Overharvesting Timber in the Tropical Solomon Islands

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16682177

In class, we’ve mostly focused on environmental justice in the terms of environmental racism. One of the environmental problems that I’m interested in is not the direct racism that occurs from strategic industrial waste sites and other toxicity issues but the inherent injustices that occur globally simply from the geographic layout of the Earth.  Every country has different resources and a different economic status which makes issues of energy procurement difficult to judge from a justice standpoint. Take “developing” countries like China and India, also called “newly industrialized countries” due to more advanced economic status. These countries have received criticism from developed countries for the use of coal and other detrimental energy practices. However, when the same industrialized countries were still developing they employed their fair share of pollution heavy practices as well, like America’s use of coal and so on. I am most interested in how to reconcile the need for development in order for every human’s basic needs to be met with the need for environmental sustainability for the long term health of our planet and future generations. 

The highlighted article discusses the continuing trajectory of the overharvesting of timber in the tropics, specifically in the Solomon Islands. The current standard cutting cycle is around 30 to 40 years, however a recent study has determined this to be too short to sustain these timber harvesting practices. The issues with overharvesting timber have been likened to the overdrawing of oil and its subsequent effects on CO2 emissions. The use of oil drums up thousands of years of stored carbon and releases it into the carbon cycle all at once. This has contributed to the enormous rise in CO2 emissions over the past few decades. As mentioned in the article, deforestation accounts for 20% of anthropocentric greenhouse gas emissions, which has plausibly followed the same trajectory as oil in releasing large amounts of stored carbon into the larger carbon cycle all at once. The forests cannot grow back faster than industry is cutting them down, which is in the end a lose-lose situation. As time goes on, the commercial timber industry will decline as they are forced to harvest smaller and smaller trees which leads to smaller and smaller profit. Eventually, the entire industry could collapse due to a failure of ecosystem provisioning services. Not only are trees being overharvested, but the tree species suitable for selling usually take longer to grow and in the quest for these trees, many other species of tropical trees are damaged or killed in order to blaze a trail to the desirable trees.

This is a prime example where there is a direct trade off between human benefit and environmental concerns. Many people make their livelihoods through the timber industry, it is not something that many tropical countries can just bounce back from if it collapses. These difficult questions may require extensive cost-benefit analyses  or economic modeling to truly capture the cost of timber both for the economy and the sustainable future of the industry and the ecosystem services it provides. I think it is most important to not just highlight these issues and think “Oh, how terrible,” but to actually make concrete policy and management suggestions that may help fix the problems. One reason I chose this article is that it ends on a positive note with a new concept called Redd, or Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. The article calls for an implementation of policies that can help pay developing countries to preserve forests and urges fundamental changes in harvesting practices. Only through innovative new management policies and a commitment to better harvesting practices will we begin to see plausible solutions to the tensions between human development and a sustainably provisioning environment.