Can a Nation Replace Its Oil Wealth With Trees?

By -
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/climate/gabon-logging-oil-economy.html

By Dionne Searcey, The New York Times. 

Excerpt: LOANGO NATIONAL PARK, Gabon — Evening and the rainforest. A riverbank packed with elephants. Treetops so dense they obscure all but a chimpanzee’s hairy arm. And, as the sun sets, a twinkle on the horizon: an offshore oil platform. The nation of Gabon is so lush with forests and wildlife its nickname is Africa’s Eden. It’s also one of the continent’s major oil producers. Gabon for decades has relied on petroleum to drive its economy. But officials know their oil won’t last forever. So they’ve turned to Gabon’s other abundant resource — a huge Congo Basin rainforest, full of valuable trees — to help make up the difference once the oil is gone. Gabon is engaging in activities that have become dirty words in the world of climate activism: It allows palm-oil plantations in certain areas and is turning rainforest into plywood. However, unlike Brazil and other countries that have stood by as rainforests are decimated, Gabon has adopted strict rules designed to keep the vast majority of its trees standing. Its aim is to strike an important balance between the needs of a single nation and those of a world facing a climate crisis. Gabon has banned raw timber exports (France was a major buyer) and created an industrial complex with tax breaks to attract furniture companies, plywood makers and others to build factories and create jobs. Rules limit logging to just two trees per hectare every 25 years. And, to fight illegal logging, a new program tracks logs with bar codes. Gabon’s approach appears to be working, and other countries are already copying aspects of its plan, making it a potential blueprint for rainforest protection.… 

Popular posts from this blog

Lost history of Antarctica revealed in octopus DNA

By -
https://www.science.org/content/article/lost-history-antarctica-revealed-octopus-dna By ERIK STOKSTAD .  Excerpt: Some 100,000 years ago, scientists believe Antarctica’s massive western ice sheet collapsed, temporarily opening waterways between a trio of seas surrounding the continent. New evidence for that scenario comes from a surprising source: octopus DNA. ...About 129,000 to 116,000 years ago, a warm spell called the last interglacial gave our planet a brief break in between several million years of ice ages. The average temperature of the planet was about 0.5°C warmer than it is today—and climate projections predict it will be again within decades. The global sea level was also 5 meters to 10 meters higher than current levels. Many scientists believe  the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and consequent melting could have been a primary reason . ...The findings are consistent with growing geological evidence supporting the ice sheet collapse....
Read more

Where Glaciers Melt, the Rivers Run Red

By -
By Mitra Taj , The New York Times.  Excerpt: As the glaciers of South America retreat, the supply of freshwater is dwindling and its quality is getting worse. Dionisia Moreno, a 70-year-old Indigenous farmer, still remembers when Shallap River, nearly 13,000 feet up in the Cordillera Blanca, brought crystal clear water brimming with trout to her village, Jancu. “People and animals alike could drink the water without suffering,” she said. “Now the water is red. No one can drink it.”....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/science/peru-glaciers-water-pollution.html . 
Read more

The first people on Tasmania brought fire and forever changed the land

By -
By Warren Cornwall , Science.  Excerpt: More than 41,000 years ago, humans traversed a strip of land that once joined the mainland of Australia to what is today the island of Tasmania, called Lutruwita by its Indigenous inhabitants today. The first humans to reach this land brought a tool they used to transform the landscape and that left the first lasting marks of their presence: fire. Thanks to layers of sediment that formed year by year along the bottom of a lake on a small island off the northeastern tip of Lutruwita, scientists have for the first time chronicled the region’s history of vegetation spanning more than 50,000 years. They found  a surge in fires starting about 41,600 years ago , the researchers report today in Science Advances, the same time as falling sea levels opened a dry corridor allowing humans to migrate to the island. ...The findings come at a time of growing interest in reviving a traditional burning culture on Lutruwita. Aboriginal communities a...
Read more