Low oil prices a threat to rain forests: CIFOR
Low oil prices a threat to rain forests: CIFOR
Agence France-Presse, Jakarta
Low world oil prices will translate into increased pressure on
the world's fast-shrinking rain forests, an international forest
research center said Tuesday.
The Indonesian-based Center for International Forestry
Research (CIFOR) said in a report that producing oil and minerals
actually helps some countries protect forests and the animal and
plant species that live there.
"The prospect of Iraqi oil flooding the world market over the
next few years and pushing down gasoline prices is music to the
ears of consumers. But our research has found that it could be
devastating for tropical forests," said CIFOR economist Sven
Wunder in the report.
CIFOR argues that high incomes from oil and minerals can
relieve pressure on forests in several ways.
They make investment in activities associated with forest
destruction, such as farming in forested areas and logging, less
attractive.
Oil cash allows governments to spend more on urban
development, attracting people into the cities and reducing
deforestation.
"When developing countries get higher prices for their oil and
mineral exports, it usually makes agriculture and logging less
profitable," said Wunder.
"If people can earn more money from oil and mineral activities
-- or the government bureaucracies and construction booms they
finance -- those people are less likely to cut down forests to
farm," he added.
About half of all tropical forests are in countries that rely
heavily on petroleum and mineral exports for their incomes such
as Venezuela, Gabon, Ecuador, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.
Over 12 million hectares (30 million acres) of natural forest,
an area the size of Nepal, are lost in the tropics every year,
CIFOR says.
The report says that when oil and mineral revenues fall
everything works in reverse, potentially causing widespread
deforestation.
Currencies weaken, making logging and the expansion of farming
into forest areas more profitable. Unemployed urban workers move
back to the countryside where they can hunt for bushmeat and
clear forests to grow crops.