began deforesting the midwest at an appalling rate. Within 40 years they deforested an area the size of europe, stripping minnesota, michigan, and wisconsin of virgin Forest."[140]; “Today the country (u.s.a.) has 728 million forest acres, with the total continuing to expand annually. The current total is less than the estimated 950 million wooded acres that existed in precolonial times, but it represents only a 23% overall north american forest reduction from the arrival of europeans to the present - hardly the drastic devastation depicted by environmental orthodoxy.”[141]; “The worst case estimate for logging harm to u.s. Forests in the past decade is four million to seven million acres damaged. That sounds like a horrifying expanse until you add that the united states has 728 million forested acres.”[142]; “Temperate north america, which was wooded from the atlantic coast as far west as the mississippi river when the first europeans arrived, lost more woodland in the following 200 years than europe had in the previous 2,000.”[143]; .. “Trees are sick and dying everywhere in the united states. If this seems to be an extreme statement, this book (‘The Dying of the Trees: The Pandemic in America’s Forests by Charles E Little) will convince you otherwise. ‘The Dying of the Trees’ gives a detailed picture of sick and dying Trees. In new england, new york, north carolina, tennessee, georgia, ohio, indiana and kentucky, it is a combination of acid rain and clearcuts. In california, it is killer smog. In arizona and new mexico, it is excessive ultra-violet light filtering through the Earth’s damaged ozone shield. In other places, it is pesticides, or toxic heavy metals released by burning coal and oil. In alaska and florida, it is rising temperatures and rising sea levels from global warming. In colorado, oregon and washington, it is destructive forestry practices, such as clear cutting and fire suppression, that leaves forests weakened, unable to withstand extremes of weather or attacks by insects and fungi.”[144]; “The total amount of forest cleared in the US for grazing or the production of fodder is 260 million acres.”[145]; “Without question the u.s. logging industry has led the way in using the government to scuttle what paltry international efforts there have been to forge an agreement to protect world forests. The timber salvage rider, passed on april 7th, aimed to expand logging an additional six billion board feet of wood over the next two years, nearly double the amount planned by the Forest service. It suspended all laws applicable to logging on National Forests, including the Endangered Species act, the clean air act, the clean water act, and the national Forest management act.”[146]

Alaska.

“The spruce bark beetle .. killed a staggering 30 million trees in alaska during 1996, creating one of the state’s worst ecological disasters.”[147]

Texas.

“A hundred years ago, (loggers) poured into southeastern Texas from the louisiana border to the gulf of mexico. That land (now) devoid of trees as a desert is their handiwork. At the turn of the century it boasted magnificent forests. Oaks and cypresses dominated river valleys, and pines ruled the uplands.”[148]

Vietnam.

“American forces and their allies dropped more than 12 million gallons of Agent Orange during the Vietnam war in a bid to deny communist forest sanctuary and food. Their aircraft systematically sprayed more than 6,500 square miles of south and central Vietnam.”[149]; “According to .. Ed Milner, as a result of the war the country (Vietnam) lost over three-quarters of its forest cover, some fifty million acres of forest, mainly due to the American air force spraying defoliants like Agent Orange.”[150]; “The Vietnamese are razing 200,000 hectares of tropical forest each year for export to Thailand and Japan.”[151]

Zaire.

.. “in Zaire 347,000 hectares per year.”[152]

Zimbabwe.

“Some 80,000 hectares of Zimbabwean land was deforested annually during the eighties and that trend is expected to continue.”[153]