A price on ecosystem?

Ecosystems are life systems. You cannot put monetary value of life systems. How can you put a money value on something like air? But increasingly there is talk of placing a value on the eco-system. IS it because we have reached a point where unless a monetary value is placed on somehting, we do not value it. Take for instance trees. Our cities are shedding trees at a rapid pace as they give way to buildings and roads. And yet, we recognise the value of a tree when caught on a hot day on the roadside. People park cars under the shade of a tree, but do not spare a thought for a tree facing the axe. Guess what trees do for us beyond the irreplaceable belching out of oxygen. They keep the concrete and asphalt of cities and suburbs 10 or more degrees cooler and protect our skin from the sun’s harsh UV rays. Loss of trees means that many millions invested in air-conditioning. Trees, also sequester carbon, a greenhouse gas that makes the planet warmer. A study by the Carnegie Institution for Science also found that water vapor from forests lowers ambient temperatures. “Working trees” could absorb some of the excess phosphorus and nitrogen that run off farm fields and help heal the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. In Africa, millions of acres of parched land have been reclaimed through strategic tree growth. Trees also release vast clouds of beneficial chemicals. On a large scale, some of these aerosols appear to help regulate the climate; others are anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral. We need to learn much more about the role these chemicals play in nature. A walk in the woods, they say, reduces the level of stress chemicals in the body and increases natural killer cells in the immune system, which fight tumors and viruses. Studies in inner cities show that anxiety, depression and even crime are lower in a landscaped environment. A 2008 study by researchers at Columbia University found that more trees in urban neighborhoods correlate with a lower incidence of asthma. The list goes on. Yet, we need monetary schemes to spur afforestation. What's your take?

The cleaning excess

“Future generations are going to look at the way we make toilet paper as one of the greatest excesses of our age. Making toilet paper from virgin wood is a lot worse than driving Hummers in terms of global warming pollution,” Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defence Council, told the Guardian.

The average American uses 23.6 rolls of toilet paper a year — that’s about 7 billion rolls for the country. If a single eucalyptus tree yields 1,000 rolls, it amounts to seven million eucalyptus trees to clean Americans. With offices reducing use of paper, it has meant less recyclable paper in general.

Can't the Americans do without tissue? While this may seem simple to most of us in the east, in fact more hygienic to use water, only about 6 percent Americans are willing to reconsider!

Makes one think how simple things taken for granted have big stories behind them. Habits die hard.

Forests of life

Sometimes, studies seem ludicrous given that they endorse what is generally accepted by common sense. But still, an academic verification of sense seems to be the way of our times.

Decades of forest destruction, we are told, have turned once-productive lands into desert across the Horn of Africa, worsening a devastating famine that has killed tens of thousands of people in Somalia and elsewhere, forestry experts say.

A new study by the Center for International Forestry Research, conducted in 25 countries, shows that forests provide about one-quarter of household income for people living in or near them, offering a critical defense against poverty.

In parched regions like the Horn of Africa, forests help retain moisture and soil nutrients, providing a defense against wind erosion and a source of food and energy.

According to an international coalition, the clear-cutting of forests and degradation of land across the region have done more than the drought to convert once-productive grazing areas into a barren landscape.

The group, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, has called for increased investments in reforestation and agroforestry projects across the region, saying similar efforts in Kenya and Niger have revitalized forests and provided critical food and other resources.

Hold on to that green cover

Forests play an even greater role in Earth’s climate system than previously known, according to the most comprehensive assessment yet of the carbon storage potential of the world’s wooded areas.

Between 1990 and 2007, the planet’s tropical, temperate, and boreal forests absorbed about 2.4 billion tons of carbon annually, or the equivalent of about one-third of fossil fuel emissions, and re-growth of trees in previously cleared lands absorbed an additional 1.6 billion tons, according to a study published in the journal Science.

During the same period, however, rampant deforestation — particularly in the world's tropical regions — released 2.9 billion tons of carbon annually. Overall, the planet’s forests provide a net carbon sink of about 1.1 billion tons of carbon, or the equivalent of about 13 percent of the emissions produced by humankind annually.

According to researchers, the findings suggest that forest protection should play an even more important role in strategies to protect the planet’s climate, including the emergence of carbon markets.

Wealth of live forests

What an irony that the UN just announced 2011 as the International Year of forests, and you have the UK government selling off its woodlands! And Brazil has given the go-ahead to the controversial $17 billion dam project at Belo Monte in the Amazonian rainforest, a massive project that will sink 588 acres of rainforest!

The UK government has already committed to selling off 15 of the public forest estates in the hope of generating an extra £100m for the exchequer. The government is proposing that English woodland be divided into four categories, ranging from "heritage" to "multi-purpose", "small timber" and "large commercial". But not many are buying this.

Do we need a year declared in order to know the value of our forests? Surely, all of us know the forests nurture our rivers? That the air we breathe, the food, water and medicines we need to survive, the variety of life on earth, the climate that shapes our present and future - they all depend on forests. Forests offer the quickest, most cost effective and largest means of curbing global emissions. Around a quarter of the income of forest-dependent communities comes from the goods and services that forests provide.

But yet, we are ready to sacrifice our forests for short-term projects. We willingly raze them down to raise plantations that fetch in quick money, even as we lose the vital biodiversity of our forests.

Will the year bring any fresh awareness on the importance of forests in our lives, however far removed from our lives they seem???

Forests of the wild

Restoring damaged rainforest is a more effective way of capturing carbon than cultivating industrial, single-species tree plantations, according to a new study.

After testing three types of plantations in northeastern Australia, researchers found that restored forests were more densely wooded than monoculture plantations, had larger trees, and captured 106 tons of CO2 per hectare, compared with 62 tons stored in timber plantations.

While timber plantations are a cheap source of abundant wood and rubber, some ecologists say they are little more than “green deserts” that lack biodiversity.

Softwood monoculture plantations are grown for industrial purposes and are used as a cheap and abundant source of resources such as timber and rubber.

The research also suggests that restoration plantings store more carbon over time. However, as restoration projects are more expensive then monoculture plantations it is unlikely that carbon markets will favour restoration.