Hello!
For what they are worth, here are my comments on the draft.
Comments on the draft- sustainable forests ...
My impression of the draft is that while it excels when it comes to the details of many elements of the problem under discussion, it might have devoted more time to render its structure more holistic than it is at present. This would require the willingness and the ability of the drafters to begin at a level above human needs like nutrition and commerce, but at the very possibility of our existence as civilised being as we understand the phrase today.
I think a scientifically justifiable frame of reference for the current discussion would have taken its point of departure in that ---
1. The possibility of any life existing on earth depends on the availability of some mineral resources (water, oxygen, etc) and certain physical conditions (light, temperature, etc).
2. Apart from the contribution made by purely physical phenomena (sun rise, part of the rainfall, etc), the availability of those mineral resources and the existence of physical conditions conducive to life, depends on the equilibrium between the amount of those resources used by the living and the amount of those resources they return for reuse within a certain period of time.
3. The amount of those available resources is finite.
4. Judging by the conditions in few man-made disasters like the environs of Aral sea and the denuded island of Celebes (now called Surabaya, I believe), both over-exploitation of such a resource or interfering with the balance between mineral resource uptake and release by the living through deforestation, adversely affect the availability of those resources and the salubrity of the environment for life.
5. Meantime, the possibility of an equilibrium between that mineral resource uptake and release, and maintenance of climatic salubrity, depends on the equilibrium among the living species.
6. The possibility of such a bio-equilibrium depends on the existence of a qualitative and a quantitative balance among the living species.
7. This qualitative balance manifests itself as bio-diversity, while its quantitative aspect reflects the size of the population of each individual species including man.
8. Other things being equal, when such a balance obtains, man shall have at his disposal a more or less adequate ecosystems services needed to produce and/or secure an adequate supply of food. (there are still a few forest dwellers who secure their food from the rain forest).
9. So far, the importance of plant cover (provided by forest, woodland, parks, plantations, grasslands, etc.) in regulating heat exchange between earth and space (solar heat) in a felicitous way, and the adverse effects buildings, particularly their roofs have on that exchange, has been ignored. The reduction of the former and an increase in the latter is a consequence of human over-population. Interference with this system of heat exchange not only raises the local temperature to insalubrious levels, but also affects the local rainfall (annual climatic extremes in New York city and other conurbations, which leads to high energy use for heating and cooling that adds to global warming and disturbs the balance between the mineral uptake and return).
10. Since satisfaction of nutritional needs is of paramount importance, it is vital to undertake every possible step to preserve, protect and extend the available ecosystem services because they are crucial to our food production.
11. Extent of the available ecosystem services depends in part, on the bio-diversity of the flora and the numbers of individual species. Their presence is reflected by the extent of plant cover as given in parentheses above.
12. Provided that human population remains at a certain level, its nutritional needs could be satisfied by harvesting food items from its environment in a sustainable way, but it becomes problematic when we resort to agriculture to achieve that objective. This is because even under best conditions, i.e., if the plant cover remains more or less constant, we would be imposing an increasing burden on ecosystems services owing to unsustainable population increase calling for an expansion of agriculture.
13. In addition, population increase (housing and infra-structure) and expansion of agriculture has brought about an extensive deforestation, ploughing up of grasslands, draining of marshlands, etc.
14. These have reduced the available ecosystem services in previously extremely fertile areas to nearly insignificant levels (Ukraine, Rumanian plain, Celebes in Indonesian archipelago, and the environs of Aral sea).
Let me underline that 1-14 above can be easily inferred from the already well-established laws of Physics and Eco-Biology. More than comprehensive data on the previous state of areas mentioned in 14 above, are easily available to anyone interested in understanding how destruction of plant cover and interference with natural system could devastate the habitat and the lives of those who live there.
Some might find it surprising that I have not taken up the commercial exploitation of forests, tree farms, etc. I think it would be reasonable to distinguish between two kinds of such exploitation, viz., procurement of food for personal use by native inhabitants, and collection/harvesting of natural or cultivated forest in order to procure money by direct sale or indirectly by selling processed forest products. I have already noted the former category, and it is the latter that poses us a great problem.
It may range from harvesting fruits and nuts, gums, latex, bark to timber. If any of these activities should exceed a certain limit, it could have a deleterious effect on the sustainability of the a given unit of flora in different ways.
Excessive harvesting of fruits and nuts may ---
I. Deprive some forest dwelling animals of their food supply, which in turn may reduce their numbers with unforeseen consequences for the balance among the living species in a forest.
II. It may reduce the harvested species’ capacity to produce enough seedlings to ensure the continuity of that species.
This would inevitably jeopardise the sustainability of the forest involved, which would lead to a reduction in the ecosystems services it could provide.
Even though it may not be obvious, apart from serving as a source of food to certain species, plant gums may be involved in some chemical mechanism that is required to maintain the balance among the living species in a forest. Our understanding of this possible phenomenon leaves a great deal to be desired.
Removal of bark and felling of trees would have the same undesirable result, unless extremely carefully supervised re-planting with the same species is carried out.
Even though it is beyond the scope of this discussion, I would like to mention that the inclusion of aquatic flora, both fresh water and marine would have made it more comprehensive, especially because too little attention has been paid to its contribution to the maintenance of an adequate ecosystems services, which are a pre-condition for sustainable agriculture as we know it, and not to mention our aesthetic and other non-material needs aggregations of flora have served since man began to try to emerge from the beast he once was.
Lal Manavado.
Lal Manavado