MONOCULTURE
FORESTRY
A Critique from an Ecological
Perspective
"The people had already sowed their
rice, their corn, their plantains, their
yucca. They had everything, and Ston
Forestry and its large tractors came with
large machinery and wiped out the rice
fields, the milpas (traditional
agricultural systems), all was levelled to
sow melina trees
.
It was a horrible thing,
it was the drop that filled the glass
...."
Costa Rican Farmer, 1991, from van den
Hombergh, 1999.
The Development of Plantations
The current western concept of
monocultures of tree species developed in
Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries,
triggered by the shortage of timber caused
by the reduction of forest cover. From the
beginning, the aim was to simplify the
structure and speed up the cycles of
natural ecosystems with the objective of
producing wood in as little time as
possible and, technically, in the simplest
manner.
Monocultures of tree species are
characterized by their uniformity. The
production of the greatest quantity of
timber (for wood, energy or construction)
in the shortest time and cheapest way
possible forms their sole objective. In
some cases, this can involve the joint
cultivation of various species, but it
always involves cultivating many individual
trees of the same age, and plantations
never reach the level of biodiversity and
complexity of a "natural" forest.
Like other agricultural monocultures,
tree plantations have undergone intensive
technical development over the last
decades. Monoculture forestry is currently
an activity that depends upon high inputs
of energy, fertilizer and pesticides.
Likewise, for technological reasons, the
areas established in one single operation
have increased, leading to a number of
cases in which plantations cover hundreds
of thousands of hectares.
Tree plantations have little in common
with forests, except for the fact that both
include trees. However, there has always
been a tendency to treat forests and
plantations as synonymous, and the act of
establishing a plantation is commonly
considered "reforestation". Generally, the
establishment of tree plantations is viewed
as intrinsically good and beneficial for
the environment and society. This is
certainly not true in the majority of
cases.
When the concept and practice of tree
monocultures was exported from Europe to
tropical regions, this situation worsened.
Basically, the tremendous biodiversity and
complexity of interactions characterizing a
tropical forest mean that this ecosystem
differs even more from a tree monoculture
than does a temperate zone forest.
It is estimated that between 1959 and
1985, a total of almost 17 million hectares
was planted in the tropics. In the 1980s,
the rate of establishment of tree
plantations in the tropics increased to
between two and four million hectares per
year. Due to mistaken concepts and policies
(in many cases generated by the confusion
caused by the term "reforestation"), many
tree plantations were established to the
detriment of original forests and/or caused
negative impacts at the ecological and
social levels.
In the past two decades, the paper
industry has also increased its demand for
raw material, and monoculture tree
plantations have been transferred from
regions with temperate climates to tropical
regions where productivity is higher. Due
to fiscal incentives and cheaper labor in
impoverished tropical countries, the
production costs are also considerably
lower in these regions. As a consequence,
social and ecological problems have
intensified.
New and Dirty Developments
Moreover, a new niche in the market
threatens to give a new and substantial
financial impetus to monoculture tree
plantations. It concerns the so-called
Clean Development Mechanism, and
specifically the financial incentives to
establish carbon sinks
as described
in the Kyoto Protocol.
These Kyoto mechanisms are the result of
a "damage control" strategy based on the
claim that carbon sinks are an effective
way to address climate change. In addition
to being unproven, this claim mistakes the
problem as one of how to "hide" the
released carbon rather than one of how to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions, especially
those of industrialized countries.
So-called sinks serve as a smokescreen
concealing the fact that the search for and
implementation of real solutions to the
problem of climate change are being
avoided. These Kyoto mechanisms have
breathed new life into the idea of tree
monocultures, and are likely to intensify
the problems caused by plantations.
Social and Environmental Impacts
The negative social effects of
monoculture tree plantations include not
only direct impacts, caused by the
transformation of land tenure and the
impoverishment of resources, but also
indirect impacts. These are caused by the
fact that the resources invested in
monoculture plantations are thereby
withheld from forestry production models
which are better adapted to natural
ecosystems and which follow the patterns
elaborated through traditional knowledge,
sometimes accumulated over thousands of
years, of peoples and communities.
Society in its entirety has been
misinformed about the difference between a
monoculture tree plantation and a forest.
Misinformation and lack of knowledge have
forced entire regions to accept tree
plantation models developed at other
latitudes. In many cases, individuals and
communities have opposed plantations as
being inappropriate and aggressive. In
other cases, a large amount of resources
has been wasted on models that, in the end,
have not led to the expected results. Such
is the case in Costa Rica, especially in
the Huetar Norte region, where the species
sown have continuously changed in accord
with different fashions during most of the
past 20 years, and one try after another
has failed. During this period, tens of
millions of dollars have been invested in
monoculture plantations. Nowadays, more
than 70 percent of these plantations are in
bad shape or have not produced the expected
results.
Tree plantation projects often promote a
change in land tenure, modifications in
agricultural structures based upon small
and medium-scale producers, and the
displacement of communities. Displaced
families have to look for new opportunities
in other areas, and they may end up cutting
primary forests or increasing urban
problems in the misery zones around large
cities. The Ston Forestry company’s
activities in the south of Costa Rica
provide an example: despite strong
opposition, this company displaced at least
300 families from almost 14,000 hectares in
order to sow Gmelina tree monocultures.
In many cases, contemporary forestry
development projects based upon tree
monocultures were developed by technicians,
persons alienated from the ecological,
social and cultural reality of the site.
Companies arrive with aggressive policies
to achieve economic goals without any
attempt to understand the region’s history,
culture or even more basic issues like the
state of land tenure. At the same time, due
to the pressure of monocultures, much
tradition and knowledge has been lost. An
example is the case of the Maleku people in
the north of Costa Rica. In this zone, some
40,000 hectares of tree plantations have
been sown in the last decades. Some 90
percent of these plantations have benefited
from state forestry subsidies. However, not
a penny was spent to help the Maleku people
to recuperate the
mastate
, a tree
which disappeared due to the pressure of
deforestation, and which formed the basis
for this people’s industry of
tapetes
and other crafts.
Finally, the biological diversity of a
monoculture plantation is a lot lower than
that of a natural forest. In many cases,
tree plantations have replaced natural
forest, and in other cases, tree
plantations have affected or have been
established to the detriment of other
ecosystems of great importance for
biodiversity conservation, such as tropical
wetlands. Furthermore, there is evidence
that fast-growing trees have an extractive
effect upon soil fertility and that they
tend to impoverish the soil and unbalance
its structure.
A dangerous lie
|
It is true that wood consists of
carbon molecules, and that a
plantation should absorb or "fix" a
certain volume of CO2 during its
growing stages. There is a tremendous
difference, however, between a carbon
deposit in the ground (an oil or coal
bank) and a tree plantation exposed
to the atmosphere. Some of the most
relevant aspects of this discussion
include:
-
The difference between mineral
carbon accumulated in geological
deposits and carbon in a plantation
is that aboveground carbon can be
absorbed into the atmosphere at any
moment. In fact, the majority of
current plantations are based upon
monocultures of fast-growing
softwood species, and in many cases
the wood of these species is used
as fibre for papermaking. This type
of wood, and the paper or cardboard
produced from it, decomposes
rapidly, releasing CO2 and other
gases which contribute to the
greenhouse effect. Likewise, the
wood is subject to accidental fires
through which the accumulated
carbon can be released.
-
The establishment of
plantations leads directly and
indirectly to processes that
release CO2 and other greenhouse
gases. The displacement of farmers
and communities, for example,
favours deforestation in other
areas. Likewise, the desiccation of
wetlands and other hydrological
changes lead to increased frequency
and intensity of wildfires.
-
The costs of presumed carbon
fixation through plantations are
popularly supposed to be far less
than the costs of a true reduction
of emissions. This is why the
interest, especially by business,
in plantations as carbon sinks is
so great.
|
Ecological Debt by Sinks
Ethically, the concept of tree
plantations as carbon sinks embodies a
major fallacy through which certain
companies and governments are proposing to
avoid their responsibility to the future of
humanity. Climate change, which is widely
recognized as one of the greatest threats
to life and the ecological equilibrium of
our planet, is turning into a new market
niche -- a market niche in which reducing
the costs of capturing a metric ton of
carbon has become more important than the
reduction of the greenhouse effect.
Corporations and industrialized
countries should reduce greenhouse gases in
a direct manner. Moreover, they should
phase out the massive transport of oil and
coal from underground deposits to the
atmosphere.
At the same time, there is an urgent
need to invest in the restoration and
conservation of forest areas all over the
world --forest areas which complement the
economies of local communities, which serve
as a protection and buffer against
disasters, and which guarantee the
conservation of biodiversity. Investment in
ecological restoration should come from the
industrialized world in the form of a
payment of the ecological debt, a debt that
has accumulated through more than five
centuries of unilateral exploitation and
destruction of the resources that we all
share and need.
The costs of damages that have already
occurred in disasters like Hurricane Mitch
in Central America or the rains that hit
Venezuela at the turn of the century are
greater than the resources needed to tackle
climate change. The only thing lacking, at
this point, is the political will to make
the necessary changes.
Javier Baltodano, FoE Costa Rica
