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| RAINFOREST LIBRARY |
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| What are the Alternatives? |
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| 1. Eco-Tourism |
| Growing world interest in the fate of the Rainforest has
made many people to want to visit the Rainforest themselves , for a first-hand look at its
natural beauty and also to see the many curious birds, animals and plants that inhabit it. As
the world becomes increasingly developed and more and more people in the developed countries
are trapped in an endless urban/suburban cycle of work, noise and air pollution, crime, over-
crowding and stress, it is becoming increasingly popular to want to escape far from home to
the peace, quiet and relative solitude of the tropical Rainforests. Rustic, and sometimes
increasingly luxurious, Jungle Lodges have been built in remote areas of the Rainforests, where
visitors can swim in crystal-clear rivers, hike through Rainforest filled with orchids, ginger
lilies, heliconia and other beautiful tropical flowers, visit caves, waterfalls and the ruins
of ancient cities, go bird-watching or on naturalist's expeditions to observe wild animals, and
recover their senses and peace of mind in surroundings of great natural beauty. Countries such
as Costa Rica, Belize, Guyana and so on, have realized that the income derived from Eco-Tourism
can be immense and can be used to offset further destruction of the Rainforest by logging, slash
and burn peasant cultivation, cattle ranches and plantations. Eco-tourism also provides
employment for indigenous peoples and an outlet for native handicrafts, as well as an increased
demand for local goods and services, creating a trickle-down effect of increased prosperity in
the local economy and community. The foreign-exchange income derived from Eco-Tourism is many
times the income produced by logging, cattle-ranching or slash and burn cultivation, all of
which are extremely destructive to the Rainforest. |
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| 2. Natural Harvest |
| Indigenous peoples, lived in harmony with the natural
cycle of the Rainforest, hunting wild game, gathering wild fruits, nuts and berries, honey and
root tubers, and planting small temporary patches of fruits and vegetables. They never took
more than they could eat or more than they absolutely needed to survive. We could learn a lot
from them and profit by their example. The Rainforest is filled with nature's bounty of tropical
fruits, nuts and other products that could be naturally harvested, in a sustainable manner,
without upsetting the delicate ecological balance of the Rainforest. Spices such as Ginger,
Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Allspice, Vanilla and Pepper grow wild in the Rainforest, as do a wide variety
of tropical fruits such as the Kiwi, Palm Fruit, Peach Palm, Guarana, Mangosteen, Durian and
Pataua, names unfamiliar to many Westerners, but often surpassing our own fruits in taste,
vitamins and protein, making them much healthier than the apples and pears that we consume.
A large number of gums, resins and latexes are also yielded by the trees and plants of the
Rainforest and have proved, as in the case of rubber and chicle, that they can be tapped and
marketed at great profit, without any damage to the Rainforest. Various fibre and cane products
such as jute, kapok, kenaf, bamboo and palm vine rattan are also of great commercial value. A
wide variety of plants such as the Ylang-Ylang and the Brazilian Oil Tree yield hat can be used
in Perfumes, Medicines and Food flavorings. Even Coffee and Cocoa grow wild in the Rainforest,
not to mention Yams, Cassava, Sweet Potatoes and hundreds of different types of root crops. The
Rainforest is a treasure chest of natural foods. In New Guinea alone, there are 251 tree species
that are known to bear edible fruit, yet only 43 have ever been privately cultivated. One tribe
in East India uses 17 different tropical fruits to make fruit juices. Sustained extraction of
rubber, allspice, nuts, fruit and game can yield U.S. $400 per acre a year, without cutting down
a single tree or degrading the Rainforest. Fish, turtle, crocodile and game farming can produce
as much as U.S.$8,000 per acre per year with only a minimal impact on the forest. In contrast,
cattle-ranching in tropical Rainforest regions yields only a meagre U.S.$19 per acre per year
and the pastures usually wear out and are abandoned within 5 years, but not before having
caused incredible destruction to vast areas of the Rainforest. |
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| 3. Medicinal Rainforest Flora |
During the 1980s, the world scientific community
became increasingly interested in the enormous potential of new medicines derived from flowers
and plants of the Rainforest. In 1988 an international convention of Pharmacologists, Economists
and Conservation Biologists met in Thailand to develop a centralized policy on the scientific
conservation and use of medicinal plants. They then issued the landmark "Chiang Mai Declaration"
calling for a greater worldwide effort to catalogue, study and conserve medicinal plants and,
under the auspices of the World Health Organization, the IUCN and the World Wide Fund for Nature
launched a massive programme to "Save the Plants that Save Lives". In recent years some of the
World's most successful medical and pharmaceutical drugs have been derived from medicinal plants
from the Rainforest. The anti-malarial agent, quinine, is extracted from the bark of several
species of the Cinchona tree, which grows in the Andean regions of Peru. The shrub Rauvolfia,
found in the Rainforests of Africa and Asia, provides reserpine, a medicine used to reduce high
blood pressure and to treat mental illness. Several different legumes, especially the Moreton
Bay chestnut, (Castanospermum australe), native to the Rainforests of Queensland, Australia,
are showing promise in the form of a drug to help combat AIDS. A drug obtained from the
Madagascar periwinkle, now extinct in the wild, has increased the survival rate of children
with Leukemia from 20 to 80% and has brought about a remarkable 80% chance of remission in cases
of Hodgkins disease. In fact, the U.S. National Cancer Institute has discovered that of
the 3,000 plants that contain anti-cancer properties, over 70% are from the Rainforest. The
contribution of medicinal plants from the Rainforest to Cancer Research is considered so
important that the U.S. Cancer Institute has stated that "the widespread elimination of the
tropical moist forests could represent a serious setback to the anti-cancer campaign". Many more
drugs have been discovered from Rainforest plants. The Mexican Yam (Dioscorea spp), found only
in tropical Rainforests, is used in the manufacture of cortisone and and hydrocortisone, vital
in the treatment of a wide spectrum of ailments including, rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatic
fever, ulcerative colitis, various allergies, sciatica, Addison's disease and certain skin
diseases. Tetrodotoxin, another drug extracted from frogs found in the Rainforests of Central
America and the Caribbean, is employed as a muscle relaxant for victims of neurogenic leprosy
and terminal cancer patients. As an anesthetic it is 160,000 times more powerful than Cocaine.
Another drug, Capoten, derived from the South American Viper, is a highly effective inhibitor
in the treatment of high blood pressure amongst stroke patients. Indigenous peoples have long
viewed the Rainforest as "Nature's Pharmacy" and through their assistance new medicinal plants
and their applications are constantly being discovered. It is estimated that some 3 billion
people worldwide, over 60% of the world's population, depend on traditional medicines derived
from medicinal plants as cures for illness. In India and China about 80% to 90% of traditional
medicines are plant-based and Chinese herbal remedies alone employ over 5,000 different species
of plants. In Kenya 40% of herbal medicines come from native forest trees and in thw Amazon, an
Ethno-Botanical team has catalogued more than 1,000 species of plants used by the indigenous
peoples, mostly for medicines. In 1993, Rosita Arvigo and Michael Balick, two Ethnobotanists
living in Belize, published "Rainforest Remedies. One Hundred Healing Herbs of Belize", the
culmination of several years of research into the traditional medicines and medicinal flowers
and plants of the Rainforest. This fascinating study reveals the immense scope of human ailments
that can be treated with medicinal plants from the Rainforest and is merely the tip of the ice-
berg. Who knows how many other potential cures for diseases such as Cancer, AIDS and so on are
still out there in the Rainforest just waiting to be discovered. However, we must act quickly,
because every minute that we destroy more and more of the Rainforest, we are also destroying our
few remaining chances to find a cure for these dreadful diseases. |
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| 4. Forest Conservation |
In 1972, the United Nations Conference on the Human
Environment held an historic meeting in Stockholm, at which they acknowledged that the Earth
was threatened by a growing environmental holocaust and that the survival of the human race
would depend upon its ability to conserve the world's resources and to achieve sustainable
development into the 21st Century. These problems and their possible solutions were later
published in 1980 by The World Conservation Union (IUCN) in a document entitled World Conservat-
ion Strategy. Since that time, despite the best efforts of the United Nations Environment
Programme, the World Wide Fund for Nature, the World Commission on Environment and Development,
and a dozen other such international organizations, governments and quasi-governmental bodies,
the destruction of the Rainforest has continued apace, and, unless we make some final stand, in
our attempts to halt this madness, the Earth as we know it will simply cease to exist The
result of Global Warming and the disappearance of the Rainforests will be extreme weather,
rising seas, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, snow storms, droughts and temperatures that will
become hotter and colder than ever on record. The recent swathe of destruction left by El Nino
through a score of countries in 1998, is merely a dress rehersal of the terrors to come if we
do not conserve our resources. Scientists have just announced that rising sea levels over the
next century will flood most existing low-lying costal areas, drastically altering the world
map and affecting its inhabitants. Severe weather, especially droughts, and dwindling resources,
will ensure that untold millions of people will die from famine in the next few decades, and we
will be unable to do anything to help them. |
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| One of the first problems were must tackle, if we are to survive the coming
Environmental Holocaust, is an adequate supply of fuel for energy, heating and cooking. The
world's supply of fuel wood, given our constantly rising rate of consumption, will not be able
to keep pace with our demand. We must find alternative sources. one such excellent source would
be the Babacu Palm (Orbignya Martiana). This remarkable tree is so versatile that its fruit
yields oil, feed and fertilizer cake, flour, charcoal, methyl alcohol, tar and acetic acid, and
some trees yield up to half a ton of fruits a year. The palm fronds provide an inexhaustible
source of coal-like fuel and the industrial potential of the tree appears unlimited. It thrives
on poor soils, it seed can be simply strewn in degraded areas, and it is perfect as a plantation
tree or a shade tree in a growing forestry mixed-planting systems. Another major problem is to find an
alternative source of fast-growing timber, that can be planted and harvested in sustainable
plantation settings. The Bamboo would seem to be the perfect candidate for this purpose, though
its many merits and uses are almost unknown outside of China and Japan, exceptin Colombia where
the versatility and strength of this wonderful plant has been exploited in the coffee-growing
highlands for years as a preferred building material. Moso bamboo (Phyllostachys pubescens), one
of the fastest-growing and largest of the bamboos, reaches 80 feet in height and 7.5 inches in
diameter, and has a first-rate reputation as timber, pulp and split-wood, and its shoots are
also edible. It will also grow readily in he poor, red-clay soils of the tropical Rainforest
and thrives on deforested mountain slopes, abandoned as sterile wastelands, where it prevents
erosion, excludes weeds and regenerates readily after clear cutting. A variety of other species
of trees, including teak, mahogany and Brazil nut, can be grown on a planation basis, and even
further integrated with the original Rainforest. Progressive Forest Management is one of the
keys to a sustainable timber industry in the 21st Century. The same can be said of Agriculture,
which must take into account new methods of crop rotation, the reproduction of the Rainforest's
unique ecological conditions by the increasing use of Agroforestry, mixing a variety of trees
and ground cover, and the intelligent application of animal and vegetable composts to enrich
the soil. If this can be achieved, then slash and burn peasant farmers can stay on their small
plots of land, making them productive, instead of abandoning them and destroying new areas of
the Rainforest. Only by halting this march of destruction through the Amazon and other
Rainforests, can we bring a glimmer of hope to the future and Save The Rainforest for our
children and their children. |
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