Burning a Resource

AT THE NOW-HISTORIC Stockholm Conference in 1972, conservationists first made the world aware that natural resources are finite. The meeting kicked off environmentalist movements in number of countries, as people and groups began to realize that the traditional global pattern of resource consumption without regard for the future could lead to disaster. Today, a relatively small circle of concerned scientists have launched a similar campaign to end the wholesale destruction of a little-known endangered resource--the tropical rain forest.

Worldwide, the demand for wood fuel has never been greater; this need, particularly in the developing world, has led to wide-scale deforestation in the rain forests of Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asiz. If all the wood used this year were stacked on a soccer field, the pile would be 250 miles high. This current consumption rate, a staggering three million cubic meters yearly, is expected to have increased by two-thirds in the year 2000. The environmental side effects of the ever-growing need are best illustrated in Africa, as a recent article in West Africa magazine contends.

Trees stabilize the soil beneath them, thereby preventing erosion. As a disaster in the Sabel region some years ago made clear, a sudden removal of trees can cause complete deterioration of agricultural land More alarmingly. Duncan Poore, a researcher at Oxford, has pointed out that loss of a large food sustaining area through such deterioration is "an important cause of political unrest and instability." Shrinking farmland area results in food shortages, and the declining number of trees makes the cost of wood skyrocket. In some areas of Africa, the price of fuel wood used to cook a meal actually exceeds the cost of the food.

It has been estimated that merely maintaining current wood fuel consumption levels in developing countries would require planting at least 125 million acres of new forest. And that figure does not include timber needed for industrial purposes. Angola, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and several other nations have already begun ambitious reforestation programs, by 1985. Nigeria plans to have doubled the amount of forest acres it had in 1980. In Zambia, new agricultural techniques have resulted in fantastic growth rates of 10 to 15 feet a year

ASIDE FROM economic factors, tropical rain forests have a scientific value that experts have yet to determine. In the forests of Gahan and Cameroon, restriction recently discovered 17 previously un described species of tree. Over three fourths of all plant species exist in tropical forests, which have been described as "genetic reservoirs." As article in the current issueof New Scientist by Mark Plotkin and Richard Schyles, director of the Harvard Botanical Museum, notes that "conservative estimates put the member of plant and animal species in rain forests at about two million of which fewer than half have ever been described by scientists."

By scrutinizing Latin American forests, Plotkin and schultes have found over 1000 plants that can be used as foods, drugs or industrial materials. Medical uses range from contraceptives to cures for skin infection, and one edible plant is apparently "as good a source of protein as meat and better than say beans," the researchers say.

THE INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT to preserve tropical forests has just begun to pick up steam. Last month 350 conservationists at a meeting in Indonesia of the World National Parks Congress decided to end the unchecked deforestation most societies had taken for granted. At this year's meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, tropical forestry was not lumped under the general topic of botany, but given special consideration

Outside the domain of scientists, new efforts have been made to inform the general public about the ecological wonders of rain forests and the need to save them. A documentary called "Korup" deals with the representative Korup forest in Cameroon. The film has been distributed to 70 countries, and will premiere in 30 capital cities.

Those who have an economic state in the exploration of resources have always been a powerful force to back, and it seems unlikely that industries that need wood and plant products will suddenly halt or slow their encroachment on tropical forests. But economic and scientific interests will, in the long run, be best served if existing ecology political action groups add one more item to their agendas