Thông tin tài liệu
Animal Abuse Resulting from Wildlife Habitat Destruction 253 leading to large-scale plantations in places such as Indonesia, Brazil and Colombia This has resulted in the clearing of rainforests and in some instances forcing Indigenous people off their lands The latter is important insofar as those living on and with the land have traditionally done so in ecologically sustainable ways (Caughley et al 1996; Robyn 2002) Mol (2013, p 254) critically observes that in Colombia: The gift of palm oil to the world leaves the people and the environment of the tropics with contaminated soils, groundwater, and rivers; habitat destruction; ecosystem disturbances; the loss of flora and aquatic and animal species; and processes of displacement and emplacement that inflect a whole range of physical, psychological, social, and cultural consequences upon local communities Cutting down trees also has a direct bearing on global warming For instance, it has been estimated that by 2022, biofuel plantations could destroy 98 % of Indonesia’s rainforests and that ‘Every ton of palm oil used as biofuel releases 30 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, ten times as much as petroleum does’ (Shiva 2008, p 79) Overall, it has been estimated that deforestation accounts globally for about 12 % of total human-caused greenhouse gas emissions (Greenpeace 2014; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2013) This deforestation not only involves the cutting down of trees but also frequently the burning of forests as part of converting land for other uses such as agriculture and biofuel plantations (see Box 1) Box Indonesian Peat Blaze Affects Orangutans 2015 saw the worst ever smoke haze over Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, extending to Thailand and the Philippines This was caused by illegal fires started in peatland and forest on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island and the Indonesian part of Borneo The fires were started in order to cheaply clear land for palm oil and pulp and paper plantations (ABC news 19 October 2015) It was claimed by the World Resources Institute that the Indonesian forest and agricultural fires cloaking South-East Asia in acrid haze were spewing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each day that all United States economic activity (ABC news 22 October 2015) The already threatened orangutans living in Borneo suffered greatly from exposure to the smoke and fire, especially the young who, as with humans, were most at risk The orangutans experienced malnutrition, dehydration and hunger as a direct consequence of the fires burning up and in their habitat (ABC news November 2015) The rise of ‘flex crops and commodities’ are also having a major impact on biodiversity (Borras et al 2013) These refer to a single crop/commodity that
Ngày đăng: 24/10/2022, 11:03
Xem thêm:
