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.