Loss of Biodiversity including deforestation
Biodiversity is the sum total of all the plants, animals and micro organisms found on the Planet (Dirzo and Raven 2003). The gene pool found in this diverse range of life which resides in the various ecosystems such as forests, deserts, rivers, oceans...etc is also part of the sum total. The on-going problem is the complexity of the system of life and so the value of each component within it. Without such value attributed, the full costs of development are never paid by the global capitalist system and the exploitation of biodiversity continues. Logging and tropical rainforest clearance (for agriculture, fuel or human infrastructure) is perhaps the best known and most high profile example of extreme biodiversity loss of species and ecosystems (Ahrends et al. 2010).
The impact is enormous, the momentum is huge with 50-100 tropical forest species lost every day due to deforestation (Stork 2010) and the knock-on impact on the global climate is no longer a matter of debate. Unlike other types of forest, tropical rainforest must be considered to be a non-renewable resource.
How might we justify such a statement?
Tropical forest ecosystems are comprised of complex and inter-dependent webs of plants and animals. They are home to half the species on Earth as well as tribal peoples, some of whom still have had no contact with the outside world. Climatologists also highlight their important role in the maintenance of global weather patterns. Their complexity has evolved over 1000s of years. Clear-felling them and re-planting will simply not be able to reproduce the complex ecosystem destroyed in the original logging process. In this sense it is normally argued that (unlike other forests) tropical forests are not a renewable resource.
Image by Alan L from Flickr. Used under Creative Commons Attribution licence