
Fighting poverty accidentally stopped deforestation - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-15/how-fighting-poverty-accidentally-stopped-deforestation
======
gampleman
I take a bit of issue with the "accidentally". Having been in the
deforestation-stopping business for some time it has been blindingly obvious
that most approaches that were being taken were completely futile until socio-
economic factors were solved for.

For example we were building satellite technology to help environmental police
patrol large rainforests to be able to focus on areas with offenders. One time
we managed to find a hidden airstrip for drug trafficking which was cool. But
most of the time the offenders were people who just needed to feed their kids
- and look there is a mahogany tree just over there that will sell for $$$. So
the cops will come, give them a fine, and then they will need the money even
more. So the pattern continues.

Funnily enough (NB: this is hearsay) the forests were actually better off when
the area was controlled by drug gangs as the people had a source of income
from the cocaine.

~~~
seotut2
The same phenomenon is easily observed in modern-day Romania. There's a clear
inverse correlation between the wealth of a region and the deforestation in
that area.

Also notice that the price of wood is fairly stable all across EU because it's
an open market after all. But the wages in Romania are far lower than the EU
average so that's why the incentive to cut and sell wood is relatively higher
here.

~~~
simion314
In Romania there is the issue where people still have to use wood for heating
because of no access to natual gas or not enough money to buy a modern heating
system, isolate the home and pay for the has, in some regions the wood is
cheap in others wood is expensive.

~~~
xyzzyz
Buying coal should be an option, no? Coal is cheaper than wood.

~~~
simion314
Yes wood is expensive you get it legally but if you have a forest 1-2 Km near
your home the wood can be free. Like people own the forest, you can't cut any
tree, you need to do a request and a person will come and mark some trees for
you to cut (there are some criteria for what tree you can mark for cutting
down). So then the expanse is cutting, moving and storing this wood .

On top of this there are people without jobs that can just cut unmarked trees.

Coal prices is also not the same in all places in the country, if you are
closer to the coal source the prioce is lower because of transportation costs.

------
cookiengineer
Little known fact: Germany was exporting wood around the beginning of the 15th
century up until the point where over 80% of all forests were gone. You could
say that almost all forests we have today are somewhat artificially grown.

That is why, by law, forests have to be maintained and regrown if you want to
harvest wood. The earliest established Forstordnung was done in 1442 in Speyer
and soon after the Kurpfalz and other states/Fürstentümer adapted it. I think
the latest state to adapt it was Sachsen around 1560, but I would have to look
that up to be certain.

Nonetheless I think this speaks volumes on how much some countries are behind
when it comes to their established laws.

~~~
blablabla123
Most trees growing in Germany grow very fast. In areas with rainforests trees
are much older and the ground on which they grow is very different from the
ground in german forests. Once deforested it takes decades to just recover the
ground, not to speak of the trees.

~~~
Cthulhu_
I heard that rainforest soil is actually pretty poor, which to me sounds weird
given how much grows (and dies / falls / decomposes) there.

~~~
MichaelMcG
Your comment intrigued me, so I looked it up--I found it pretty interesting,
so thanks for the inspiration.

Looks like one of the main factors is due to the soil acidity being similar to
the pH of the plant roots. Also, while there is a ton of dead organic material
in the soil, the high temperatures and precipitation causes it to decompose so
rapidly that most of the nutrients are lost.

Finally, the clay particles in the soil are poor for trapping the minimal
nutrients remaining from the decomposing material, and what is trapped is
frequently washed away from the precipitation.

------
ReticentVole
“You know, I have often thought that at the end of the day, we would have
saved more wildlife if we had spent all WWF's money on buying condoms.”

\- Sir Peter Scott, Founder, WWF (1909-1989)

~~~
redis_mlc
That's a great quote.

In a lot of countries, you have to be married to even get family planning
advice, so that's a hindrance.

The US has its own problems with requiring current prescriptions ($$) for
anything, including the pill.

(For non-US readers, a doctor's office visit without insurance is typically
$100 in SF, if you can find one with a patient list opening. Plus filling the
prescription.)

Refillable natural gas containers would also help reduce deforestation.
They're commonly used in SE Asian homes, but should be expanded to areas still
cutting down trees for firewood.

~~~
fragmede
That's not entirely accurate. San Francisco, and the rest of California,
changed the law in 2016 so that properly trained pharmacists are allowed to
prescribe the birth control pill. That training is part of the standard
curriculum for new pharmacists, and training is available for pharmacists who
got their license before that became part of the curriculum. Anecdotally, I
will also say that Planned Parenthood of California is pretty decently funded
and are able to offer IUDs (Mirena) and Depoprevera (the shot) at a reasonable
price, with and with-out insurance.

This practice is not limited to California, either. Washington DC and nine
other states - Colorado, Hawaii, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon,
Tennessee, Washington, and Utah – allow pharmacists to prescribe birth
control.

[https://www.goodrx.com/blog/heres-how-to-get-birth-
control-w...](https://www.goodrx.com/blog/heres-how-to-get-birth-control-
without-a-doctors-prescription/)

~~~
redis_mlc
That's a big improvement, but there is some fine print per pharmacy:

[https://www.cvs.com/content/pharmacy/womens-
health/faq](https://www.cvs.com/content/pharmacy/womens-health/faq)

~~~
lostlogin
It gets better, whatever that link gives is inaccessible from outside the US,
but notes “CVS.com® is not available to customers or patients who are located
outside of the United States or U.S. territories. We apologize for any
inconvenience.

For U.S. military personnel permanently assigned or on temporary duty
overseas, please call our Customer Service team at 1-800-SHOP CVS
(1-800-746-7287) if you need assistance with your order.“

------
projektfu
I came across a charity that gets a “double” or triple in a similar way. They
build stoves for people who are currently cooking on open hearth. Those people
then use less fuel, make less carbon dioxide, take less from the forest, and
have vastly better respiratory health.

[https://guatemalastoveproject.org/](https://guatemalastoveproject.org/)

~~~
Cthulhu_
Proves that there's a lot of low-hanging fruit still that can have a much
bigger impact than e.g. buying an electric vehicle.

~~~
gbear605
The problem is that we need to do both. We can’t escape climate change if
everyone on the planet is driving a large gas guzzling SUV. So we need to both
change to electric cars and also do things like this oven.

In addition, it’s bad to say to developing countries “well, you have to make
this change for the good of the planet, but we don’t have to make any change,
even though we produce much more CO2 than you do.”

~~~
Nasrudith
Both are the same thing essentially - improvements to the efficiency at the
cost of upfront capital above and beyond "the norm" for such tasks. There are
other variables in play too - stoves that boost fire efficiency are tech
available centuries ago while electric cars are still progressing and have R&D
baked in. Stoving everyone up would hit its limits for enviromental
improvements before electrification of cars.

It is a matter of proportion of use as a whole that they become comparable. A
single wooden shack with a camp fire produces less air pollution than a coal
power plant and a single concrete tenament but ironically if you have enough
campfires concrete tenaments with coal fired electric burners and heat it
becomes the cleaner and more efficient option compared to many wooden shacks
and firea even before you start adding scrubbers.

------
dba7dba
South Korea is another example of fighting poverty that stopped and completely
reversed deforestation.

Korean peninsula in general went through extreme deforestation under Japan,
especially during the WW2 era and Korean War, as supply of coal was cut off
from the civilian population and redirected to war effort by Japan and Korea.
In order to get fuel supply that was needed to cook food and heat homes, local
hills were cleared of trees by locals.

If you watch video footage of the Korean War 1950 - 53, the hills are
completely devoid of trees. The trees are missing because they had all be cut
down for fuel.

If you talk to any older Korean men who were teens up until mid 1960s, they
all remember walking 1 - 2 hrs one way up into the hills to collect firewood,
piled mountain high on their A-frames (in Korean, jigae).

Once South Korea started getting better off, they went to coal, oil, natural
gas, and then electricity for fuel source.

The South Korean government "Korea Forest Service" ministry is completely
focused on restoring the depleted forests. And they seem to have done
reasonably well.

------
jes5199
there’s a nonprofit called “Carbon Offsets to Alleviate Poverty” where you can
buy carbon offset credits that are implemented by paying impoverished people
in various parts of the world to reforest their land. I’d love to see a
comparison of whether that was ultimately more or less effective than UBI at
the two goals of reducing poverty and averting climate change

~~~
renewiltord
I currently use TerraPass. Are these guys audited by third parties or
something like that? Generally work in the US is more trustworthy since it's
theoretically verifiable here.

~~~
itsmeamario
Care to share why? I'd like to help, but the trouble is how am I sure that the
money goes to the pockets of people who need it and not to some CEO's holiday?

~~~
tribby
tax-exempt 501(c)3 nonprofits in the US are required to file IRS form 990[1]
which sheds some light on the financials of the organization. it doesn't mean
that the organization is run efficiently or puts money to good use, but it
does increase transparency[2]

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_990](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_990)

2\.
[https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/)

------
distant_hat
India's birth rate in villages plummeted when TV was introduced to them. These
kind of effects are not that rare.

~~~
Cthulhu_
There's a strong correlation between wealth, education, quality of life, and
child birth rate. Tl;dr, improve people's lives and birth rate drops.

Which may cause its own problems (e.g. in Japan), but there's a lot of
countries that aren't there yet.

------
the8472
_> Cash payments to people in impoverished areas led to a 30% drop in tree
loss_

It did not stop deforestation. It only lowered the rate of loss. Which of
course is a significant improvement but still not sustainable.

------
alkonaut
"Accidentally"? Bring up google maps and look at the forest cover of Haiti vs.
the Dominican Republic. You don't really need the border drawn as a line.

------
ima_banana
This may be a dumb question, but is there a field of study of unintended
consequences?

~~~
seltzered_
Complexity Theory / Santa Fe Institute folks might be in this domain. Jordan
Hall recommends this book for starters:
[https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/thousand-years-nonlinear-
hist...](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/thousand-years-nonlinear-history)

------
reinkaos
> For local communities, selling timber and clearing land for cultivation is
> an income stream of last resort.

There's also another problem that affects places like Brazil: deforestation
for cattle ranching.

------
Mirioron
I don't quite understand the headline. This seems like a rather obvious
outcome.

The big question is: what are the limits on it? Helping the poor in Indonesia
(and Brazil) would diminish deforestation, but would it do the same if you
were helping the poor in the US? Ukraine? My guess is that it would do barely
anything about deforestation in the US, but I have no idea about Ukraine.

~~~
PeterisP
What deforestation in the US? The forest area in the US has been stable since
~1900, and the volume of forest has been increasing in the last decades.

I don't have good recent data about Ukraine, but it also seems to have
_increased_ the amount of forests e.g. in the period between 1990-2010.
[https://rainforests.mongabay.com/deforestation/2000/Ukraine....](https://rainforests.mongabay.com/deforestation/2000/Ukraine.htm)
; this would match the general trend of the rest of Europe of an increase in
forests.

~~~
Mirioron
Yes, but people still cut down trees. The question is how much faster forests
would spread since there would be less deforestation.

~~~
PeterisP
Cutting down trees does not generally decrease the area of forests in the
first world - it decreases the _volume_ of forests, it's essentially
"harvesting the crop" because the same plot usually is replanted, and it often
is _required_ to be replanted. A reasonable mental model to think of most
first world forests is as an equivalent to a wheat field, with the difference
that ist's harvested and replanted not once a year like wheat, but once every
20-30-50 years depending on the tree species. Cutting down more trees is the
equivalent of harvesting early, cutting down less trees is the equivalent of
letting it grow some more before the inevitable harvest. It's not wilderness,
it's something that's managed and taken care of.

Also, forests _don 't_ spread on their own. Well, they do in some untouched
wilderness, but if I think of e.g. a central european landscape, there's no
free space for them to expand to - in general, all land is owned by someone
who wants some return out of it, so a forest ends right where something else
starts, almost all usable land is productively used if it's not a national
park or something like that. A place can be a forest only if people let it be
a forest - and that has nothing to do with cutting down trees, it's about the
fact that seeds can't grow into saplings if someone's doing something with
that land.

A forest can spread only in two cases - either someone intentionally plants
one (the most common scenario, but it relies on the expectation that in a few
decades it will be allowed to harvest the 'crops'), or it's a result of
decrease in agriculture, as some pastureland or farmland got abandoned because
it was worthless to work it, and it overgrew with trees over the years. But
such abandoned land is relatively rare, because even if it does "simply" get
overgrown with trees, then it's profitable to take proper care of that forest
(ensuring sparsity of trees, etc) so it usually gets done.

So if we don't cut down trees, or cut down trees slower than they grow, then
(assuming no changes in agricultural land) forests don't spread, the trees
just grow taller and wider. Forest area remains stable, forest volume
increases - e.g. the current USA situation. And, of course, no new forests
would get planted, because it's not practical to do so if you expect that
you'll be prohibited to harvest it once it's grown. There are more forests in
Europe than before because it became more profitable to plant _and cut down_
trees rather than use the same land for e.g. pastures, so forests got planted
- they did not spread on their own.

~~~
Mirioron
You're missing the point. The claim in the headline states that fighting
against poverty helps with deforestation. My argument is that this is not
absolute. It helps fight against deforestation in (some) poor countries,
because poor people there cut down forests for wood and farmland. This doesn't
happen anywhere near as much in first world countries. The question about
those countries was there to ask about the magnitude. I was trying to
underline the point that there are more variables at play than just poverty.

------
MiguelVieira
Environmental Kuznets curve

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve#Environmental_Ku...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve#Environmental_Kuznets_curve)

~~~
CryptoPunk
And the best way to increase per capita income is to implement pro-market
policies, that provide rights to private property and the freedom to contract:

[https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer_why_the_world_needs_cha...](https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer_why_the_world_needs_charter_cities)

[http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-bill...](http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-billion-
people-have-been-taken-out-extreme-poverty-20-years-world-should-aim)

[http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-
glo...](http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-global-war-
on-poverty)

~~~
eru
Not a popular insight in the western world these days, alas.

Compare [https://www.econlib.org/socialism-the-failed-idea-that-
never...](https://www.econlib.org/socialism-the-failed-idea-that-never-dies/)

------
neonate
[https://archive.vn/4gTqu](https://archive.vn/4gTqu)

------
dr_dshiv
This is a great example of economic harmony in nature. There has been a big
debate in environmentalism whether rising incomes naturally produces more
concern for and protection of the environment.

The implications of that question are, very, very important.

------
coderintherye
Also an example of UBI in action.

~~~
Cthulhu_
UBI requires a country to be pretty wealthy though, have a steady, reliable
source of income such as natural resources or healthy trade.

------
nwah1
Look into the Environmental Kuznets Curve and the Demographic Transition.

------
adamnemecek
No shit. It also stops crime, a lot of early and unnecessary deaths.

------
082349872349872
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending upon where one lives), fighting
poverty is like fighting pandemics: some places try it, and others declare it
difficult* and leave it untried.

* "difficult" being the charitable interpretation of the people who will argue, at length and in print, that having poverty or having an endemic or having brutality is somehow better than the alternatives.

(in my country, it's considered shocking news that, unemployment having
reached almost 4%, thousands of people showed up for food handouts during the
pandemic. It's considered ongoing news that we still have double digits, about
1% of peak, of new virus cases per day. Both public mass shootings from this
century are considered national tragedies)

------
aaron695
> How Fighting Poverty Accidentally Stopped Deforestation

This is garbage -

When know by fighting poverty, which is increasing wealth, it's good for

The environment, all the social rights, IQ, crime, happiness, almost all
issues the rich first world people think are important. Because the people
targeted become better off and can afford to worry about these issues as well.

This is why good people fight poverty, and the bad people jump ahead and fight
for the things that come after poverty, because that's what makes them
personally feel good.

~~~
mrpopo
Then why are rich people bigger meat consumers and bigger CO2 emitters than
poor people?

~~~
imtringued
They burn coal instead of wood. In practice both are equally unsustainable but
deforestation is an issue with higher visibility.

~~~
mrpopo
Strange answer. Most importantly, they consume a lot more energy, be it from
coal or from wood.

