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Location: Bekasi, Jawa Barat, Indonesia

Friday, December 11, 2009

FOREST DESTRUCTION

Forest destruction, particularly in tropical forests, has increased rapidly in recent decades. Causes and dynamics differ in different regions. In the Amazon, cutting and burning forest for large-scale cattle ranching is the leading cause of deforestation. Colonization programs that bring poor and landless farmers from other areas also have an impact. But extraction of high-value tropical hardwoods such as mahogany often creates the first access to isolated areas. Deforestation follows the opening and paving of roads closely — the rate of increase in forest clearing from road building and road paving in the Amazon is now predictable (see the Institute for Environmental Research in the Amazon and Woods Hole Research Center’s paper on the Brazilian government infrastructure development program, Avança Brasil). Increased soy production is a new threat. In southeast Asia, commercial logging and clearance for plantations, as well as small farmer colonization are important. It is often assumed that increasing population forces the poor to clear forest in order to make a living. This is undoubtedly so in some areas, but much destruction is driven by uncontrolled resource pillage by powerful, often corrupt, elites, with little social benefit, and often with support from international financial institutions. (The Suharto government's distribution of logging concessions to family members and cronies is an example.) No accurate means exist to quantify the contributions of different activities to deforestation in most regions.
(From: http://www.edf.org/documents/2348_ForestDestruction.pdf)

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