ENCOURAGING oil prospectors and opening up woods and jungles to mining conglomerates seems an unlikely way to save the forests. But contrary to what you might think, these environmental pariahs can turn the tide of deforestation in many poor forested countries, economists claimed this week.
The analysis, from the Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), finds that mining and oil drilling provide an alternative income to the most destructive money-making activities in forests: logging and clearing the trees for farming. But environmental groups were quick to condemn CIFOR鈥檚 controversial conclusion. In many forests, they say, the reality is very different.
However, the theory holds true in at least two heavily forested countries, claims economist Sven Wunder of CIFOR. He says long-term oil booms in Gabon in West Africa and Venezuela in South America have 鈥渨iped out agriculture and resulted in many abandoned areas growing back as forests鈥�.
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For example, since 1970, forest cover has increased in oil-rich Gabon, Wunder says, while its oil-poor neighbours had to clear forests to survive. His study also shows that other countries, including Gabon鈥檚 neighbour Cameroon and Papua New Guinea in the western Pacific, would have lost more forest if they had not been able to exploit their oil and mineral reserves.
The benefits from the oil and mining industries are reinforced in three ways, Wunder claims. They provide city dwellers with money to buy food rather than grow it. That in turn encourages farmers not to exploit the land on which forests grow and head for jobs in towns. Finally, the money generated by the industries improves currency exchange rates, making forestry and cash cropping less profitable.
But forest campaigner Ed Matthew of Friends of the Earth in London says the study is 鈥渄eeply flawed鈥�, because the reforestation Wunder cites in Venezuela mostly happened before the second world war. According to UN data examined by New 杏吧原创, Gabon lost around 5 per cent of its forests during the 1990s.
Wunder admits his theory has its flaws. In Ecuador, he says, the government exacerbated the effect of deforestation by using oil revenues to build roads and subsidise cattle ranches in the rainforests. He also agrees that companies should be held accountable for the local impacts they have. 鈥淥ur report in no way excuses companies using environmentally destructive mining practices,鈥� he says.
But Wunder claims that environmentalists have made a mistake in ignoring the macroeconomic effects of capital-rich industries in poor countries. CIFOR does not receive funding from oil or mining companies, he says.
Wunder鈥檚 report, entitled 鈥淥il, Macroeconomics and Forests: Assessing the Linkages鈥� appears just as the World Rainforest Movement (WRM), which campaigns to protect forest communities, is accusing the global mining industry of destroying forest ecosystems and forcing forest dwellers to flee their homes, while bringing few economic benefits.
The opencast mines, drilling platforms, waste dumps, worker camps and access roads for oil and mining companies 鈥渁re together threatening the last stretches of the world鈥檚 primary rainforests鈥�, says the WRM鈥檚 Uruguay-based coordinator Ricardo Carrere. 鈥淸CIFOR鈥檚] solution to the forest crisis is to take people out and let the oil and mining companies take care of the forests. Forest people will regard this as science fiction.鈥�