"Deforestation, Environment, and Sustainable Development: A Comparative Analysis"
Edited by Dhirendra K. Vajpeyi
Each chapter, written by different authors, reviews the condition of the forests around the globe. Individual chapters look at India, Bangladesh, China, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, Thailand, Latin America, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo and Israel. The book was compiled in 2001 using both historical data and recent studies to document the changes in global forest health, its impact on the environment, and to assess the potential for sustainable development.
The book begins with a litany of facts regarding the status, location and conditions of forests, as well as their ecological and economic significance. Many of these facts are familiar but having them all in one place at one time really brings a new sense of awareness and concern to the situation. A few facts I found particularly painful to read were the loss of half the world's tropical forests between 1950 and 1999, the annual deforestation rate of 0.9 percent, and the loss of 50,000 invertebrate species every year (140/day) due solely to the chopping down of tropical forests.
These facts don't point to a rosy future. The continuing loss of forests at the current rate would exhaust all of the world's tree cover in less than a century. While this would be ominous at any time, it is particularly alarming at present given the concern about climate change and global warming, and the role the world's forests play as a vital CO2 sink and to help cool the planet.
The second chapter deals with the role the World Bank has had on deforestation, particularly throughout the developing world. The World Bank, founded in 1946, takes money from member states and funds projects in the developing world on the premise of promoting economic development and relieving poverty. Their favorite projects over the past half century have been primarily in the energy, transportation and agricultural sectors, all of which have a direct and indirect impacts on increasing local deforestation where the projects are built.
In almost every country studied the situation is more similar than different. Local differences arise from the ecology, the history, local practices, government policies and the like, however it is the overriding similarity that most resonated with me. In each country, there is a population that makes a living and uses the forests in a reasonably low-impact and nearly sustainable basis. These folks are the losers as governments, in an interest to grow economically, see the forests as an economic resource to generate revenue and political power. So the government is more than willing to follow the World Bank and other developers as they propose dams, roads and agriculture to raise money and supposed living standards. These projects ultimately have a negative impact on forests in direct and obvious ways, but they also bring people and economic activity deeper and deeper into the forests causing yet further long-term destruction. In the end, the forests are gone and the environmental and economic problems remain.
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I'd say its closer to this
In each country, there is a population that makes a living and uses the forests in a reasonably low-impact and nearly sustainable basis. These folks are the losers as government elites, in an interest to pad their individual personal and family nest, are bribed by the World Bank and others to allow exorbitant loan and external financial domination of their countries to be achieved because the local elites get a personal commission off the loan in auctioning off their own people. It's just global organized crime, organized by the World Bank.
See:
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Paperback)
by John Perkins
John Perkins started and stopped writing Confessions of an Economic Hit Man four times over 20 years. He says he was threatened and bribed in an effort to kill the project, but after 9/11 he finally decided to go through with this expose of his former professional life.
Perkins, a former chief economist at Boston strategic-consulting firm Chas. T. Main, says he was an "economic hit man" for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business.
"Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars," Perkins writes. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is an extraordinary and gripping tale of intrigue and dark machinations. Think John Le Carré, except it's a true story.
Perkins writes that his economic projections cooked the books Enron-style to convince foreign governments to accept billions of dollars of loans from the World Bank and other institutions to build dams, airports, electric grids, and other infrastructure he knew they couldn't afford.
The loans were given on condition that construction and engineering contracts went to U.S. companies.
Often, the money would simply be transferred from one bank account in Washington, D.C., to another one in New York or San Francisco.
The deals were smoothed over with bribes for foreign officials, but it was the taxpayers in the foreign countries who had to pay back the loans.
When their governments couldn't do so, as was often the case, the U.S. or its henchmen at the World Bank or International Monetary Fund would step in and essentially place the country in trusteeship, dictating everything from its spending budget to security agreements and even its United Nations votes.
It was, Perkins writes, a clever way for the U.S. to expand its "empire" at the expense of Third World citizens. While at times he seems a little overly focused on conspiracies, perhaps that's not surprising considering the life he's led. --Alex Roslin --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.