In the 1830s, 65% of the landmass of Mauritius was covered by primary forests. Fifty years later, under pressure from a growing population and the colonists’ love affair with sugar cane, the figure had dropped to 4%. Today, according to the Mauritius Wildlife Foundation (MWF), pristine forests account for a mere 1% of the island.

The government’s decision, last week, to excuse the forest in Ferney from road development duties, is a sound one. If Mauritius is bound to abandon the sugar cane venture in favour of a high-tech economy, much of the green landscape of the country will be lost. But, this is not confined to us. Everywhere in the world, man has gradually been tearing down trees to satisfy the timber industry, for agriculture, mining, gas and oil exploration or cattle ranching. Greenpeace, the non-Governmental organisation, says that we lose 10 million hectares of ancient forest annually or the size of a football pitch every two seconds.

At this pace, the NGO is worried for the vital rainforests of Indonesia and Central Africa, which could disappear in a few decades. Along with the forests, many rare plants and animals face extinction, due to the loss of their habitat. Greenpeace estimates that 24% of mammals and 14% of plants could join the dodo on the long list of the departed.

The disappearance of forest areas is a subject of contention on the international level, due to the ongoing discussion on the definition of what actually constitutes a forest. The latest attempt came from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) through its Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) four years ago. The latter offers a generous term, dumping everything from natural forests to planted ones under a broad definition.

For the FAO, trees occupy 30% of the world’s land area. Enjoying such munificence, the government has been able to declare that 25% of Mauritius (including Rodrigues, St. Brandon and Agalega) has a forest canopy, in a report to the UN Forum on Forests dated October 2004. But that same document concedes the disappearance of most of the native forests by the end of the 19th century.

Herein lies the deception that critics of the FAO say is misleading the world about the true state of forestation on the planet. The World Rainforest Movement (WRM), an international network of citizens groups, indicates that under the FAO definition, most green urban areas can be considered major forest ecosystems.

Such assessments are confusing according to the WRM. Primary forests are being replaced by mono-culture plantations, such as eucalyptus and pine trees, or by biologically poor forests, devoid of undergrowth and original soil biodiversity. Unique bird, mammal and reptile species have vanished.

<B>16 million hectares disappear each year</B>

Another environmental think tank, the World Resources Institute (WRI), criticises the conservative estimates of the FAO. Furthermore, it says that the loss of natural forests cannot be offset by afforestation, a process that the FRA 2000 takes into consideration. To come to a global net rate of change, it combines natural forest and plantation areas. At the same time, tropical forests have been disappearing at a rate of 16 million hectares a year. The WRI also points to discrepancies in the figures of the FAO. A majority of the developing countries’ inventories were either out of date or incomplete, while there were major inconsistencies in the methodology used by developed countries. The WRI finds this alarming as the FRA 2000 is the bible of ecologists, climate change scientists, politicians and policy makers.

The FRA 2000 still acknowledged the decimation of 4.2% of the world’s natural forests during the 1990s. As a net loss, this amounted to an area larger than Venezuela, or 94 million hectares in that ten year period. The regions most affected have been tropical Africa and Asia, while Latin America has shown no major increase in the rate of deforestation. This is alarming, considering that these regions are home to the rainforests, the lungs of the Earth as they are sometimes called.

<B>The human tax on forests

The pressures on our forests are again coming from this most destructive inhabitant of the planet. Human factors are slowly encroaching on most of the untouched parts of nature, causing potentially irreversible damage. The exponential growth of the population and the subsequent urbanisation are major causes of deforestation. With more agricultural land needed to feed the masses, many forests are being converted to farmland.

Areas previously covered by trees are making way for crops and cattle raising, often on an industrial scale. Logging, sometimes illegal, is the other major threat to natural forests. Mau-ritius is a net importer of wood as its natural resources cannot cater for demand, according to the report to the UNFF. Another problem faced by the country is that large tracts of forest lands are privately owned, leaving the government powerless to decide their fate.

Forests are an important part of the ecosystem and protecting them is tantamount to ensuring our survival. With global warming on the increase due to pollution, continued deforestation can only contribute to the demise of life on the planet. Profits rank higher for the neo-liberal rulers of the planet. The environment is only here to be exploited no matter how short-term the gains are.

<I>Diren Valayden

Outlook

Correspondent in Dublin</I>