
Amazon Deforestation, Once Tamed, Comes Roaring Back - blondie9x
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/business/energy-environment/deforestation-brazil-bolivia-south-america.html
======
conesus
I'm running a Kickstarter for a wood product right now and so I've learned a
thing or two about how to encourage reforestation. The answer is get economics
to drive reforestation.

Cats, cows, turkeys, dogs, and horses, among many other animals, will always
be around as long as humans are, simply because we'll ensure that they always
have a healthy habitat. The same goes for trees, especially tropical trees.

Reforestation is a huge opportunity if we invest in plantations that have
managed cutting, allowing tropical trees to grow up to 40 years before being
turned into beautiful products like furniture.

In order to produce high quality lumber that's useful for furniture making,
like mahogany for example, loggers have to be selective about the trees they
fell. Can't just chop down every one of them because not all will generate
productive wood.

Maple is similar in that it's plantation grown right here in the U.S. What
that actually means in terms of wood quality is that it suffers a bit from
uniformity.

The reason I know this is because I'm running a Kickstarter for a remote
control[1]. It's made out of mahogany and maple, but its impact is offset a
bit by the small size of the remote, which also makes small features much more
distinguishable.

This is also one of the reasons why I'm a vegetarian, as much deforestation is
caused by burning forests for raising livestock.

[1]: Turn Touch: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/samuelclay/turn-
touch-b...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/samuelclay/turn-touch-
beautiful-control)

~~~
lm2s
I'll probably be downvoted but I think it's in bad taste to use this kind of
(bad) news as another way to market your product. I'll surely won't be buying
your product nor recommending it. /rant

What you've said about making economics drive reforestation is true, but
that's like saying that to end hunger you just have to give people food.

So you suggest planting trees that take 40 years to grow when the people doing
the deflorestation are doing it because of profits that they'd never get via
that method. (Economics)

It's the same with the plague that is eucalyptus, you know what drove its
plantation and override of all other natural trees and plants in many places
of the world? Economics! So you see that just economics might not be a very
good way to solve the problem at hand.

So what do you propose to make the economics work? Highly tax meat? Or other
products that are indirectly causing deflorestation?

~~~
conesus
I simply have experience in the subject because I've spent the last three
years researching ways to make woodworking more sustainable. And driving up
demand will in turn drive up supply, and as I explained above increased supply
does indeed increase forests, as they have to be sustainably managed to come
into the U.S. due to import restrictions.

~~~
cooper12
> driving up demand will in turn drive up supply [and] increase forests

I'm not sure this follows. Increasing the demand will merely incentivize
deforestation at an increasing rate. If you start putting controls on it, the
black market will just work around it just like with exotic parts from animals
like horns. Let's assume you yourself are a woodcutter who believes in
sustainability. The problem is that everyone else will just be thinking about
short-term profits, _especially_ when demand is so high. (see: the tragedy of
the commons) If trees could be grown fast in farms like other animals or
artificially like diamonds, you might have a point, but trees take so long to
grow and if the demand is high, it will only encourage fast growing and
killing of trees. You mention that optimizing for quality requires longer
growth, and that assumes that quality wood is in demand which would also fetch
higher prices, but that's debatable around the type of tree and its use. (you
yourself say you have a market that require an "artisan" type of wood, but the
majority of the world will be happy with whatever wood it can get, especially
considering we use mixes in stuff like paper) Due to the limiting factor
(time), demand will outdrive supply.

------
jly
A global economy built on minimally controlled capitalism will be the downfall
of our natural environment and ultimately the species. There is continued
proof all around us that this is the direction we're heading. We have the
foresight to recognize this now, but sadly not the motivation to correct it.

Read 'Half Earth' by Edward Wilson to see his arguments for setting aside 50%
of the surface land as pure wild nature, to preserve biodiveristy and,
ultimately, us. I agree with many comments here that many established powerful
nations spent much of the last few hundred years destroying parts of their own
ecosystem to get where they are. The past is the past, though, and we face an
uncertain future unless we band together to change this behavior now,
regardless of borders or economies.

~~~
e40
There are so many humans on the planet now, and they all want a piece of the
pie. Billions of them dream of riches, or to put it more precisely, they dream
of being richer than most of their fellow humans. Yes, greed. The greedy will
always win, because they are better at hoarding than the rest of the humans
are at protecting resources from hoarding. Look how easily we in the US were
duped into electing a POTUS that is the knife edge of greed and corruption.
It's depressing.

~~~
marmot777
Yes, greed is insane. It really is insane. I personally try to live as simply
as I can not because I want to win virtue points, I almost never mention it,
but because I think it's the right thing to do. Greed is a pathology. It feels
very sick to me whenever I encounter it. I want to purge when I feel its
presence.

------
goodroot
Nyughh. Sad. This hits me right in the heart. I have been to the Amazon and it
is lush, beautiful paradise. It changed my perspective on how valuable natural
life is on our planet.

It is not just the net loss of plant matter. The indigenous are under constant
duress and we risk losing a unique part of our world; medicinal plants and
esoterica, wild-life, and access to limited resources, to boot.

There are groups working with those impacted by this. I am contributing to an
NGO called the Alianza Arkana which is doing some work to aid the indigenous
and the rainforest.

Contextual plug: [http://alianzaarkana.org](http://alianzaarkana.org) .

I left a grand paying, comfortable tech job to try to make even-a-small
difference. I hope this devastation is not a part of my generation's legacy.

~~~
tlow
"Nature with a capital 'N' is my Religion" \- Frank Lloyd Wright

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Rapzid
Wow,we need to bring back the "Save The Rainforest" awareness full force. I
see people talking reforestation and that's good and all.. But the tragedy of
the rainforest isn't so much that "now there are no trees here". It's the loss
of the biodiversity and ecosystem. You can replant a forest, but you can't
replant The Rainforest.

Man, I love the rainforest. Why don't we hear about it as much? It's been a
dream of mine to visit the Amazon. Now that I have the means I really need to
get down there.

~~~
senorjazz
Ultimately the problem is money. Amazon based countries have this resource
which can enrich the population / provide a means to generate income.

Basically telling these countries "no you cannot use your natural resources
because it benefits the whole world" is not going to work.

Europe pretty much cut down all their forests during the industrial revolution
and is now a developed and powerful world wide force. Arab countries with oil
/ gas reserves. Similarly the US etc etc.

If the world does not want the Amazon forests cut down, these countries need
to be compensated for not doing so. Ecuador tried something a few years back
regarding not drilling in the Amazon basis, along the lines of asking the
international community to pay them to not drill. It failed and the
deforestation continues. When an oil road is built, or logging road or any
road, then the deforestation happens along the road, over dirt roads are built
inland and more trees come down.

At the end of the day, none of us are prepared to dip into our pockets to not
cut down the Amazon and this will be it's downfall

------
entrance-right
Bolivia has more forest than Western Europe, Southern Europe and Central
Europe together. I had a look at Google Maps; Brasilia is frightening. The
rainforest gets divided into smaller parts. The South American rainforest is
still larger than the African rainforest, but looks like an organism becoming
devoured by bacteria.

The problem is that there are too many people on Earth. Our impact on Earth is
much too high. We would already need 2 Earths. Overpopulation causes a lot of
problems, not just deforestation, mass extinction of animals and climate
change, but also lack of food, human mass migrations, elevating crime rates,
and so on. However if we could reduce the world population to 3 or 4 billion
people, than all mentioned problems should be solved and Earth should be able
to re-establish a natural balance.

I am ready to help.

~~~
boomka
"Too many humans" is a lazy, negligent argument by those who don't want to
make any changes in how we conduct business.

Deforestation in Brazil is happening not because humanity really needs that
lumber. It doesn't. Deforestation is happening because people in Brazil see
those trees in their country's backyard as essentially free money lying
around, and they do not give a second thought to chopping them down.

Nothing to do with overpopulation of Earth.

~~~
graeme
> Nothing to do with overpopulation of Earth.

I wouldn't say so. The forest is being cut down because there's profit in
farming it. Why is there profit?

Because people are paying for higher priced food, and more people exist.

Resource demand per capita * number of people = Total resource demand

Overpopulation isn't the _entire_ cause, but it's certainly a factor.

(Yes, yes, some people consume much more than others. But there's also a
baseline minimum in food required, and also as we've eliminated the worst
poverty over the past 20 years, that raises the baseline)

So since 2000, we've added 1.5 billion people _and_ dramatically increased the
size of the middle class _and_ also cut the worst poverty. Which means more
resource consumption at all levels, multiplied by a greater number.

I should note that more efficient global transport and supply chains is also a
cause. It's now a lot easier to take resources from the amazon and sell them
to north america, europe, asia, etc. When trade and transport were less
efficient, there was less incentive to use all resources to their pure
maximum.

------
rkachowski
>A decade after the “Save the Rainforest” movement forced changes that
dramatically slowed deforestation across the Amazon basin .... That
resurgence, driven by the world’s growing appetite for soy and other
agricultural crops

The article doesn't get into it, but what is driving this growing appetite? Is
it a natural effect of population growth?

~~~
paganel
This and more people climbing out of the "miserably poor" hole and affording
to eat better stuff (like stuff based on soy and other agricultural crops).

~~~
jurip
And it's important to note that most soy is used to feed cattle etc:
[http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/soy/co...](http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/soy/consumers/)

------
lacker
Who actually owns the rain forest land? It seems odd to me that this article
does not really get into that. The simplest way to save the rain forest would
be for some entity, private or public, to buy it up and turn it into a park.
That seems way more effective than trying to convince companies to not use it
for farming, since there is no limit to the supply of companies that are
capable of operating a farm.

~~~
astrange
People are burning it down for farmland and palm oil even after someone else
tells them they own it. Enforcement doesn't always work since nobody is that
motivated to guard it - you have to actively involve locals in using all the
trees for something.

~~~
mercer
Would it make sense to pay locals to be stewards/guards of the forest? I
imagine it would cost a pittance compared to the cost of buying the land.

~~~
paganel
> I imagine it would cost a pittance compared to the cost of buying the land.

In my parts of the world (Eastern Europe) most of the locals themselves are
the one tearing the forests down, because high in the mountains where they
live this is one of the only income sources they have. In order to convince
them not to cut down trees anymore you'd basically have to implement a
guaranteed minimum income across all those areas, which should be big enough
to buy its beneficiaries 4x4 vehicles and build big houses (that's what
cutting trees affords those people to buy right now).

The anti-deforestation discourse comes mostly from people living in urban
areas, who do not economically depend on cutting forests down. Ours is a
complicated species.

------
devoply
Humans are the ultimate invasive species. We complain about fungus and other
pests moving their range and causing havoc because of global warming, is it
not the case that we do the exact same thing all the time, and that's
considered a good thing. And it's not the locals doing it, it's global
corporations, many with HQ in developed countries, so it's not as if they
don't know any better. I doubt we will ever be controlled until we welcome our
new AI masters.

~~~
formula1
You know who creates the "ai masters"? Corporations

You know what coorperations view as a "win condition"? Monopoly and profits

You know what nature is? An obstacle or opportunity along the way towards such
goals.

At no point is preservation of an "outdated" and "inefficient" system
complimenting such goals.

If you can make an ai view life as more than a number and make ai into "eco
system tenders" rather than judge jury and executioner, then it's possible
that the ai master would work consider nature worth saving

~~~
devoply
I agree. But just like Stallman saw open source, correction free software, as
a possibility for liberation, which was subverted by corporations for massive
profits. I see AI in the same way. I am a naive idealist in that sense. But
maybe one day it will work out the way it's supposed to. If it does not we as
a species are doomed. Also I think pointing the finger at corporations is a
bit naive, they simply follow certain set of normalized rules that have the
ascent of the masses. In that they provide the masses with employment and
cheap bread and circuses. So the underlying problem with corporations is
people as a whole. That masses which don't care, compared to the few people,
usually idealists, who do.

~~~
mverwijs
s/open\ source/free\ software/

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mirekrusin
"(...) deforestation rose in 2015 for the first time in nearly a decade, to
nearly two million acres from August 2015 to July 2016. That is a jump from
about 1.5 million acres a year earlier and just over 1.2 million acres the
year before that (...)"

...so really it did rise in 2014, from 1.2 to 1.5 so the first statement is
false, isn't it?

~~~
vacri
end winter 2014 1.2M, end winter 2015 1.5M, end winter 2016 2.0M. 'rose for
the first time in 2015' fits those numbers.

------
hendler
Where there are problems this massive, there is opportunity; reforestation,
biodiversity, businesses that utilize existing ecosystems without devastating
them. Forty years ago environmental protection was seen as being at odds with
economic progress. This perception is changing because it must. Tesla/Solar
City I hope are only the beginning of aligning great technical achievement,
economic viability, and environmental sustainability.

------
ryanmarsh
The thing that kills me about this is that we're basically saying: "Sorry we
cut down too many of our trees to build a powerful economy from nothing in
under 300 years, but you can't cut down yours to do the same because we need
those trees to offset our CO2 production"

~~~
diego_moita
I eared a lot this argument in Brazil. It is wrong in a thousand ways. Cutting
trees is not a necessary condition for powerful economies, we are in the 21st
century. Canada and Scandinavian countries have lots of trees and also
powerful economies. Europe is actually increasing their forested area.

The only industries that benefit with deforestation are logging and raising
cattle in extensive pastures. Brazil needs manufacturing and services, they
generate a lot more income and jobs.

~~~
ryanmarsh
Doesn't agriculture, specifically cereal grains, require a lot of arable land?

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taway_1212
There is a bit of hypocrisy in the discussion about cutting out rain forests.
Western nations paid no mind to destroying their local ecosystems when they
were getting rich over a span of the last couple of centuries, and only
started to care about the environment when they reached comfy living for their
citizens. It's unfair to demand something else from developing countries now.

~~~
laxd
The fact that so much rainforest is gone just makes it more important to save
what's left. "They must be allowed because we did it" is a short sighted
argument with these stakes.

~~~
taway_1212
I agree that, on a planetary scale, it's short-sighted.

I think it would be fair for the nations who profited from destroying their
natural environment to pay some cash equivalent to those haven't yet.
Otherwise it's pulling the ladder after you already got in.

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knowaveragejoe
What a shame. Unfortunately, the incentives seem to be aligned such that I
fear this will be a difficult trend to slow or ultimately reverse.

~~~
transfire
A shame? Loss of the rain forest means a loss of one of the biggest oxygen
generators on the planet. We literally will not be able to breath without it.

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marmot777
This is an absolute tragedy. I'd say that it's near the top of the list of the
worst things human beings are doing I'd say that if we weren't in denial, five
alarm fire alarms would be going off. I wish I knew what I could do to help
stop this horror but I feel powerless. :-(

By the time my 5-year-old son is an adult, I think I'm going to have to
explain to him what happened. That is, if things aren't so fucked up by
unintended and intended consequences that this conversation never can happen.
What a fucking delightful world that we are just destroying it with no more
honor and respect than we'd give an ant on the kitchen floor.

------
lyonlim
This is sad. Anything that we can do?

There's this site, tree-nation.com that helps with reforestation projects. Any
others out there?

~~~
astrange
[https://carbonfund.org/forestry/](https://carbonfund.org/forestry/)
[http://www.edenprojects.org](http://www.edenprojects.org)

------
transfire
THIS IS WHAT YOU CAN DO: [https://eowilsonfoundation.org/half-earth-our-
planet-s-fight...](https://eowilsonfoundation.org/half-earth-our-planet-s-
fight-for-life/)

------
transfire
Hurry up with the vat meat!

------
codecamper
Don't worry everybody. There is always Mars!

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lugus35
Don't worry, they have collected enough little trees during the Olympic games
opening ceremony.

------
singularity2001
"we’ll do something about it,” Mr. MacLennan said. “If that’s accurate, it’s
not acceptable.

It is absolutely not acceptable and I'm optimistic that we will see the day
when MacLennan, Trump and similar will be imprisoned by the people. It is our
right and duty to imprison them.

