In Argentina, the invasion of tree monocultures is destroying the country's grassland-related biodiversity. Subsidised by the government with backing from the World Bank, plantations are expanding in the eastern Provinces of Misiones, Corrientes and Entre Rios, while significant areas are also being planted in the Provinces of Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Cuyo, Chaco and Patagonia. According to unofficial figures, the plantation area in Argentina has increased five fold from 1995 to 2000, and continues growing.
Bulletin articles
From 27 to 29 March Brazilian politicians, forestry officials, industry and NGO representatives got together in the city of Brasilia during the seminar “Amazonia XXI Century: Perspectives for Sustainable Development”, to discuss the future of the Amazon forest, the largest tropical rainforest in the world. In spite of the dramatic process of deforestation and forest degradation that has for years been affecting this vast and rich geographical space, an optimistic vision reigned during the meeting.
The fragmentation of habitats resulting from human activities --among which industrial tree plantations-- provokes restrictions in the supply of resources and the spacial needs of animal and plant species, which can even lead to the extinction of entire ecosystems. Once landscape structure has been altered the persistence of both plant and animal populations is menaced.
The Ecuadorian government has signed a contract with the company Oleoductos de Crudos Pesados (OCP) to build a pipeline that will cross the country from east to west, through the three geographical regions that form its territory. It will affect fragile areas of great importance from an ecological and agricultural point of view.
The Kingdom of Tonga is located in the central south-west portion of the Pacific Ocean. Its territory comprises more than 175 islands, with a total of about 750 square kilometres of land, inhabited nowadays by about 100,000 people residing in 166 villages on 43 islands. The climate of Tonga is sub-tropical. It has an annual temperature range of 17 – 30ºC, with annual rainfall of approximately 2,700mm.
The world is increasingly concerned over the disappearance of life forms on Earth and many organizations --governmental and non governmental-- appear to be trying to find solutions to the problem. However, in most cases they are failing, either because of implementing the wrong solutions --or more simply for not doing anything-- or because the political, economic and social causes which are at the root of the problem are not being adequately addressed.
Governments should be directly responsible for the conservation of the natural and cultural heritage of their respective countries and people. Nevertheless, what frequently happens in the South is that the authorities act in collusion with powerful internal and external interests, and to the detriment of the country’s biodiversity, and thus against the welfare of the population they are supposed to protect. This is what is going on in Kenya.
Liberia hosts the last two significant blocks of the remaining closed canopy tropical rainforest within the upper Guinea Forests of West Africa, which spans Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. The original extent of tropical rainforest in the region is estimated at 727,900km2, but has shrunk to about 92,797km2 - about 12.7% of its original size! Liberian forests account for 44.5% of the remaining 92,797km2 followed by Cote d’Ivoire with 29.1%.
Known by its historical past because of the vast and powerful empire that surprised European visitors in the XIV century, nowadays the Malian territory comprises more than 1,200,000 square kilometres in West Africa, over the Sahara desert in the north, the Sahel grasslands in the centre and the savannah region in the south. In the Sahel, human life as well as that of the flora and fauna follow the Niger River's annual flood cycle, with high water levels between August and November.
Invasion of habitats by alien plants is one of the causes of the extinction of native species. Some plant species have developed the capacity to adapt to new sites and to displace the original vegetation cover. This phenomenon has been widely recorded and it is known as “bioinvasion”. Needless to say that invasive species constitute a threat for biodiversity at the local and regional level, since the spread of newcomers alters the richness and abundance of the flora and fauna of the original ecosystem.
Bangladesh is one of the states signatories of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Nevertheless, the three types of forests existing in the country --the evergreen and semi-evergreen rainforests in the eastern region and at the Chittagong Hill Tracts region, the moist and dry deciduous forests, known as “sal” forests, situated in the central plains and the northeast region, and the tidal mangrove forests along the coast-- are under threat, and little is being done to save them. In the meantime, annual deforestation rate has reached 3.3%.
Forest and biodiversity conservation mean different things to different people. In the case of Cambodia, village people throughout the country depend on farmland, fisheries and forests for their livelihoods. For them, conserving the forest and its biodiversity implies ensuring their present and future means of survival. In recent years, even as peace has returned to rural areas, large scale logging concessions have reduced villagers' access and rights to forests, and caused massive damage to the forests themselves.