If you live in North America, chances are you haven’t just seen the hazy skies blanketing much of the continent this week, but have been breathing the toxic air, too. Blowing in from the monstrous wild fires devouring the forests out west, it’s more than just a reminder that our planet can’t continue to swallow the pollution we’re pumping into it; more than a reminder, it’s a presence that’s killing us.
And with Covid’s delta strain now spreading like an invisible haze, one that’s possibly spreading into our lungs as well, poor air quality (that euphemism for our most ubiquitous carcinogen) is something we certainly don’t need more of.
And while we can’t stop the wind, that doesn’t mean we’re entirely powerless to clean the air. The cheapest and most effective way, of course (in addition to curtailing pollution — i.e., degrowth), is to plant trees. Trees and other plants not only capture CO2, but produce oxygen. So, if we value breathing (and, really, only a maniac doesn’t, right?), we must also value trees. We should plant trees, as many as possible. But, crucially, we should also conserve the trees and forests and green spaces we have already. Those in positions of power who don’t value, and don’t prioritize, such vital resources are putting us all on a path to catastrophe.
That’s why it’s so peculiar that Bill de Blasio (the mayor of New York City, who never tires of promoting himself as a friend of the environment) among others are planning to destroy over one thousand mature trees in a park here this coming October. At a time when we should be protecting our trees and green spaces most vigorously, the city is intent on destroying the thousand trees of East River Park, the nearly one-and-a-half mile long park that runs between the East River (really a tidal strait, an extension of the bay, particularly prone to flooding) and the FDR Highway on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. But why?
When Superstorm Sandy arrived nearly nine years ago, its high winds and floods spread destruction and havoc throughout the region. Knocking out the ConEd power station at East River Park’s northern end resulted in major power outages over much of Manhattan. From midtown to its southernmost tip, Manhattan was without power for days. And though other parts of the city, such as the Rockaways, suffered worse and for far longer, it was this, along with substantial flooding in the Lower East Side, that led the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to initiate a contest to find the best flood control and coastal resiliency project for the area.
The winning plan proposed to transform the 1.4 miles of East River Park into a new and improved park, with terraced fields and, importantly, a flood plain designed to absorb future flooding. This design not only preserved East River Park’s trees and green spaces. Part of the BIG U that was to wrap around all of lower Manhattan to protect it from rising seas, the proposal won wide support, including from the lower-income community of color that surrounds the park.
Altering the waterfront promenade to gently descend into the East River (to function as a flood plain), it would have also covered the FDR, creating a flood barrier over where that poisonous highway now roars. And because cars account for a great deal of the greenhouse gases heating, poisoning, and flooding us, the covered FDR was to be converted from a source of global heating into a mass transit corridor.
With widespread community support, the plan was adopted, but in 2018 it was suddenly scrapped. Bill de Blasio and his constituency, largely real estate developers, decided to pursue a different, nearly twice as expensive plan. They refused, however, to disclose why. And when the studies they relied on were finally made public, following a court order, much of it was blacked out. What are they hiding?
Among other things, de Blasio et al argue that their new plan protects the nearby ConEd energy plant. But, with all their secrecy, it’s more likely that saving the FDR and serving the real estate industry (i.e., making money) is their true motive.
This would hardly be unprecedented. Trees have been at odds with making money and power since this civilization’s earliest days. Even the ancient Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2100 BCE) includes an important episode in which the hero Gilgamesh, along with his companion Enkidu and the sun god Shamash, kills Humbaba, the protector of the Great Cedar Forest. And for what reason? In order to chop down the salubrious Forest (a use-value) and sell it for gold (exchange-value) and power.
This story illustrates a fundamental ambivalence inherent in the concept of value, one that inheres in the word itself. For value derives from the Latin word valere, which means strength; but this strength is defined both as health and as power. Among other places, this double even appears in the opening of the Old Testament, in the Garden of Eden. For the two trees, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge, express this duality of value, too. If, as Francis Bacon put it, knowledge is power, then the tree of knowledge corresponds to power; and for Bacon this is the power to “conquer and subdue nature.”
As for the tree of life, this is nature itself; the nature that the tree of knowledge would subdue, just as Gilgamesh subdued Humbaba. Importantly, the tree of life is also associated with health. The leaves of the tree of life are described by John of Patmos in the book of Revelation (22:2) as being medicine.
We could go on and on with this, and elsewhere I have. Needless to say, the point is that there’s a fundamental conflict between trees and gold which is at play here, too.
And while we may not know precisely why de Blasio and his rich friends scrapped the earlier accepted design for the park we do know this. Instead of a flood plain they plan to build a sea wall. Instead of repurposing the carcinogenic, global heating FDR, the new plan aims to save the highway, by bulldozing a thousand trees and 1.4 miles of gardens and fields, an amphitheater, historic buildings, playgrounds, all of it, and cover all 56 acres of the park in a billion tons of most likely highly toxic garbage (no one knows what the fill will consist of, or where it will come from) to raise the park. Then a new park will be built, 8 to 10 feet higher than the present park, atop this material.
New trees will be planted, they say. But it will be decades before these trees provide any shade, or produce much oxygen, or provide any relief to the community.
With the climate emergency upon us, this is no time to destroy trees, open space, parks, and public health, as the city plans to do. To be sure, if one values human and environmental health one will recognize that if anything needs to be destroyed it’s the FDR, among other highways. Trees, and human health, are clearly valuable as ends in themselves. The lethal, pollution-generating, space-eating cars and highways, on the other hand, are mere means, and poisonous ones at that. Just as the word insane stems from the Latin in (not) and sanus (healthy), it is literally insane to not shut down these ecocidal entities.
What will happen? Will the trees survive the bulldozers of progress? Will the waters rising all around us lead us to rise to this world historical occasion? We’ll see.
Elliot Sperber is a writer, attorney, and adjunct professor who lives in New York City. He can be reached at elliot.sperber@gmail.com and on twitter @elliot_sperber
Featured image: Dayak Culture Parade to commemorate Youth Pledge Day in Anjungan village, West Kalimantan, Borneo. Image courtesy of Antonsurya12/Wikimedia Commons.
A new report highlights systemic social and environmental problems that continue to plague the Indonesian palm oil industry and ripple far up the global palm oil supply chain.
The report looked at local and Indigenous communities living within and around 10 plantations and found that their human rights continued to be violated by the operation of these plantations.
The documented violations included seizure of community lands without consent; involuntary displacement; denial of fundamental environmental rights; violence against displaced Indigenous peoples and communities; harassment; criminalization; and even killings of those trying to defend their lands and forests.
The problems have persisted for decades due to ineffective, and sometimes lack of, due diligence by buyers and financiers along the global supply chain, the report says.
JAKARTA — Human rights abuses continue to fester in the Indonesian palm oil industry as global brands and financial institutions and investors turn a blind eye to the problem, a new report says.
The report by a coalition of NGOs documents the human rights and environmental impacts of 10 oil palm plantations in Indonesia that are currently supply to markets in the EU, U.K. and U.S., with consumer goods giants such as Nestlé and PepsiCo rounding out the supply chains.
The report found that local and Indigenous communities living within and around these 10 plantations continue to have their human rights violated by the operations of these plantations, which are the declared holdings of the Astra Agro Lestari, First Resources, Golden Agri-Resources/Sinar Mas, and Salim (Indofood) conglomerates.
The documented violations include seizure of community lands without consent; involuntary displacement; denial of fundamental environmental rights; violence against displaced Indigenous peoples and communities; harassment; criminalization; and even killings of those trying to defend their lands and forests.
“It is scandalous that Indigenous and rural communities endure years and sometimes decades without redress for harms inflicted by the palm oil industry, that continue to this day,” said Norman Jiwan, a Dayak Indigenous leader and co-author of the report.
Palm oil from these 10 plantations end up in the supply chains of numerous global brands, including Cargill, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever, Wilmar International, Archer Daniels Midland and AAK.
And funding the operations of these plantations are prominent institutions and investors, including BlackRock, ABN-AMRO, Rabobank, Standard Chartered, Citigroup, Lloyds Banking Group, JP Morgan Chase, as well as various other banks and pension funds, according to the report.
“Our report is just the latest in a whole set of independent studies showing the Indonesian plantation sector and associated global palm oil trade are not complying with industry sustainability standards nor applicable laws,” Norman said.
New oil palm planting near a protected area in Indonesia. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Selling off problem assets
One of the cases highlighted in the report is the ongoing conflict between the Indigenous Dayak Hibun communities in the western part of Indonesian Borneo and plantation firm PT Mitra Austral Sejahtera (MAS).
The conflict started in 1996, when MAS obtained a location permit for the lands of the Dayak Hibun without their free, prior and informed consent, or FPIC. Despite that, MAS went on to obtain, in 2000, a right-to-cultivate permit, or HGU — the last in a series of licenses that oil palm companies must obtain before being allowed to start planting.
The HGU permit, valid until 2030, covers 8,741 hectares (21,600 acres) of land, of which 1,400 hectares (3,460 acres) overlap with the ancestral lands of the Dayak Hibun. As a result, the communities’ lives have been impacted by the plantation, with their sacred sites damaged and their environment degraded.
The land conflict has also led to injuries, threats, harassment and intimidation, and the criminal prosecution of four farmers seeking land justice.
Despite the conflict being well-documented over the years, MAS continues to be a supplier to Cargill, Nestlé, Unilever and Wilmar, and also supplies AAK via Cargill, according to the report.
Cargill had the case logged as “under investigation” in July 2019 without details and no updates in 2020.
Although MAS was named on Unilever’s 2018 mill list, Unilever said in May 2020 via its grievance tracker that MAS was now “outside” of its palm oil supply chain, though it precise status in 2021 is unclear.
Nestlé had not logged the conflict at the time the NGOs compiled their report.
In an attempt to seek remedy, the communities and the NGO Sawit Watch filed a formal complaint to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2012, as MAS at the time was owned by Sime Darby, an RSPO member.
This complaint remains unresolved and still “under investigation,” eight years after the original grievance was lodged.
In 2019, Sime Darby sold MAS to PT Inti Nusa Sejahtera (INS), despite strong objections and pleas from the communities for Sime Darby to remain engaged.
The report says this shows how powerful palm oil conglomerates like Sime Darby are still permitted to wash their hands of responsibility for remedying community grievances by divesting “problematic” subsidiaries, even as formal complaints remain unresolved.
At the end of 2020, INS allegedly sold its majority stake in MAS to PT CAPITOL, citing difficulties in getting bank funding to finance acquisition, consolidation and operational activities. The communities affected by MAS’s operations have still not received any official notification of changes in the company’s ownership, according to the report.
The communities are also insisting that Sime Darby honor its earlier commitments to assist in resolving the case, the report says.
They say this can be done by providing funds to the Indonesian land agency to compensate MAS for relinquishing the disputed land to the Dayak communities, or to cover their legal costs to seek land restitution through the courts, the report adds.
The communities are also demanding the RSPO investigate Sime Darby’s divestment of MAS, given that RSPO members are discouraged from selling any subsidiaries subject to ongoing complaints, according to the report.
“It’s regrettable that the RSPO, Unilever, Sime Darby, PT Inti Nusa Sejahtera, PT CAPITOL and PT Mitra Austral Sejahtera have failed to remedy the human rights of Dayak Hibun communities in Kerunang and Entapang,” said Redatus Musa, a member of the Dayak Hibun community and the head of Entapang hamlet in West Kalimantan province.
On the issue of Sime Darby’s divestment from MAS, the RSPO pointed Mongabay to the resolution passed in November 2018 “discouraging” members from divesting units with active complaints.
“However, it is pertinent to note that the above resolution looks into measures to discourage members from divesting, and not to prohibit or refrain members from doing so as the RSPO recognizes its members’ rights to divest as part of its ongoing business dealings,” the RSPO told Mongabay in an email.
The RSPO added that its complaints panel may investigate the divestment “based on the independent legal review and the final comments from the parties of the complaint.”
Sime Darby did not respond to Mongabay’s questions on the issue.
Oil palm fruit bunches in a truck for transport to market. Image by John C. Cannon/Mongabay.
Weak due diligence
Most of the companies in the supply chains of the plantations linked to human rights abuses, and some of the investors, are prominent members of the RSPO and other sustainability initiatives.
“Yet, despite the fact that the violations uncovered are clearly contrary to RSPO standards, as well as the companies’ own ‘No Deforestation, No Peat and No Exploitation’ [NDPE] policies, the trade and investment continues unchecked,” the report says.
This is because existing industry accountability mechanisms, such as the RSPO complaints system, are typically slow and ineffective, according to the report.
It highlights this lack of effectiveness in the case of the Dayak Hibun communities, whose complaint against MAS has languished for more than eight years at the RSPO.
Most of the businesses were also found to have ineffective due diligence systems in place to uphold their human rights responsibilities and commitments.
In 2019, the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB) initiative found that 49% of 195 large global companies surveyed scored between 0 and 10% against a set of human rights due diligence indicators, while only one scored above 80%.
Responding to the criticisms, the RSPO said some cases could take a long time to resolve since its complaints system “follows a rigorous process to ensure the highest standards of assurance and integrity are upheld.”
“At times, this may result in lengthy investigations, especially for complex cases,” the RSPO told Mongabay in an email, adding that it continues to address any inefficiencies in its system and expedite the resolution of complaints.
A woman collects oil palm fruit on an oil palm estate in southern Papua. Image by Albertus Vembrianto for Mongabay and The Gecko Project.
Opaque finances
The due diligence failings are even more prevalent among global and local financiers and investors of the palm oil industry. Many global financiers and the corporate agribusiness groups in Indonesia and elsewhere that they finance or control don’t have public grievance logs, according to the report.
Financiers should step up their game, said Linda Rosalina, a campaigner from TuK Indonesia, an NGO that advocates for social justice in the agribusiness sector.
“Banks and investors should have looked at these cases and taken an active role to ensure that their clients could improve [the situation on] the ground,” she said. “It’s important for banks and investors to improve their regulations to ensure the mitigation of impacts [of their clients’ activities] on the ground.”
The report also calls for greater transparency in the finances of the plantation sector, with many corporate groups failing to disclose their beneficial owners. This opacity has allowed the persistence of offshore financial jurisdictions and shadow companies to enable investments in the sector, according to the report.
This study and related investigations indicate that beneficial ownership of subsidiary companies associated with land conflicts and deforestation is not being disclosed by RSPO members like First Resources in potential violation of RSPO rules on transparency.
As a result, companies and their financiers are evading accountability for violations against the rights of local communities and the public.
“Our research in 2019 shows that less than 1%, or 0.7% to be exact, of companies have disclosed who their beneficial owners are,” Linda said. “This is a far cry from companies’ responsibilities to be transparent, and I think responsibilities are key.”
Interior of an oil palm plantation in Indonesia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler.
Falling through the cracks
While many conflicts are still awaiting resolution before the RSPO and other sustainability mechanisms, many others aren’t even picked up at all.
Tom Griffiths, responsible finance coordinator at the Forest Peoples Programme and co-author of the report, said those cases that come to the fore are only a sliver of the total conflicts brewing on the ground.
“The main finding [of the report] is that the impacts and grievances are not being picked up,” he said at the virtual launch of the report. “We know that companies increasingly have grievances logged or registered, but they only touch the tip of the iceberg of the grievances and harmful impacts.”
Most of the time, companies only respond to cases that are reported to the RSPO or documented in reports by major NGOs, Griffiths said.
“But other impacts that we have documented here are not being picked up or certainly not disclosed,” he said.
This is because companies further down the supply chain from these plantations appear to apply a flawed approach to the definition of community “grievances,” limited to formal complaints only, according to the report.
“This narrow focus is failing to identify numerous outstanding community concerns and grievances, which should be picked up and addressed through due diligence, thus overlooking unresolved human rights abuse cases in their operations and palm oil supply chains,” the report says.
These ongoing cases of human rights violations fall through the cracks despite companies and global food and beverage brands continuing to market their green credentials and claim to support due diligence and “environmental, social and governance” (ESG) principles.
The report calls for strengthening the due diligence process to identify the impacts that the whole supply chain has. Without it, affected communities will continue to be denied remedy, according to Griffiths.
“Many of these [communities], sometimes [they are] waiting for years or even decades, they have no remedy,” he said. “They’re still suffering from harmful impacts, and these are still ongoing.”
Logging has begun in Jackson State Demonstration Forest, 48,000 acres of state owned redwood forestland in Mendocino County in Northern California. The forest consists mostly of heavily cut over land – probably logged several times since logging in the County began in the 1860s. This continued when the state acquired the land in 1947 – the hypothesis then was to acquire forestland to apply science to commerce with goal of demonstrating best practices. Today, seventy five years later, it’s not easy to find much that’s “best” in this highly disturbed forest land. Still there are numerous groves of second-growth redwood to be found – remnants of what was once one of the wonders of the natural world.
The Jackson State Demonstration Forest is managed by CALFIRE, the huge state bureaucracy known mainly for fighting fires; that we may be thankful for. Alas, there seems to be very little evidence that CALFIRE is much interested in forest ecology. They do no logging themselves but farm out the work to a garden variety of logging operations, this time to Anderson Logging of Fort Bragg. Financially, it’s no big deal for CALFIRE, a darling of the state in this era of wildfire. Nevertheless, the evidence is that the income (from this “cash cow” as the locals call it) is important for them. Since then Forest’s inception they’ve fought tooth and nail to defeat any and all suggestions to reverse its practice, no evidence to hint that it might be interested in other, better uses for Jackson State. No doubt the high price of timber this spring influenced them to hurry up, but they like other public agencies prefer the fait accompli. They play by the very letter of the law.
The news of new logging plans – all on the far western slopes of the forest, beginning with the “Caspar 500,” the closest to residential communities – was received with disbelief on the coast, where the forest is cherished (even in its present state) by many – hikers, dog walkers, mushroom pickers, bicycle riders. Chad Swimmer, president of the Mendocino Trail Stewards, a bicyclists’ organization, reported he was “heart broken” when he “first heard that CALFIRE was planning logging in my back yard. I was heartbroken and indignant, but I didn’t know how to contest a timber harvest plan (THP). Now I do, I know the protocol. I also understand that this agency considers itself all powerful and unstoppable – with no need to argue with the public about forest management.”
The Trail Stewards took the lead this time around but there is a long history of “forest defenders” here in Mendocino County, and opposition to the plan is widespread and also diverse – ranging from bands of Pomo Indians to school kids from the village of Mendocino. In May, two tree sitters set up shop in a grove of giant trees, one in the “Mama Tree” the other in the “Papa Tree”; they’re still there. Since then, there have been blockades, invasions of sites to be logged, as well as appeals to local, county and state representatives. There was a demonstration at Town Hall in Fort Bragg; there, members of the Coyote Band of Pomo, explained the meaning of the forest to them – a sacred place now and for thousands of years past, a place still home to ancient relics and practices, a place for recovery and restoration. On June 19, the Trail Stewards organized a well-attended demonstration at Caspar, this one where the big log truckers will join Highway one, the Coastal highway, jammed at this time of year with holiday traffic. Bill Heil, a veteran of the Redwood Summer era of the 1990s, explained they “had to get this to stop. They had to get CALFIRE to face the public and talk.”
This opposition and obstruction – the tree-sit, blocking roads, chaining themselves to gates, invading active logging sites – forced Anderson Logging to move down the road to another site. However, this second attempt too was obstructed by protesters, on foot and on bike, as well as random holiday hikers who wondered unknowingly into “closed” areas. The activists used whistles to let the workers know that – above all – they were there, well knowing the danger this implied for all. Then, on Monday, June 21, facing increasing pressure, CALFIRE announced a “pause” in logging the “Caspar 500” section of the forest, as well as its intention to “further engage with our local community.” This was a victory for the activists, certainly, but simultaneously logging was begun several miles to the east, near Fort Bragg, along state Highway 20. Inspired, the activists followed. “We’re grateful that logging here has been paused, a day without logging is a good day,” says Michelle McMillian, the media representative for the “Mama Tree Network.” “We’re not overly optimistic, however. We want to have a conversation but we want more than lip service.”
Opponents of logging since the first years of the Save-the-Redwoods League based their case on the sheer beauty of the redwood grove, and its inspirational value. This has not changed, even with the massive damage done. These groves, even these remnants of ancient coastal forests, remain like nothing else, even the second growth. Only 4% of the old growth redwood forest in California remains, nearly all in overburdened state parks. Reed Noss, the well know advocate of the forests explained it this way: “the redwoods deserve all the lavish terms used to describe them. No one with an open mind could walk through a redwood forest without being humbled. No thoughtful person could stand beneath one of these immense trees, gaze up into its canopy, and not help but think that here is a remarkable organism –so much more than all the board feet of lumber men might cleave form it. Not only are they among the largest living trees, they are among the largest. Their close ancestors have been here since other giants – including dinosaurs- came and went. An entire forest of these trees is one of the most remarkable expressions of nature’s productive capacity. And it is beautiful, truly beautiful.”
We don’t have here in Mendocino the kind of forest Noss sees, but we still have beautiful groves. And we still have the chance that these groves can be the heart of a new forest if this one, today, can just be left alone. A lot, then, is at stake. Alas, however, there’s more, much more. Today, there is a new crisis and a new urgency. McMillian insists that this is not the old movement of tree-huggers versus loggers. “This is about everybody. Climate change doesn’t know sides.” And climate change has indeed become the mantra of the movement. It is now widely accepted that the current mega drought is directly linked to climate change as are the wildfires. The stakes, then, are existential.
CALFIRE has half-heartedly challenged this reality, with some supporters going so far as to deny climate change altogether. The agency insists that drought is not an issue, that logging inhibits fires and that removing old trees increases the sequestration of carbon.
Never mind the massive waste of water, just to keep the dust from the worksites in the woods and truck traffic down the logging roads in this ultra-dry summer. The prospect of wildfires now terrifies literally millions across northern California, and rightly so. These northern counties were developed with little thought to an ecology of drought and fire. We on the coast have long seen the redwood forest as our firewall. It still is but now only to a degree. In 2020 fires raced through redwood stands in Santa Cruz County, devastating large stands of trees even in Big Basin state Park. Professor Will Russell, an environmentalist at San Jose State University, explained the “new normal” this way: “Any honest fire scientist will tell you that small trees burn more readily than large trees. Timber harvest operations target large healthy trees as they supply the highest quality timber products. Once these trees have been removed they are replaced by a regenerating forest of very small highly flammable saplings and sprouts. Timber operations also tend to open up the forest stand which allows for greater air flow providing oxygen for any fire that might start. Anyone who has ever built a fire knows that small sticks with a lot of air space gives the best chance for a successful fire – the same is true for a forest fire.”
Then, of course, there is carbon sequestration. CALFIRE argues that when a large tree is cut, many small ones take its place, hence increasing the number of trees and allowing for more carbon sequestration. Again, the consensus in science seems to suggest the opposite. J.P. O’Brien is currently a post doctoral research fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Climate and Global Dynamics Division, in Boulder, Colorado. He tells us: “Short of burning fossil fuels, cutting down trees is the single worst thing we can do for climate change. Not only do trees directly remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it for centuries to millennia, the very act of cutting them down results in immediate carbon releases via felling, hauling, milling, and processing machinery that represents a “double hit” to the climate. Climate change presents a clear, present, and ever increasing danger to nearly every aspect of our lives and the earth system, including our terrestrial forests.”
Times are changing here on California’s north coast, and while logging continues – the vast majority of redwood forest land is in corporate hands – the once overwhelming culture of work in the woods and the mills of our counties is greatly diminished, as is the number of jobs and mills. The Trail Stewards circulated a petition that in a very short period of time was signed by more than five thousand supporters. It called for a moratorium on logging, for cultural & tribal sovereignty, unified ecosystem restoration, climate change mitigation and environmentally sustainable economics. (https://www.mendocinotrailstewards.org/forest-reserve-proposal).
Mendocino County is valued right across California, even beyond, for its redwoods, its steep canyons, oak woodlands and its wild, rocky coast line. It is a liberal county; it voted for Bernie twice, in large numbers, and there is widespread support for a Green New Deal. Alas, however, we are a large County with a small population, relatively far from population and media centers. Perhaps this explains the silence of our elected representatives – our city councils, supervisors, assembly members, senators and congressmen, also of course our Governor Gavin Newsome and his new head of the Resources Agency, Wade Crowfoot, virtually all Democrat, virtually all in on climate change. And virtually all prepared to support President Biden’s plan for “conserving” 30% of our country by 2030 – “30 by 30.” But not here. Perhaps there are louder voices. The Mendocino Redwood Company (MRC), owned by San Francisco’s Fisher Family owns 227,000 acres of redwood timberland. In Humboldt County, just north, it owns another 200,000, making it, with holdings in Sonoma County, 440,000 acres, vast holdings, the journalist Will Parrish tells us, the “owner of more redwood forest than any private entity ever has.” This is not insignificant. Then there is the clamor of the developers and the builders and the voices from the past.
The tree-sitters, the blockaders, the forest defenders, trail stewards and local residents and many visitors are appealing for support. They deserve it. Your voice can help.
Southeast Asia is home to roughly half of the world’s tropical mountain forests, which support massive carbon stores and tremendous biodiversity, including a host of species that occur nowhere else on the planet.
A new study reveals that mountain forest loss in Southeast Asia is accelerating at an unprecedented rate throughout the region: approximately 189,000 square kilometers (73,000 square miles) of highland forest was converted to cropland during the first two decades of this century.
Mountain forest loss has far-reaching implications for people who depend directly on forest resources and downstream communities.
Since higher-elevation forests also store comparatively more carbon than lowland forests, their loss will make it much harder to meet international climate objectives.
Southeast Asia is home to roughly half of the world’s tropical mountain forests. These highland ecosystems support massive carbon stores and tremendous biodiversity, including a host of species that occur nowhere else on the planet. But new evidence suggests these havens are in grave danger. Conversion of higher-elevation forest to cropland is accelerating at an unprecedented rate throughout the region, according to findings published June 28 in Nature Sustainability.
By analyzing high-resolution satellite data sets of forest loss and state-of-the-art maps of carbon density and terrain, an international team of researchers quantified patterns of forest loss in Southeast Asia during the first two decades of this century. They found that during the 2000s, forest loss was mainly concentrated in the lowlands; but by the 2010s, it had shifted significantly to higher ground.
Between 2001 and 2019, the researchers calculated that Southeast Asia had lost 610,000 square kilometers (235,500 square miles) of forest — an area larger than Thailand. Of this loss, 31% occurred in mountainous regions, equivalent to 189,100 km2 (73,000 mi2) of highland forest converted to cropland and plantation in less than two decades.
Moreover, the study reveals an accelerating trend. By 2019, 42% of total annual forest loss occurred at higher elevations, with the frontier of forest loss migrating upslope at a rate of roughly 15 meters (49 feet) per year.
Particularly prominent shifts to mountain forest loss were found in north Laos, northeast Myanmar, and east Sumatra and Kalimantan in Indonesia — the country that experienced the most overall forest loss.
Terraces are cleared on a hillside in Malaysian Borneo to make way for an oil palm plantation. Image by Rhett Butler/Mongabay
Decades of widespread clearing of lowland forests to make way for rice, oil palm and rubber plantations has led the conservation community to perceive forest loss as an issue only affecting the lowlands, said Paul Elsen, climate adaptation scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society and co-author of the study.
“To see through this study that forest loss is increasing and accelerating in mountainous areas throughout the whole of Southeast Asia was pretty surprising,” he told Mongabay.
The expansion of agriculture into higher elevation areas, despite sub-optimal growing conditions due to lower temperatures and steep slopes, spotlights just how scarce undeveloped land now is in lowland Southeast Asia.
“Just because we found that there’s a lot of increasing forest loss in the mountains does not mean that we’re not still seeing forest loss in the lowlands … we still have to worry about lowland forest loss,” Elsen said. “It is just shocking that [forest loss] is continuing to move up into places that we felt were safe by virtue of being rugged and remote and isolated.”
Natural hazards
Worldwide, more than 1 billion people live in mountainous regions. Forest loss in these areas has far-reaching implications for people who depend directly on forest resources and downstream communities.
Clearing forests in steep headwaters where rivers originate can increase the risk of catastrophic landslips and flooding in lower areas. It also exacerbates soil erosion and runoff, causing rivers to clog with silt and agricultural pollutants, reducing downstream water quality and availability. In 2018, many people blamed the devastating floods that struck southeast Sulawesi in Indonesia, displacing thousands of people from their villages, on upstream forest clearing.
“These impacts can kill people, of course, but they also disrupt roads and transportation access so goods and services can’t reach communities,” Elsen said. “That’s hugely impactful when you have increased soil erosion and instability following the removal of trees.”
Elsen said communities dependent on mountain forests are hit with a “double whammy” when trees are cleared, since they lose the safety net the forest provides against diminished crop yields, which also suffer from diminished water availability and quality. “Now that the forest has been removed, you have fewer products available for communities to rely on, so it also reduces their adaptation potential,” he said. “If left unchecked, this could be a really big environmental problem for the communities living both in the mountains and in the lowlands.”
Furthermore, a 2021 study showed that deforestation in the tropics can increase local warming by up to 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit). “Local communities living in these frontier zones will suffer much stronger climate warming due to the biogeophysical feedbacks driven by tree loss further compounding the effects of global warming,” Zhenzhong Zeng, associate professor at the Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China and co-author of the new study told Mongabay.
A landslip in Indonesia caused by the removal of trees which has destabilized the steep slope. Image by Rhett Butler/Mongabay
Nowhere to go
If the forest loss continues to march upslope, the consequences for wildlife could be equally devastating. Recent studies suggest many species are shifting their ranges to higher altitudes in response to warming temperatures.
“The mountains of Southeast Asia are one of the most biologically rich regions of the planet and it’s incredible how many species of mammals, of birds, of amphibians are living only in the mountains and rely on forested ecosystems for their survival,” Elsen said. “So the removal of any of those forests will most likely reduce their abundances at a minimum and could potentially cause local extinctions because species that live in mountains often are very isolated in particular spots.”
“While it’s not surprising, unfortunately, that forest loss rates are moving up elevation in Southeast Asia, this study importantly quantifies this upwards acceleration,” Tim Bonebrake, a conservation biologist at Hong Kong University who was not involved in the study, told Mongabay in an email. He said the rate of upslope shift in the frontier of forest loss is very concerning and might hamper species’ ability to adapt to climate change.
“Not only do these losses of forest cover amount to losses in habitat for species, but the incursion of this forest loss up elevation will also impair biodiversity resilience to climate change,” Bonebrake said. “Forest species that may have otherwise been able to shift their distributions in response to warming will have less space to do so.”
White-handed gibbons (Hylobates lar) are among the many species that may have to shift their ranges further up into mountain forests in response to climate change. Image by JJ Harrison via Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0)
Global carbon budget
As part of the study, the researchers investigated how forest loss is affecting carbon budgets by overlaying forest loss datasets on high-resolution carbon density maps. They found that carbon stocks in steeper, higher-elevation forests are much greater than in lowland forests. This contrasts with patterns in Africa and South America where lowland forests account for more carbon sequestration. The Southeast Asia pattern is most likely due to greater levels of primary production and organic soil content in the region’s highland forests, say the researchers.
The team calculated that the total annual forest carbon loss across Southeast Asia was 424 million metric tons of carbon per year, which is equivalent to one-sixth of all the carbon absorbed by the world’s oceans each year. Mountain areas accounted for nearly one-third of that loss.
Their findings suggest that assumptions used in global climate change models, which consider all forest carbon emissions as equal, could be inaccurate. Moreover, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) climate models incorporate predictions that tree-dominated land cover will persist in Southeast Asian mountains. Not only are those mountains losing their forest cover, but the fact that the region’s mountain forests store comparatively more carbon than lowland forests means that their loss will disproportionately affect climate predictions.
The authors calculate that if the patterns of forest loss continue, annual forest carbon loss in the mountains will exceed that of the lowlands as soon as 2022. They also suggest that the continued loss of carbon-rich forests at higher elevations could eventually tip the scales, shifting Southeast Asia’s forests from being a neutral actor in the global carbon cycle to a net carbon emitter.
Ultimately, the loss of higher-elevation forest will make it much harder to meet international climate objectives to limit global warming to below 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) by the end of this century. This is, according to Elsen, “A very simple message that we need practitioners and policymakers to understand.”
Citation:
Feng, Y., Ziegler, A. D., Elsen, P. R., Liu, Y., He, X., Spracklen D. V., … Zeng, Z. (2021). Upward expansion and acceleration of forest clearance in the mountains of Southeast Asia. Nature Sustainability. doi:10.1038/s41893-021-00738-y
By David Tindall, Professor of Sociology, University of British Columbia
The RCMP has recently been arresting protesters who had set up blockades to prevent the logging of old-growth forests on Vancouver Island. Environmentalists say the Fairy Creek watershed, near Port Renfrew, is the last old-growth area left on southern Vancouver Island, outside of protected areas.
The contested forested areas lie close to the internationally known West Coast Trail, and within the unceded traditional territory of several First Nations, including Pacheedaht and Ditidaht.
Some of the trees are more than 1,000 years old and are part of rare ecosystems that some independent estimates suggest make up less than one per cent of the remaining forest in B.C. Close to 25 per cent of the world’s remaining temperate rainforest is in B.C., mainly along the coasts.
The demonstrators established the first blockade in August 2020 along the logging roads into the Fairy Creek watershed, where Teal-Jones has a “tree farm licence” to harvest timber and manage forest resources. Now dozens of people, including some First Nations youth, have been arrested for violating a B.C. Supreme Court order that restricts protesters from blockading the logging roads.
This dispute resembles the protests over Clayoquot Sound (also on the west coast of Vancouver Island). Dubbed the “War in the Woods,” more than 850 people were arrested in 1993 for blockading logging roads. That protest, sparked by a decision to allow logging in the area, was the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history and a seminal event in the history of the environmental movement.
As a researcher of social movement and environmental issues, I have been surveying the general public and environmental activists about their attitudes and behaviours for about three decades. I am particularly interested in environmental conflicts and the factors (such as social networks) that explain why people get involved incollective actions to protect the environment or to protest against such actions (pro-industry protesters).
This research can shed light on current and future conflicts. People who support the goals and values of a movement can be drawn into it, what social movement scholars call “the mobilization potential.” However, involvement is often contingent upon other factors, such as social ties to other participants.
‘War in the Woods’ redux?
The connection between Fairy Creek and Clayoquot Sound was highlighted when Tzeporah Berman — a high-profile environmentalist and a leader of the Clayoquot protests — was arrested at a road leading into the Fairy Creek watershed in May.
Berman, who is also the director of the environmental organization Stand.earth, co-ordinated the blockade in Clayoquot Sound 27 years ago. She was arrested then too, although the long list of charges was eventually dismissed on constitutional grounds. No large-scale industrial logging occurred in Clayoquot in the aftermath of the protests.
More recently, anti-logging protests focused on the old-growth forest in the Great Bear Rainforest. Environmentalists, the forestry sector, First Nations and the B.C. government eventually worked together to establish a 2016 agreement to protect the Great Bear Rainforest.
An old-growth forest is one that has not been disturbed by large-scale human activities, such as industrial logging. In B.C., these forests have been growing since the last ice age, about 10,000 years.
They include gigantic trees such as red and yellow cedars, Sikta spruce, hemlock and Douglas firs, which are sometimes as tall as a football field or soccer pitch is long. One thousand-year-old trees may be the most iconic features of coastal old-growth forests, but the forests also promote biodiversity by providing habitat to numerous wildlife species, many of which do not thrive outside of old-growth forests.
Logging has contributed to the dramatic decline of B.C.‘s old-growth forests. One independent study suggested that the majority of B.C.’s productive old-growth forests have been logged, and there are plans to log the majority of what remains.
In a 2007 survey, my group found that 75 per cent of the general public completely or mostly agreed that “clearcut logging should not be allowed in old-growth forests.” So did 93 per cent of environmentalists.
We also asked about the statement: “Some forested areas should be set aside in order to protect endangered and threatened species (e.g., the spotted owl, the spirit bear).” Here, 94.2 per cent of the general public and 98 per cent of environmentalists completely or mostly agreed.
It is difficult to assess the outcomes of social movements, but civil disobedience has been successful in the past. Media attention, changing public opinion and disruption can put pressure on governments to change course.
Growing protests
Protesters have been blocking access to logging roads and positioning themselves high in trees to disrupt harvesting operations in the Fairy Creek area, drawing the attention of the media and the public and putting pressure on government. The RCMP responded slowly at first, but recently began to enforce the court injunction and have restricted access to the protest sites.
While the protest has been going on since late last summer, its activities have recently heated up. Environmentalists want the government to adopt the recommendations from a new advisory report on old-growth forests. It seems likely that the protest will grow.
A large number of people see civil disobedience as being effective and are willing to do it. Once the B.C. government eases COVID-related restrictions, more people will likely become involved in protests. Pleasant weather and flexible summer schedules may encourage others to join. Satellite protests regarding the threat to old-growth forests will also continue in urban centres.
The RCMP says it has arrested more than 100 people already, and 75 seniors from the Victoria area have joined the protest at Fairy Creek. This may just be the beginning of another “War in the Woods.”
