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Could Forests Worsen Global Warming?

Published in The Sunday Star, 15 January 2006, p.36.

The recent research findings that forests generate methane, a gas responsible for global warming, should not really surprise us, as it highlights how little we understand how ecosystems work. But loggers take note: this is no reason to cut more forest or to avoid our responsibility to rehabilitate damaged forests.

The chemical forces at work within a forest ecosystem have bigger consequences than just locking up carbon or emitting methane. We must take stock of the free and vastly valuable ecological services that forests provide us before we commit yet more damage that may have unforeseen consequences. As a species, we have already seriously mutilated our own ecosystem, to the extent that there is a real possibility that civilization as we know it may cease to exist within the next century. We know that forests and oceans generate the oxygen, water and food we depend on for our very survival, but we extract so much from both for our short term gains and fail to appreciate that these systems can only be taxed so far before they quickly spiral into irreversible unproductivity.

We must therefore apply the cautionary principle: don't cut forests because one study shows that they generate greenhouse gases, as they are incalculably valuable for other reasons that we have not bothered to quantify. Healthy forests ensure clean water supplies and safe habitats for the myriad of species that make up these unique chemical and biological systems. The plants in Malaysia's, the oldest, forests in the world are yet to be studied in detail but they surely harbour an entire pharmacopoeia of cures for all man's ills and needs.

Forests have supported mankind for millennia, and as long as there are healthy forests I believe there will be healthy people.

I appeal to the Prime Minister to realize the impressive National Physical Plan prepared by the Federal Government, by supporting the States financially so that they can protect our forests rather than logging them for short term gain. I believe we face a critical watershed right now: if our forests are allowed to be devastated for the sake of an insatiable world timber market, then the ecology of our tropical paradise may well collapse.

I for one would willingly pay an environmental tax to keep our forests intact.

Angela Hijjas
Member, Malaysian Nature Society

Last updated: 06 May 2006.

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