Editor’s Note: Mainstream environmental organizations propose electric vehicles (EVs) as a solution to every environmental crisis. It is not only untrue, but a delusion. It does not matter to the hundreds of lives lost whether they were killed for extraction of fossil fuel for traditional internal combustion (IC) cars, or for extraction of materials necessary for manufacturing EVs. What matters is that they are dead, never to come back, and that they died so a portion of humans could have convenient mobility. DGR is organizing to oppose car culture: both IC and EVs.
By Benja Weller
I am a rich white man in the richest time, in one of the richest countries in the world (…)
Equality does not exist. You yourself are the only thing that is taken into account.
If people realized that, we’d all have a lot more fun.
ZDF series Exit, 2022, financial manager in Oslo, who illegally traded in salmon
Wir fahr’n fahr’n fahr’n auf der Autobahn
Vor uns liegt ein weites Tal
Die Sonne scheint mit Glitzerstrahl
(We drive drive drive on the highway
Ahead of us lies a wide valley
The sun shines with a glittering beam)
Kraftwerk, Single Autobahn / Morgenspaziergang, 1974
Driving a car is a convenient thing, especially if you live in the countryside. For the first time in my life I drive a car regularly, after 27 years of being “carless”, since it was left to me as a passenger. It’s a small Suzuki Celerio, which I call Celery, and fortunately it doesn’t consume much. Nevertheless, I feel guilty because I know how disturbing the engine noise and exhaust fumes are for all living creatures when I press the gas pedal.
So far, I have managed well by train, bus and bicycle and have saved a lot of money. As a photographer, I used to take the train, then a taxi to my final destination in the village and got to my appointments on time. Today, setting off spontaneously and driving into the unknown feels luxurious.
However, my new sense of freedom is in stark contrast to my understanding of an intact environment: clean air, pedestrians and bicyclists are our role models, children can play safely outside. A naive utopia? According to the advertising images of the car industry, it seems as if electric cars are the long-awaited solution: A meadow with wind turbines painted on an electric car makes you think everything will be fine.
“Naturally by it’s very nature.” says the writing on an EV of the German Post, Neunkirchen, Siegerland (Photo by Benja Weller)
In Germany, the car culture (or rather the car cult) rules over our lives so much that not even a speed limit on highways can be achieved. The car industry has been receiving subsidies from the government for decades and journalists are ridiculed when they write about subsidies for cargo bikes.
Right now, this industry is getting a green makeover: quiet electric cars that don’t emit bad air and are “CO2 neutral” are supposed to drive us and subsequent generations into an environmentally friendly, economically strong future. On Feb. 15, 2023, the green party Die Grünen published in its blog that the European Union will phase out the internal combustion engine by 2035: “With the approval of the EU Parliament on Feb. 14, 2023, the transformation of the European automotive industry will receive a reliable framework. All major car manufacturers are already firmly committed to a future with battery-electric drives. The industry now has legal and planning certainty for further investment decisions, for example in setting up its own battery production. The drive turnaround toward climate-friendly vehicles will create future-proof jobs in Europe.”
That’s good news – of course for the automotive industry. All the old cars that will be replaced with new ones by 2035 will bring in more profit than old cars that will be driven until they expire. That the EU along with the car producers, are becoming environmentalists out of the blue is hard to believe, especially when you see what cars drive on German roads.
In recent years, a rather opulent trend became apparent: cars with combustion engines became huge in size and gasoline consumption increased, all in times of ecological collapse and global warming. These oversized SUVs are actually called sport-utility vehicles, even if you only drive them to get beer at the gas station. Small electric cars seem comfortable enough and have a better environmental footprint than larger SUVs. But the automotive industry is not going to let the new electromobility business go to waste that easily and is offering expensive electric SUVs: The Mercedes EQB 350 4matic, for example, which weighs 2.175 tons and has a 291-hp engine, costs €59,000 without deducting the e-car premium.
Comparing the Citroen 2CV and the Renault Zoe electric car shows that the Zoe uses about 8 times more kinetic energy. (Graph by Frederic Moreau)
If we look at all the production phases of a car and not just classify it according to its CO2 emmissions, the negative impact of the degradation of all the raw materials needed to build the car becomes visible. This is illustrated by the concept of ecological backpack, invented by Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek, former head of the Material Flows and Structural Change Department at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy. On the Wuppertal Institute’s website, one can read that “for driving a car, not only the car itself and the gasoline consumption are counted, but also proportionally, for example, the iron ore mine, the steel mill and the road network.”
“In general, mining, the processing of ores and their transport are among the causes of the most serious regional environmental problems. Each ton of metal carries an ecological backpack of many tons, which are mined as ore, contaminated and consumed as process water, and weigh in as material turnover of the various means of transport,” the Klett-Verlag points out.
Car production requires large quantities of steel, rubber, plastic, glass and rare earths. Roads and infrastructure suitable for cars and trucks must be built from concrete, metal and tar. Electric cars, even if they do not emit CO2 from the exhaust, are no exception. Added to this is the battery, for which electricity is needed that is generated at great material expense, a never-ending cycle of raw material extraction, raw material consumption and waste production.
Power generation sources for electric vehicles (Graph by Frederic Moreau)
Lithium is a component of batteries needed for electric cars. For the production of these batteries and electric motors, raw materials are used “that are in any case finite, in many cases already available today with limited reserves, and whose extraction is very often associated with environmental destruction, child labor and overexploitation,” as Winfried Wolf writes in his book Mit dem Elektroauto in die Sackgasse, Warum E-Mobilität den Klimawandel beschleunigt (With the electric vehicle into the impasse, why e-mobility hastens climate change).
What happens behind the scenes of electric mobility, which is touted as “green,” can be seen in the U.S. campaign Protect Thacker Pass. In northern Nevada, a state in the western U.S., resistance is stirring against the construction of an open-pit mine by the Canadian company Lithium Americas, where lithium is to be mined. Here, a small group of activists, indigenous peoples and local residents have united to raise awareness of the destructive effects of lithium mining for electric car batteries and to prevent the lithium mine in the long term with the Protect Thacker Pass campaign.
Thacker Pass is a desert area (also called Peehee muh’huh in the native language of the Northern Paiute) that was originally home to the indigenous peoples of the Northern Paiute, Western Shoshone, and Winnemuca Tribes. The barren landscape is still home to some 300 species of animals and plants, including the endangered Kings River pyrg freshwater snail, jack rabbit, coyote, bighorn sheep, golden eagle, sage grouse, and pronghorn, and is home to large areas of sage brush on which the sage grouse feeds 70-75% of the time, and the endangered Crosby’s buckwheat.
For Lithium Americas, Thacker Pass is “one of the largest known lithium resources in the United States.” The Open-pit mining would break ground on a cultural memorial commemorating two massacres perpetrated against indigenous peoples in the 19th century and before. Evidence of a rich historical heritage is brought there by adjacent caves with burial sites, finds of obsidian processing, and 15,000-year-old petroglyphs. For generations, this site has been used by the Northern Paiute and Western Shoshone tribes for ceremonies, traditional gathering and hunting, and educating young Native people. Now it appears that the history of the colonization of Thacker Pass is repeating itself.
According to research by environmental activists, the lithium mine would lower the water table by 10 meters in one of the driest areas in the U.S., as it is expected to use 6.4 billion gallons of water per year for the next 40 years. This would be certain death for the Kings River pyrg freshwater snail. Mining one ton of lithium generally consumes 1.9 million liters of water at a time when there is a global water shortage.
The mine would discharge uranium, antimony, sulfuric acid and other hazardous substances into the groundwater. This would be a major threat to animal and plant species and also to the local population. Their CO2 emissions would come up to more than 150,000 tons per year, about 2.3 tons of CO2 for every ton of lithium produced. So much for CO2-neutral production! Thanks to a multi-billion dollar advertising industry, mining projects are promoted as sustainable with clever phrases like “clean energy” and “green technology”.
About half of the local indigenous inhabitants are against the lithium mine. The other half are in favor of the project, hoping for a way out of financial hardship through better job opportunities. Lithium Americas’ announcement that it will bring an economic boost to the region sounds promising when you look at the job market there. But there’s no guarantee that working conditions will be fair and jobs will be payed well. According to Derrick Jensen, jobs in the mining industry are highly exploitative and comparable to conditions in slavery.
Oro Verde, The Tropical Forest Foundation, explains: “With the arrival of mining activities, local social structures are also changing: medium-term social consequences include alcohol and drug problems in the mining regions, rape and prostitution, as well as school dropouts and a shift in career choices among the younger generation. Traditional professions or (subsistence) agriculture are no longer of interest to young people. Young men in particular smell big money in the mines, so school dropouts near mines are also very common.”
Seemingly paradoxically, modern industrial culture promotes a rural exodus, which in turn serves as an argument for the construction of mines that harm the environment and people. Indigenous peoples have known for millennia how to be locally self-sufficient and feed their families independently of food imports. This autonomy is being repeatedly snatched away from them.
Erik Molvar, wildlife biologist and chair of the Western Watersheds Project, says of the negative impacts of lithium mining in Thacker Pass that “We have a responsibility as a society to avoid wreaking ecological havoc as we transition to renewable technologies. If we exacerbate the biodiversity crisis in a sloppy rush to solve the climate crisis, we risk turning the Earth into a barren, lifeless ball that can no longer sustain our own species, let alone the complex and delicate web of other plants and animals with which we share this planet.”
We share this planet with nonhuman animal athletes: The jack rabbit has a size of about 50cm (1.6 feet), can reach a speed of up to 60 km/h (37mph) and jump up to six meters (19.7 feet) high from a standing position. In the home of the jack rabbit, 25% of the world’s lithium deposits are about to be mined. To produce one ton of lithium, between 110 and 500 tons of earth have to be moved per day. Since lithium is only present in the clay rock in a proportion of 0.2-0.9%, it is dissolved out of the clay rock with the help of sulfuric acid.
According to the Environmental Impact Statement from the Thacker Pass Mine (EIS), approximately 75 trucks are expected to transport the required sulfur each day to convert it to sulfuric acid in a production facility built on site. This means that 5800 tons of sulfuric acid would be left as toxic waste per day. Sulfur is a waste product of the oil industry. How convenient, then, that the oil industry can simply continue to do “business as usual.”
Nevada Lithium, another company that operates lithium mines in Nevada states: “Electric vehicles (EVs) are here. The production of lithium for the batteries they use is one of the newest and most important industries in the world. China currently dominates the market, and the rest of the world, including the U.S., is now responding to secure its lithium supply.” The demand for lithium is causing its prices to skyrocket: Since the demand for lithium for the new technologies is high and the profit margin is 46% according to Spiegel, every land available will be used to mine lithium.
Lithium production worldwide would have to increase by 400% to meet the growing demand. With this insane growth rate as a goal, Lithium Americas has begun initial construction at Thacker Pass on March 02, 2023. But environmentalists are not giving up, they are holding meetings, educating people about the destructive effects of lithium mining, and taking legal action against the construction of the mine.
Let’s take a look at the production of German electric cars.
Meanwhile, this is the third attempt to bring electric cars to the market in Germany. In the early 20th century, Henry Ford’s internal combustion engine cars replaced electric-powered cars on the roads.
“In fact, three decades ago, there were similar debates about the electric car as today. In 1991, various models of electric vehicles were produced in Germany and Switzerland,” writes Winfried Wolf. “At that time, it was firmly assumed that the leading car companies would enter into the construction of electric cars on a large scale.”
He goes on to write about a four-year test on the island of Rügen that tested 60 electric cars, including models by VW, Opel, BMW and Daimler-Benz passenger cars from 1992 to 1996. The cost was 60 million Deutsche Mark. The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IFEU) in Heidelberg, commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Research, concluded that electric cars consume between 50 percent (frequent drivers) and 400 percent more primary energy per kilometer than comparable cars with internal combustion engines. The test report states that the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) in Berlin also sees its rejection of the electric car strategy confirmed.
There is no talk of these test results in times of our current economic crisis: also German landscapes and its water bodies must make way for a “green” economic policy. We can see the destructive effects of electric car production centers in the example of Grünheide, a town in Brandenburg 30 km from Berlin.
Manu Hoyer, together with other environmentalists in the Grünheide Citizens’ Initiative, rebel against the man who wants to discover life on other planets because the Earth is not enough: Elon Musk. She explains in an article by Frank Brunner in the magazine Natur how Tesla proceeded to build the Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg with supposedly 12,000 employees: First, they deforested before there was even a permit, and when it was clear that the electric car factory would be built, Tesla planted new little trees elsewhere as compensation.
The neutral word “deforestation” does not explain the cruel process behind it: Wildlife have their habitat in trees, shrubs and in burrows deep in the earth. In the Natur article, Manu Hoyer recalls that the sky darkened “with ravens waiting to devour the dead animals among the felled trees.”
In the book The Day the World Stops Shopping, J.B. MacKinnon describes, based on a study of clearing in Australia, that the scientific consensus is that the majority, and in some cases all, of the individuals living at a site will die when the vegetation disappears.
It doesn’t sound pretty, but it’s the reality when you read that animals are “crushed, impaled, mauled or buried alive, among other things. They suffer internal bleeding, broken bones or flee into the street where they are run over.” Many would stubbornly resist giving up their habitat.
In this, they are like humans. Nobody gives up her piece of land or his house without a fight when it is taken away from him; animals and humans both love the good life. But the conditions of wild animals play no role in our civil society, they should be available anytime to be exlpoited for our needs.
In order not to incite nature lovers, legal regulations are supposed to lull them into the belief that what is happening here is morally right. Behind this is a calculus by the large corporations, which in return for symbolic gestures can continue the terror against nature blamelessly.
In December 2022, Tesla was granted permission to buy another 100 hectares of forest to expand the car factory site to 400 hectares. The entire site had long been available for new industrial projects, although it is also a drinking water protection area. The Gigafactory uses 1.4 million cubic meters of water annually in a federate state plagued by drought.
Manu Hoyer tells Deutschlandfunk radio that dangerous chemicals are said to have leaked only recently and contaminated firefighting water seeped into the groundwater during a fire last fall. Another environmentalist, Steffen Schorcht, who studied biocybernetics and medical technology, criticizes local politicians for their lethargy in the face of environmental destruction. He sees no other way to fight back than to join forces with other citizens and international organizations outside of politics.
The beneficiaries are not the people who make up the bulk of the population. Tesla cars go to drivers who are happy to spend 57,000€ for a car with a maximum of 535 horsepower.
I can still remember how, as a child, I used to drive with my parents on vacation to the south of France, Italy or Austria in the Citroën 2CV model (two horsepower). Such a car trip was more adventure than luxury, but the experiences during the simple camping vacations in Europe’s nature have remained formative childhood memories.
The author sitting on the hood of a Citroën 2CV in Tuscany, Italy, 1989 (Photo: private)
Today, we have to go a big step further than just living a “simple life” individually. The car industry is pressing the gas pedal, taking the steering wheel out of our hands and driving us into the ditch. It’s time to get out, move our feet and stand up against the car industry.
The BDI, Federation of German Industries, writes in its 2017 position paper on the interlocking of raw materials and trade policy in relation to the technologies of the future that without raw materials there would be no digitalization, no Industry 4.0 and no electromobility. This statement confirms that our western lifestyle can only be financed through the destruction of the last natural habitats on Earth.
The mining of lithium and other so-called “raw materials” for new technologies is related to our culture, which imposes a techno-dystopia on the functioning organism Earth, that nullifies all biological facts. If we want to save the world, it seems to me, we should not become lobbyists for the electric car industry. Rather, we should organize collectively, learn from indigenous peoples, defend the water, the air, the soil, the plants, the wildlife, and everyone we love. The brave environmentalists in Grünheide and Thacker Pass are showing us how.
Homo sapiens have done well without cars for 200,000 years and will continue to do so. All we need is the confidence that our feet will carry us.
Wir fahr’n fahr’n fahr’n auf der Autobahn, Kraftwerk buzzed at the time
as an ode to driving a car
I glide over the asphalt to the points in lonely nature,
give myself a time-out from the confines of the small town
Bus schedules in German villages are an old joke
Buy me a Mercedes Benz, cried Janis Joplin devotedly,
without an expensive car, life is only half as valuable
Car-free Sundays during the oil crisis as a nostalgic anecdote
Driving means freedom and compulsion at the same time, asphalt is forced upon topsoil
with millions of living beings per tablespoon of earth
You must go everywhere: To the supermarket, to school, to work, to the store,
to the club, to friends, and to the trail park
Be yourself! they tell you, but without a car you’re not yourself,
on foot with a lower social status than on wheels
The speed limit dismissed each time, which party stands for the wild nature,
our ancient living room? Don’t vote for them, they deceive too
Believe yourself! they say, but what else can you believe, grown up believing
that this civilization is the only right one
Drive, drive, drive and the airstream flies in your hair –
Freedom, the one moment you have left
Featured image: A view of Thacker Pass by Max Wilbert
Editor’s Note: This is an op-ed written by Jaedin Medicine Elk, who is the co-founder and vice-president of Roam Free Nation. She writes about the continued slaughter of migratory buffalo.
Thirty percent of America’s last wild migratory buffalo have been removed from the population.
On Saturday, March 18th, Yellowstone National Park released the latest report of bison slaughter and removal operations on the Interagency Bison Management Plan website. The report shows that the slaughter of Yellowstone’s bison continues, including the killing of pregnant females who are just weeks away from giving birth.
As of Saturday, March 18th, 1,814 buffalo have been killed or otherwise removed from the population. That is 30% of the entire population of Yellowstone buffalo, which was at 6,000 in August of last year. Unless Yellowstone takes action now, this will be the most buffalo taken in a season since the deadly slaughters of the late 1800’s. The firing-line style “hunt” at the boundary of Yellowstone has taken the lives of 1,067 buffalo. At least 349 of these were adult females, and nearly every one of those females will have been pregnant. That’s 349 calves that will never be born.
When there’s thirty hunters there from ten different tribes, it turns into a competition to see who can get a buffalo, causing hunters to start firing into family groups hoping they kill a buffalo. It seems the new ‘relationship’ is hunting them to near-extinction because our treaty rights are more important than the well-being of a strong buffalo population.
The billboards put up by The Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Roam Free Nation continue to draw attention to the hunt – there are now five billboards across Montana with more on the way. Our message: “There is no hunt. It’s slaughter.” will now reach people in Helena, Billings, Belgrade, and Livingston, Montana.
Yellowstone claims they have no control over what happens to buffalo once they leave the park, and they have been trying to pass the blame for the unprecedented slaughter. But Yellowstone has trapped 781 buffalo at the Stephens Creek Capture Facility inside the park. Of these; 88 were shipped to slaughter (including 70 adult females, most likely pregnant); 282 have been sentenced to a life of domestication in the quarantine program, never to be wild again; and only 34 have been released. Yellowstone continues to hold 374 for “release or slaughter” – so they cannot claim they have no control over their fate..
These dire numbers get even worse when the natural winter kill is taken into account. Yellowstone estimates that 9 out of every 100 adult bison die over the winter on an average year, and with a winter as harsh as this one has been, those numbers can be expected to rise. The state of Montana needs to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the impact of this bison slaughter on grizzlies, since winterkill bison carrion are an important food source for grizzlies, especially since grizzlies’ other main food sources, whitebark pine nuts and Yellowstone cutthroat trout have both been decimated.
The “hunt” has been, and continues to be, an irresponsible slaughter that disregards the very survival of the population. The fact that Yellowstone has captured, slaughtered, and consigned to quarantine another huge group of buffalo only compounds the cost to the herds. How can those doing the bulk of the killing say that they want more buffalo on a larger landscape? How can Yellowstone say the park could host 10,000 plus buffalo while they contribute to removing 30% of the herd? When does it end? When the buffalo are gone?
Editor’s Note: Taking the context of Maryland’s forests, the following piece analyses how the mainstream environmental movement and pro-industry management actors have used deliberately misinterpreting to outright creation of information to justify commercial activities at the expense of forests. Industrial deforestation is harmful for the forests and the planet. The fact that this obvious piece of information should even be stated to educated adults affirms the successful (and deceitful) framing of biomass as an environmentally friendly way out of climate crisis. The same goes for deep sea mining.
By Austin
Most would agree that we live in an age of multiple compounding catastrophes, planetary in scale. There is controversy, however, regarding their interrelationships as well as their causes. That controversy is largely manufactured. In the following pages I will describe the state of “forestry” in the state of Maryland, USA, and connect that to regional, national, and international stirrings of which we should all be aware. I will continue to examine connections between international conservation organizations, the co-optation of the environmental movement, the youth climate movement, and the financialization of nature. Full disclosure. I am writing this to human beings on behalf of all the non-human beings and those yet unborn who are recognized as objects to be converted to capital or otherwise used by the dominant culture. I am not a capitalist. I am a human being. I occupy unceded land of unrecognized peoples which is characterized by poisoned air, water and soil, devastated forest ecosystems, decapitated mountains, and collapsing biodiversity. I am of this earth. It is to the land, water and all of life that I direct my affection and gratitude as well as my loyalty.
Last winter, amid deep concerns about the present mass extinction and an unshakeable feeling of helplessness, I began to search for answers and ecological allies. I compiled a running list of local, regional, national, and international organizations that seemed to have at least some interest in the environment. The list quickly swelled to hundreds of entries. I attempted to assess the organizations based upon their mission, values, goals, publications and other such things. I hoped that the best of the best of these groups could be brought together around ecological restoration and the long-term benefits of clean air, water, healthy soil supporting vigorous growth of food and medicine, and rebounding biodiversity throughout our Appalachian homeland. Progress was and continues to be slow. Along the way, I encountered an open stakeholder consultation (survey) regarding a risk assessment of Maryland’s forests. As an ethnobotanist with special interests in forest ecology and stewardship, Indigenous societies and their traditional ecological knowledge, symbiotic relationships, and intergenerational sustainability, I realize that my unique perspectives could be helpful to the team conducting the assessment. I proceeded to submit thought provoking responses to each question. Because the consultation period was exceedingly brief and outreach to stakeholders was weak at best, and because the wording of the questions felt out of alignment with the purported purpose of the survey, I sensed that something was awry. So I saved my answers and resolved to stay abreast of developments.
Summer came around, I became busy, and the risk assessment survey faded from my mind until a friend recently emailed me a draft of the document along with notice of a second stakeholder consultation and the question: should we respond? This friend happens to own land registered in the Maryland Tree Farm Program. The selective outreach to forest landowners with large acreage was an indication as to who is and who is not considered a “stakeholder” by the committee.
After reviewing the Consultation Draft: A Sustainability Risk Assessment of Maryland’s Forests I felt sick. Low to Negligible was the risk assignment for every single criteria. I re-read the document – section by section – noting the ambiguity, legalese and industry jargon, lack of definitions, contradictory statements, false claims, poorly referenced and questionable sources, and more. Have you heard of greenwashing? Every tactic was represented in the 82 page document. Naturally, then, I tracked down and reviewed many of the referenced materials and I then investigated the contributors and funders of the report.
To understand the Sustainability Risk Assessment of Maryland’s Forests, one must also review the <a href=”https://ago-item-storage.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/90fbcb6e1acd4f019ad608f77ac2f19c/Final_Forestry_EAS_FullReport_10-2021.pdfMaryland Forestry Economic Adjustment Strategy, part one and two of Maryland Department of Natural Resources Forest Action Plan, and Seneca Creek Associates, LLC’s Assessment of Lawful Sourcing and Sustainability: US Hardwood Exports, and of course American Forests Foundation’sFinal Report to the Dutch Biomass Certification Foundation (DBC) for Implementation of the AFF’s 2018 DBC Stimulation Program in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, and Louisiana. Additionally, it is helpful to note that the project development lead and essential supporters each operate independent consultancies that: offer “technical and strategic support in navigating complex forest sustainability and climate issues,” “provide(s) services in natural resource economics and international trade,” and “produced a comprehensive data research study for the Dutch Biomass Certification Foundation on the North American forest sector,” according to their websites.
Noting, furthemore, that on the Advisory Committee sits a member of the Maryland Forests Association (MFA). On their website they state: “We are proud to represent forest product businesses, forest landowners, loggers and anyone with an interest in Maryland’s forests…” They also state: “Currently, Maryland’s Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard uses a limiting definition of qualifying biomass that makes it difficult for wood to compete against other forms of renewable energy,” oh yes, and this extraordinarily deceptive bit from a recent publication, There’s More to our Forests than Trees:
When the tree dies, it decays and releases carbon dioxide and methane back into the atmosphere. However, we can postpone this process and extend the duration of carbon storage. If we harvest the tree and build a house or even make a chair with the wood, the carbon remains stored in these products for far longer than the life of the tree itself! This has tremendous implications for addressing the growing levels of carbon dioxide, which lead to increased warming of the earth’s atmosphere. It means harvesting trees for long-term uses helps mitigate climate change. We can even take advantage of the fact that trees sequester carbon at different rates throughout their lifespan to maximize the carbon storage potential. Trees are more active in sequestering carbon when they are younger. As forests age, growth slows down and so does their ability to store carbon. At some point, a stand of trees reaches an equilibrium where the growth and carbon-storing ability equals the trees that die and release carbon each year. Thus, a younger, more vigorous stand of trees stores carbon at a much higher rate than an older one.
Just in case you were convinced by that last bit, my studies in botany and forest ecology support the following finding:
“In 2014, a study published in Nature by an international team of researchers led by Nathan Stephenson, a forest ecologist with the United States Geographical Survey, found that a typical tree’s growth continues to accelerate (emphasis mine) throughout its lifetime, which in the coastal temperate rainforest can be 800 years or more.
Stephenson and his team compiled growth measurements of 673,046 trees belonging to 403 tree species from tropical, subtropical and temperate regions across six continents. They found that the growth rate for most species “increased continuously” as they aged.
“This finding contradicts the usual assumption that tree growth eventually declines as trees get older and bigger,” Stephenson says. “It also means that big, old trees are better at absorbing carbon from the atmosphere than has been commonly assumed.” (Tall and old or dense and young: Which kind of forest is better for the climate?).
Al Goertzl, president of Seneca Creek (a shadowy corporation with a benign name that has no website and pumps out reports justifying the exploitation of forests) who is featured in MFA’s Faces of Forestry, wouldn’t know the difference, he identifies as a forest economist. In another publication marketing North American Forests he is credited with the statements: “There exists a low risk that U.S. hardwoods are produced from controversial sources as defined in the Chain of Custody standard of the Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).” and “The U.S. hardwood-producing region can be considered low risk for illegal and non-sustainable hardwood sourcing as a result of public and private regulatory and non-regulatory programs.” The report then closes with this shocker: “SUSTAINABILITY MEANS USING NORTH AMERICAN HARDWOODS.”
Why are forest-pimps conducting the risk assessment upon which future decisions critical to the long-term survival of our native ecosystem will be based? What is really going on here?
A noteworthy find from Forest2Market helps to clarify things:
“Europe’s largest single source of renewable energy is sustainable biomass, which is a cornerstone of the EU’s low-carbon energy transition […] For the last decade, forest resources in the US South have helped to meet these goals—as they will in the future. This heavily forested region exported over <7 million metric tons of sustainable wood pellets in 2021 – primarily to the EU and UK – and is on pace to exceed that number in 2022 (emphasis mine) due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, which has pinched trade flows of industrial wood pellets from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.”
Sustainability means using North American hardwoods.
If it has not yet become clear, the stakeholder consultation for the forest sustainability risk assessment document which inspired this piece was but a small, local, component of an elaborate sham enabling the world to burn and otherwise consume the forests of entire continents – in comfort and with the guilt-neutralizing reassurance that: carbon is captured, rivers are purified, forests are healthy and expanding, biodiversity is thriving and protected, and “the rights of Indigenous and Traditional Peoples are upheld” as a result of our consumption. (FSC-NRA-USA, p71) That is the first phase of the plan – manufacturing / feigning consent. Next the regulatory hurdles must be eliminated or circumvented. Cue the Landscape Management Plan (LMP).
“Taken together, the actions taken by AFF [American Forest Foundation] over the implementation period have effectively set the stage for the implementation of a future DBC project to promote and expand SDE+1 qualifying certification systems for family landowners in the Southeast US and North America, generally.”
“As outlined in our proposal, research by AFF and others has demonstrated that the chief barrier for most landowners to participating in forest certification is the requirement to have a forest management plan. To address this significant challenge, AFF has developed an innovative tool, the Landscape Management Plan (LMP). An LMP is a document produced through a multi-stakeholder process that identifies, based on an analysis of geospatial data and existing regional conservation plans, forest conservation priorities at a landscape scale and management actions that can be applied at a parcel scale. This approach also utilizes publicly available datasets on a range of forest resources, including forest types, soils, threatened and endangered species, cultural resources and others, as well as social data regarding landowner motivations and practices. As a document, it meets all of the requirements for ATFS certification and is fully supported by PEFC and could be used in support of other programs such as other certification systems, alongside ATFS. Once an LMP has been developed for a region, and once foresters are trained in its use, the LMP allows landowners to use the landscape plan and derive a customized set of conservation practices to implement on their properties. This eliminates the need for a forester to write a complete individualized plan, saving the forester time and the landowner money. The forester is able to devote the time he or she would have spent writing the plan interacting with the landowner and making specific management recommendations, and / or visiting additional landowners.
With DBC support, AFF sought to leverage two existing LMPs in Alabama and Florida and successfully expanded certification in those states. In addition, AFF combined DBC funds with pre-existing commitments to contract with forestry consultants to design new LMPs in Arkansas and Louisiana. DBC grant funds were used to cover LMP activities between July 1, 2018 and December 31, 2018 for these states, namely stakeholder engagement, two stakeholder workshops (one in each state Arkansas and Louisiana) and staffing.” (American Forest Foundation, 2, 7).
It is clear that global interests / morally bankrupt humans have been busy ignoring the advice of scientists, altering definitions, removing barriers to standardization / certification, and manufacturing consent; thus enabling the widespread burning of wood / biomass (read: earth’s remaining forests) to be recognized as renewable, clean, green-energy. Imagine: mining forests as the solution to deforestation, biodiversity loss, pollution, climate change, and economic stagnation. Meanwhile, mountains are scalped, rivers are poisoned, forests are gutted, biological diversity is annihilated, and the future of all life on earth is sold under the guise of sustainability.
Sustainability means USING North American hardwoods!
The perpetual mining of forests is merely one “natural climate solution” promising diminishing returns for Life on earth. While the rush is on to secure the necessary public consent (but not of the free, prior, and informed variety) to convert the forests of the world into clean energy (sawdust pellets) and novel materials, halfway around the planet and 5 kilometers below the surface of the Pacific another “nature based solution” that will utterly devastate marine ecosystems and further endanger life on earth – deep sea mining (DSM) – is employing the same strategy. Like the numerous other institutions that are formally entrusted with the protection of forests, water, air, biodiversity, and human rights, deep sea mining is overseen by an institution which has contradictory directives – to protect and to exploit. The International Seabed Authority (ISA) has already issued 17 exploration contracts and will begin issuing 30-year exploitation contracts across the 1.7 million square mile Clarion-Clipperton zone by 2024 – despite widespread calls for a ban / moratorium and fears of apocalyptic planetary repercussions. After decades of environmental protection measures enacted by thousands of agencies and institutions throwing countless billions at the “problems,” every indicator of planetary health that I am aware of has declined. It follows, then, that these institutions are incapable of exercising caution, acting ethically, protecting ecosystems, biodiversity or indigenous peoples, holding thieves, murderers and polluters accountable, or even respecting their own regulatory processes. Haeckel sums up industry regulation nicely in a recent nature article regarding the nascent DSM industry:
“…Amid this dearth of data, the ISA is pushing to finish its regulations next year. Its council met this month in Kingston, Jamaica, to work through a draft of the mining code, which covers all aspects — environmental, administrative and financial — of how the industry will operate. The ISA says that it is listening to scientists and incorporating their advice as it develops the regulations. “This is the most preparation that we’ve ever done for any industrial activity,” says Michael Lodge, the ISA’s secretary-general, who sees the mining code as giving general guidance, with room to develop more progressive standards over time.
And many scientists agree. “This is much better than we have acted in the past on oil and gas production, deforestation or disposal of nuclear waste,” says Matthias Haeckel, a biogeochemist at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany.” (Seabed Mining Is Coming — Bringing Mineral Riches and Fears of Epic Extinctions).
Of course, this “New Deal for Nature” requires “decarbonization” while producing billions of new electric cars, solar panels, wind mills, and hydroelectric dams. The metals for all the new batteries and techno-solutions have to come from somewhere, right? According to Global Sea Mineral Resources:
“Sustainable development, the growth of urban infrastructure and clean energy transition are combining to put enormous pressure on metal supplies.
Over the next 30 years the global population is set to expand by two billion people. That’s double the current populations of North, Central and South America combined. By 2050, 66 percent of us will live in cities. To support this swelling urban population, a city the size of Dubai will need to be built every month until the end of the century. This is a staggering statistic. At the same time, there is the urgent need to decarbonise the planet’s energy and transport systems. To achieve this, the world needs millions more wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicle batteries.
Urban infrastructure and clean energy technologies are extremely metal intensive and extracting metal from our planet comes at a cost. Often rainforests have to be cleared, mountains flattened, communities displaced and huge amounts of waste – much of it toxic – generated.
That is why we are looking at the deep sea as a potential alternative source of metals.”
Did you notice how there is scarcely room to imagine other possibilities (such as reducing our material and energy consumption, reorganizing our societies within the context of our ecosystems, voluntarily decreasing our reproductive rate, and sharing resources) within that narrative?
Do you still wonder why the processes of approving seabed mining in international waters and certifying an entire continent’s forests industry to be sustainable seem so similar? They are elements of the same scheme: a strategy to accumulate record profits through the valuation and exploitation of nature – aided and abetted by the non-profit industrial complex.
“The non-profit industrial complex (or the NPIC) is a system of relationships between: the State (or local and federal governments), the owning classes, foundations, and non-profit/NGO social service & social justice organizations that results in the surveillance, control, derailment, and everyday management of political movements.
The state uses non-profits to: monitor and control social justice movements; divert public monies into private hands through foundations; manage and control dissent in order to make the world safe for capitalism; redirect activist energies into career-based modes of organizing instead of mass-based organizing capable of actually transforming society; allow corporations to mask their exploitative and colonial work practices through “philanthropic” work; and encourage social movements to model themselves after capitalist structures rather than to challenge them.” (Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex | INCITE!).
The emergence of the NPIC has profoundly influenced the trajectory of global capitalism largely by inventing new conservation and the youth climate movement –
The “movement” that evades all systemic drivers of climate change and ecological devastation (militarism, capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, patriarchy, etc.). […] The very same NGOs which set the Natural Capital agenda and protocols (via the Natural Capital Coalition, which has absorbed TEEB2) – with the Nature Conservancy and We Mean Business at the helm, are also the architects of the term “natural climate solutions”. (THE MANUFACTURING OF GRETA THUNBERG – FOR CONSENT: NATURAL CLIMATE MANIPULATIONS [VOLUME II, ACT VI]).
In the words of artist Hiroyuki Hamada:
“What’s infuriating about manipulations by the Non Profit Industrial Complex is that they harvest the goodwill of the people, especially young people. They target those who were not given the skills and knowledge to truly think for themselves by institutions which are designed to serve the ruling class. Capitalism operates systematically and structurally like a cage to raise domesticated animals. Those organizations and their projects which operate under false slogans of humanity in order to prop up the hierarchy of money and violence are fast becoming some of the most crucial elements of the invisible cage of corporatism, colonialism and militarism.” (THE MANUFACTURING OF GRETA THUNBERG – FOR CONSENT: THE GREEN NEW DEAL IS THE TROJAN HORSE FOR THE FINANCIALIZATION OF NATURE [ACT V]).
We must understand that the false solutions proposed by these institutions will suck the remaining life out of this planet before you can say fourth industrial revolution.
“That is, the privatization, commodification, and objectification of nature, global in scale. That is, emerging markets and land acquisitions. That is, “payments for ecosystem services”. That is the financialization of nature, the corporate coup d’état of the commons that has finally come to wait on our doorstep.” (THE MANUFACTURING OF GRETA THUNBERG – FOR CONSENT: NATURAL CLIMATE MANIPULATIONS [VOLUME II, ACT VI].
An important point must never get lost amongst the swirling jargon, human-supremacy and unbridled greed: If we do not drastically reduce our material and energy consumption – rapidly – then We (that is, all living beings on the planet including humans) have no future.
In summary, decades of social engineering have set the stage for the blitzkrieg underway against our life-giving and sustaining mother planet in the name of sustainability industrial civilization. The success of the present assault requires the systematic division, distraction, discouragement, detention, and demonization (reinforced by powerful disinformation) and ultimately the destruction of all those who would resist. Remember also: capital, religion, race, gender, class, ideology, occupation, private property, and so forth, these are weapons of oppression wielded against us by the dominant patriarchal, colonizing, ecocidal, empire. That is not who We are. Our causes, our struggles, and our futures are one. Unless we refuse to play by their rules and coordinate our efforts, We will soon lose all that can be lost.
Learn more about deep sea mining (here); sign the Blue Planet Society petition (here) and the Pacific Blue Line statement (here). Tell the forest products industry that they do not have our consent and that you and hundreds of scientists see through their lies (here); divest from all extractive industry, and invest in its resistance instead (here). Inform yourself, talk to your loved-ones and community members and ask yourselves: what can we do to stop the destruction?
All flourishing is mutual. The inverse is also true.
“…future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than currently believed. The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms—including humanity—is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts […] this dire situation places an extraordinary responsibility on scientists to speak out candidly and accurately when engaging with government, business, and the public.” – Top Scientists: We Face “A Ghastly Future”
—Austin is an ecocentric Appalachian ethnobotanist, gardener, forager, and seed saver. He acknowledges kinship with and responsibility to protect all life, land, water, and future generations—
Editor’s note: The Thacker Pass lithium mine project reflects more than one injustices in the world: greenwashing mines, denying U.S. atrocities against indigenous tribes, grabbing indigenous land against their will, ecocide. This article highlights some of these injustices.
A coalition of conservation groups on Tuesday joined Native American tribes in launching legal challenges to a proposed lithium mine in northern Nevada that critics say was “illegally approved” and will “irreparably damage” the delicate desert ecosystem and land where Indigenous peoples are seeking federal historical recognition of a genocidal massacre perpetrated by U.S. colonizers.
Members of the Western Watersheds Project filed an emergency motion in federal court Tuesday seeking an injunction against the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine in Humboldt County pending action by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to ensure the project—which would tap into the largest known source of lithium in the United States and was approved during the final days of the Trump administration—complies with federal law.
“This mine should not be allowed to destroy public land unless and until the 9th Circuit has determined whether it was legally approved,” Western Watersheds Project staff attorney Talasi Brooks said in a statement announcing the filing.
“There’s no evidence that Lithium Nevada will be able to establish valid mining claims to lands it plans to bury in waste rock and tailings, but the damage will be done regardless,” Brooks added, referring to the subsidiary of Canada-based Lithium Americas that is seeking to build the mine. Lithium is a key component of electric vehicle batteries, cellphones, and laptops.
The emergency motion follows a lawsuit filed last week by the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, Burns Paiute Tribe, and Summit Lake Paiute Tribe in response to U.S. District Judge Miranda Du’s earlier ruling that largely favored Lithium Americas and rejected opponents’ claims that the project would cause “unnecessary and undue degradation” to the environment and wildlife.
Opponents, including the Reno Sparks Indian Colony, promise to continue fight to stop the mine.https://t.co/dLMIGM4puo
“When the decision was made public on the previous lawsuit last week, we said we would continue to advocate for our sacred site PeeHee Mu’Huh. A place where prior to colonization, all our Paiute and Shoshone ancestors lived for countless generations,” Arlan Melendez, chairman of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, said in a statement.
“It’s a place where all Paiute and Shoshone people continue to pray, gather medicines and food, honor our nonhuman relatives, honor our water, honor our way of life, honor our ancestors,” Melendez added.
All three tribes call Thacker Pass PeeHee Mu’Huh, which means “rotten moon”—a name given to honor the dozens and perhaps scores of Northern Paiute men, women, and children who were massacred by Nevada Cavalry on September 12, 1865.
Daylight was just breaking when we came in sight of the Indian camp. All were asleep. We unslung our carbines, loosened our six-shooters, and started into that camp of savages at a gallop, shooting through their wickiups as we came. In a second, sleepy-eyed squaws and bucks and little children were darting about, dazed with the sudden onslaught, but they were shot before they came to their waking senses…
We dismounted to make a closer examination. In one wickiup we found two little papooses still alive. One soldier said, “Make a cleanup. Nits make lice.”
The three tribes assert that all of Thacker Pass should be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Nevada tribes are seeking to add Thacker Pass, a culturally-important area slated for a lithium mine, to the National Register of Historic Places. https://t.co/roF71AYC86
“While Americans tend to focus on only the proud moments of American history, the shameful history of genocide perpetrated by the American government against Native Americas is nevertheless a broad pattern running throughout American history,” Michon Eben, the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony’s cultural resource manager, wrote in a 2022 letter to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
Eben added that the tribe “considers the destruction of its traditional cultural properties for another mine another act of genocide in the broad pattern running throughout American history.”
Indigenous advocates argue that victims of the 1865 massacre were never properly buried, that human remains and artifacts are still being discovered in Thacker Pass, and that federal authorities failed to properly consult tribes on the mine project in violation of the National Historic Preservation Act.
“Part of the federal government’s responsibility is to determine if a proposed mining project may adversely affect historic properties. Historic properties include Native American massacre sites,” Eben toldNevada Current. “The BLM failed in its trust responsibility to tribes and now our ancestors’ final resting place is currently being destroyed at PeeHee Mu’huh.”
“The BLM failed in its trust responsibility to tribes and now our ancestors’ final resting place is currently being destroyed.”
Will Falk, attorney for the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and co-founder of Protect Thacker Pass—which set up a protest camp on the site of the proposed mine—accused BLM officials of lying about the massacre site being located outside the project area.
“The Biden administration and [Interior] Secretary Deb Haaland keep paying lip service to tribal rights and respect for Native Americans,” Falk toldLast Real Indians last year. “Well, now three federally recognized tribes are saying that BLM Winnemucca did not respect tribal rights. It’s time that BLM halts this project so the tribes can be heard.”
Tim Crowley, vice president of government affairs and community relations for Lithium Nevada, argued in a statement that “since we began this project more than a decade ago, we have been committed to doing things right,” and that Du’s ruling “definitively supported the BLM’s consultation process, and we are confident the ruling will be upheld.”
While global demand for lithium is surging, extraction of the metal can have devastating consequences, including destruction of lands and ecosystems and water contamination.
“Global warming is a serious problem and we cannot continue burning fossil fuels, but destroying mountains for lithium is just as bad as destroying mountains for coal,” contends Max Wilbert of Protect Thacker Pass. “You can’t blow up a mountain and call it green.”
Please donate to support the case and fund legal costs!
Editor’s Note: The following is a press release by Roam Free Nation. It describes how the population of wild bison is being targeted and reduced in favor for the livestock industry. Once again, the needs of the natural world is being held secondary to the profit motive of businesses.
GARDINER, MT: On Friday, Yellowstone National Park submitted a report to IBMP.info (the website of the Interagency Bison Management Plan) revealing shocking numbers of Yellowstone’s bison – the country’s last wild migratory buffalo — who have been killed during the so-called hunt, slaughter, and removal for quarantine (domestication). At the time the report was issued, the number of buffalo eliminated from Yellowstone’s population stood at 1,024. That number increases daily, and it’s only early February. This is already the most deadly year for wild buffalo since 2017, and if the killing and capturing continues at this rate, these mis-management actions could remove a third to half of the population.
“This is a global travesty,” said Stephany Seay, co-founder of Roam Free Nation, a Montana-based wildlife and wild lands advocacy group. “This is the last wild, migratory population of American bison left in this country, beloved the world over, who once numbered nearly 70 million strong, and at the beginning of this winter there were barely 6,000. There are nearly 50,000 African elephants left in the world, and they are considered endangered and fiercely protected. Why is our country’s National Mammal not given the same concerns and protections?”
Yellowstone’s report to the Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) can be reviewed here.
At the November Interagency Bison Management Plan meeting, Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Cam Sholly and lead bison biologist Chris Geremia spoke strongly for the small but growing bison population, stating that the park alone could sustain upwards of 10,000. They stood up to the Montana Department of Livestock that wants to drive the population down to 3,000 for the sake of convenience.
“So much for Yellowstone’s good words,” said Cindy Rosin, Board Secretary for Roam Free Nation. “They have shown that it’s just business as usual in Yellowstone, which means doing the dirty work for Montana’s livestock industry.”
“It is so disheartening to see a failed policy continue to be pursued, a policy that was abandoned decades ago for one species, but revived for other species today,” said Lee Fulton, Treasurer for Roam Free Nation. “Bison, elk, and wolves have all been subjected to a firing line mentality once they dare to cross Yellowstone Park’s boundary as they pursue their natural migration.”
Excessive hunting, which is essentially an extension of government slaughter, has claimed the lives of more than 500 wild buffalo in less than two months, with more dying every day. The infamous killing fields of Beattie Gulch in Montana’s Gardiner Basin have seen the worst of the killing spree, when large family groups migrate across Yellowstone’s northern boundary and are gunned down by state and tribal hunters. In the frenzy, many buffalo have been severely wounded and run for the shelter of the park, only to be euthanized by park rangers.
“I don’t know how anyone partnered with the IBMP could say they want more buffalo,” said Jaedin Medicine Elk, a Northern Cheyenne tribal member and co-founder of Roam Free Nation. “That sounds great at the IBMP meetings but looks way different in the field where actions are speaking louder than words. Beattie Gulch hunting field? More like Beattie Guts slaughter field. It’s different when you actually see buffalo you have a relationship with getting killed off. Family groups getting wiped out, pregnant moms young and old getting killed with their babies in gut piles.”
“The hunters are blind to the fact that they are being used as tools by the Montana Department of Livestock to do the bidding of the cattle industry, that opposes wild bison restoring themselves in their native Montana lands,” Seay said. “Anyone who has witnessed even a single day at Beattie Gulch understands this to be a slaughter, a massacre, and not a hunt at all. Just because you have a right, does not make it right.”
As the so-called hunt blasts on, Yellowstone National Park began capturing wild buffalo at their Stephens Creek capture facility, barely a mile from Beattie Gulch. To date, Yellowstone has captured and consigned to slaughter 88 buffalo, with another nearly 400 captured for possible quarantine (domestication).
“People are fooled by the government into thinking that quarantine will eliminate slaughter, which it doesn’t,” said Seay. “Quarantine is a domestication program based on a livestock paradigm, removing wild bison from their wild homelands, tearing apart their families, and ensuring they will never roam free again. It’s another false-positive the government is selling to the public and to tribes.”
At least 340 of the wild buffalo eliminated are adult females, most of them pregnant. Every conservationist knows that if you want to drive a population down, you kill the females. Much like elephants, buffalo are a matriarchal society, so the adult females are the teachers, the wisdom-keepers, the ones who teach even the bulls how to be a successful buffalo. Every hunter or government worker who takes an adult female puts the herds in deeper jeopardy.
The Yellowstone buffalo (bison) populations are the last continuously wild, migratory buffalo who have existed on the landscape since prehistoric times.
Roam Free Nation is a Montana-based, Native led wild buffalo, wildlife, and wild lands advocacy group who speaks from and represents the perspective of wild nature. Their representatives have over 50 years of combined experience in the field monitoring wild bison migration, documenting actions against them, and advocating on their behalf. Contact:
Stephany Seay, Co-founder, Roam Free Nation roamfreenation@gmail.com
Editor’s Note: The following Mongabay article is based on a recent study that found that marginalized subsistence communities are driving deforestation due to poverty. The article also writes that deforestation caused by these communities cannot still be compared to industrial deforestation. It is understandable that basic needs may drive people towards deforestation. But where does the poverty come from? It is unfortunate that the communities that once lived harmoniously with the forests are now doing the opposite. Why are they now unable to do so in the same forests?
It may be that the forests that they live in now do not produce as much as they used to in the past, or that the number of people dependent on the forests now exceeds the carrying capacity of the forests. Both of these are a possibility. Humans are currently in a population overshoot. Forests across the world are being used for industrial purposes, leaving less for the subsistence communities. In addition, the overall destruction of the environment has impacted the health, and hence productivity, of natural communities. In technical terms this is called “absolute poverty,” where a person’s basic needs are unmet. A related concept is that of “relative poverty,” where a person’s income is far less than the societal norms. In this type of poverty, the person thinks of himself/herself as poor in comparison to others he/she is exposed to on a daily basis. Exposure to the industrial culture is a tool that different states have employed to assimilate indigenous populations and, thus, destroy their culture. This turns indigenous cultures against their landbases: harmonious relationships are replaced by exploitative ones. While it is necessary to acknowledge this trend, it is also worth pointing out that a lot of the indigenous communities are risking their lives to protect their landbases.
Subsistence communities can drive forest loss to meet their basic needs when external pressures, poverty and demand for natural resources increase, says a new study unveiling triggers that turn livelihoods from sustainable into deforestation drivers.
The impact of subsistence communities on forest loss has not been quantified to its true extent, but their impact is still minimal compared to that of industry, researchers say.
Deforestation tends to occur through shifts in agriculture practices to meet market demands and intensified wood collecting for charcoal to meet increasing energy needs.
About 90% of people globally living in extreme poverty, often subsistence communities, rely on forests for at least part of their livelihoods—making them the first ones impacted by forest loss.
Subsistence communities, those who live off the forest and lead largely sustainable lifestyles, can actually become drivers of forest loss and degradation under certain circumstances, according to a new study. This happens when external changes put pressure on their traditional lifestyles.
This could be anything from market demands that shift agriculture practices to increased populations in need of resources living in forest areas. These shifts could make communities another alarming source of carbon emissions, say researchers.
Subsistence communities have often been associated with low environmental impact and a small carbon footprint. But as external pressures and demand for natural resources increase, these communities tend to intensify their forest activities to meet their basic needs, at the same time releasing more carbon stocks into the atmosphere from forest destruction, according to researchers.
In the new study published in the journal Carbon Footprints, researchers set out to look at this phenomenon on a global scale. They did a systemic review of 101 scientific reports, all based in the tropics, to see if they could identify the livelihood activities and triggers that lead to forest degradation. Thirty-nine reports are in Africa, 33 in Asia, and 29 in Latin America.
The authors point out that these are the same sustainable communities, such as Indigenous and local people (IPLCs), that will be the first ones impacted by forest loss and climate change, as they continue to depend on these diminishing forests and tend to be materially poor or deprived.
About 90% of people living in extreme poverty depend on forest resources for their survival, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
“At the end of the day, these communities need support, and their impact, I think, while it has not been quantified to its true extent, their impact is still minimal compared to what the energy industry does,” says Wendy Francesconi, author of the report and senior environmental scientist with the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT.
Their initial aim of the research was to collect data about how much forest cover is lost due to sustainable communities, but this proved too challenging to track, says Francesconi. Their impact is minimal and not documented as well as larger scale or industrial drivers of deforestation.
“I think one of the key messages is that we have to start paying more attention to these communities and how to support them better because they also have power in numbers—and impact in numbers,” she tells Mongabay via video call.
The authors identified two main activities the communities engaged in that became the main drivers of forest loss or degradation: intensified wood collecting (particularly for firewood or charcoal) and agriculture.
Other activities include illegal practices such as illicit crops or illegal logging and mining. The latter has been a growing concern for environmentalists who have seen Indigenous communities engage in illegal mining in Brazil and logging in Indonesia to supplement their income.
The factors pushing these changes include increased local population pressures in conjunction with changing lifestyles, availability of alternative labor, land tenure rights, market access, governance, migration, and access to technology.
External factors were highly context-dependent, however, and not all of them led to forest loss in all cases. A larger household size, for example, was associated with higher deforestation in most cases; but some case studies showed a higher likelihood for large families to share resources among each other, resulting in lower demand for resources and less forest loss, such as one case in Ethiopia.
It’s important to understand these dynamics so we don’t start to see “a more vicious cycle, where deforestation creates more poverty, then more deforestation, then more poverty, etc.” Martha Vanegas Cubillos, senior research associate at the Alliance for Biodiversity International and CIAT and another author of the study, tells Mongabay via video call.
Changing livelihoods in Indonesia
One of the studies analyzed from Asia looks at the impact of mangrove deforestation in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, and its socioeconomic consequences. The 2016 study identified that the total area of mangroves decreased by 3,344 hectares (8,263 acres), or 66.05%, in the study area of the Takalar District between 1979 and 2011.
The majority of this loss was for the creation of shrimp ponds, mainly driven by local fishermen changing their livelihoods to shrimp farming. There are two reasons for this shift: as an export product, shrimp have more stable prices, but also government incentives, like credit and subsidies, were available for farmers to expand shrimp ponds, says the report.
This forest loss had a number of impacts on the local community, as it reduced the area where they could continue with their traditional use of the mangroves, like collecting firewood, house materials, and fish traps. It also exposed them to coastal erosion and saltwater into their territory, and released the rich carbon stocks stored in the mangrove trees, says the report.
This shift in production made the communities here more vulnerable, as they put all their eggs in one basket, centralizing their earnings in shrimping, and removing the protective cover of the mangroves from climate changes, says Ole Mertz, professor in the department of geosciences and natural resource management at the University of Copenhagen, and one of the authors of the South Sulawesi study.
But Mertz is skeptical that any global generalizations can be made from a literature review alone, referring to the Carbon footprints study, saying these drivers are often context-dependent.
Speaking from his experience working with communities in South East Asia, the most important driver of forest loss by smallholder communities – a term he prefers to ‘sustainable communities’, which he considers an inaccurate generalization – has been the political pressure to develop land to something more productive.
This includes policies to promote industries like palm oil, rubber, or, in the case of South Sulawesi, shrimp ponds, which has more to do with political decisions rather than the community’s socioeconomic situation, he says.
“Poverty might in some cases be driving deforestation, but I think it’s always in combination with other things, with other drivers,” he tells Mongabay.
More energy needs, more deforestation in the DRC
Communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are already feeling these external pressures, says Raymond Achu Samndong, a manager at the Tenure Facility, an IPLC organization based in Sweden.
In his 2018 paper – which was included in the Carbon footprints literature analysis – Samndong and fellow researchers take a closer look at deforestation at the community level in the Bikoro and Gemena regions, two REDD+ project areas in the DRC. After conducting interviews in the communities, 82% of households said they engaged in some type of forest clearing in the year prior to the study, despite the REDD+ incentives not to deforest.
All of them said it was for agriculture purposes, like moving or expanding crop area, while some also said it was for wood collection, either for charcoal production or artisanal logging. Charcoal and firewood are the main sources of energy in the DRC, with only 9% of the population having access to electricity, including in the capital Kinshasa.
As energy needs increase, particularly for businesses and restaurants in the city, the traditional use of charcoal is now a concerning driver of deforestation.
The main decision to clear forests in the REDD+ areas was economic poverty, lack of alternative livelihood or income generation, and lack of basic infrastructure and services, says the study.
Samndong says communities he’s worked with in the DRC are already seeing the effects of climate change, as changing weather patterns have reduced their harvest. They are aware that more deforestation will contribute to climate change and biodiversity loss, but community members tell him they don’t have any economic alternatives, “it’s like a survival strategy,” he tells Mongabay by a video call from his home in Sweden.
Solutions to deforestation should look at all the dimensions and drivers of it, not just depend on one economic incentive, like REDD+, to address it, adds the study. Better land use planning, tenure rights to communities, and more accountable institutions are among the needed solutions, researchers point out.
But Samndong says it’s essential that communities be involved in these plans. Billions of dollars have already been spent on development programs in the region over the years and nothing has changed, he elaborates.
“The problem is that development programs have been very challenging in Congo because they are mostly top-down,” he tells Mongabay, adding local communities still know and understand their local forests better than experts in the capital, or abroad.
Conflict and cash crops in Colombia
Deforestation in Colombia has long been a problem but has skyrocketed since 2016 when the FARC guerrillas and the Colombian government signed peace agreements to try to stem the conflict. Deforestation in parts of Colombia then accelerated—reaching a peak in 2017 with 219,552 hectares (542,524 acres) of forest loss—as the FARCs left many strongholds in the forests and mountainsides, which opened up previously forested areas to illegal economic development, such as growing small coca fields for cocaine production as cash crops.
One study published in 2013 takes a closer look at the conditions under which local communities plant coca. Their research, included in the Carbon Footprints analysis, found a direct correlation between coca cultivation areas and those deemed Rural Unsatisfied Basic Needs areas, indicating that poverty was a major factor in areas where communities engage in coca cultivation. The others include weakness and low presence of the state, violence and armed conflict, inaccessibility, and favorable biophysical conditions.
Vanegas Cubillos, who has long been working with communities in Colombia and Peru, says Colombia is a very particular case, as the ongoing armed conflict has greatly impacted rural communities. Migration and forced displacements have forced communities to inhabit new territories, often causing some level of deforestation in areas where fertile lands are scarce.
Both in Colombia and on a global scale, there are opportunities for both the public and private sectors to create economic benefits for communities, and to break the cycle of deforestation, she says.
“Until they realize that they really have to pay attention to these communities,” she says, “I think that this is a problem that can continue to get worse.”
Featured image:Indigenous Tikuna paddling a dugout canoe on a tributary of the Amazon by Rhett A. Butler via Mongabay.
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