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How many trees is it okay to cut to grow?

22 Aug 2021

By Madhusha Thavapalakumar Local deforestation has always been a topic of local interest, and I am not saying this just because certain local netizens still have the Facebook profile picture frame of “Let's Preserve Wilpattu”, but because it was making headlines in the recent past. It is safe to say that at least it was making headlines up until the outbreak of the new wave of the prevailing pandemic. Local news reports, social media posts, and even memes to some extent were reporting on local deforestation extensively in the past few months, as deforestation was and is still reportedly happening left, right, and centre. At one point, the Government was even proposing to build reservoirs and an irrigation scheme in the Sinharaja Rainforest, a United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Heritage Site with endemic herbs and animals. The agitated general public has been protesting on multiple occasions. Amid protests and uncover-ups of deforestation by the Government, the justification the Government put forward for the deforestation is that if the country has to be developed, deforestation “to some extent” is unavoidable. This justification is in addition to the justification a few government officials have provided that cutting down trees will not reduce the oxygen level in the atmosphere, as Middle Eastern countries with large deserts still do have oxygen. The latter justification aside, have we already surpassed this “some extent of deforestation” that the Government is justifying, in the path of becoming a developed nation? That is what the Market Mine of The Sunday Morning Business is analysing this week, after a long break. Deforestation in Sri Lanka Sri Lanka’s forest cover in the 1880s was reportedly around 80%, of which the country lost a little over 17% during the period from 1990-2005. According to the latest available data, in 2019, Sri Lanka’s forest cover stood as a mere 16.5% compared to 29.7% two years ago. The country’s average annual deforestation rate at the moment stands around 1.14%. According to the Global Forest Watch, in Sri Lanka, the top seven regions were responsible for 53% of all tree cover loss between 2001 and 2020. Anuradhapura had the most tree cover loss at 29.9 kha compared to an average of 7.54 kha. Even though deforestation prevailed during Sri Lanka’s colonial era, it was not as significant as it is today. The colonial period witnessed deforestation mainly due to commercial agriculture, and this was accelerated during British rule, according to Ravindra Kariyawasam and Chinthaka Rajapaksa of the Centre for Environmental Studies. After Sri Lanka gained independence, the country increased timber production and established the State Timber Corporation, which reportedly contributed to heavy deforestation. With increased urbanisation rate, construction of transport ways across forests, and construction of hotels in the wilderness, the speed of deforestation today is higher than it ever was. Amongst the factors that lead to deforestation, climate too plays a role as forests disappear naturally as well. And then there is agriculture. Along with the increase in population, the demand for food supplies too increases. As the population rate spikes, so does the urbanisation rate. Governments around the world claim that in order to feed the growing population, trees need to be cut down for commercial agriculture. About 19 million children are born into the world annually, while on the other hand, life expectancy is on the rise as the number of deaths is on the decline. Several environmentalists argue that the world wastes about 30% of the food it grows on a daily basis, meaning a huge amount of food that grows in lands is being wasted on a daily basis. They argue all that these governments need is a proper plan to utilise this 30% and minimise deforestation. Deforestation and urbanisation As mentioned earlier, Sri Lanka’s average annual deforestation rate is around 1.14%. On the other hand, preliminary spatial analysis data suggest that in the capital of Sri Lanka, the urban built-up area witnessed growth from around 41 km2 in 1995 to around 281 km2 in 2017, while non-built-up areas diminished from 125 km2 to a mere 10 km2. “This trend of urban expansion is unprecedented in the city’s history, with a far greater urban area added in the years 1995-2017 than at any other time in the settlement’s existence,” according to data from United Nations Habitat (UN-Habitat). As per the available data, the urban area grew by 9.57% per year, which is a remarkably high figure even by global standards. According to studies, humans cut down about 15 billion trees each year and plant only one-third of this amount. In order to get a better understanding of Sri Lanka’s deforestation in comparison to other developing nations, we decided to take a number of countries to compare Sri Lanka with. These emerging and developing nations include Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Fiji, India, Indonesia, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, and the Philippines. Recently, The Washington Post has done a detailed graph on trees per square kilometer (figures 1 and 2).  Accordingly, Cambodia has 30,421 trees per square kilometer. With a population of 16.5 million, Cambodia’s GDP stands a little above $ 27 million. Cambodia has lost nearly 2.2 million ha of tree cover between 2001 and 2008, Global Forest Watch indicates. Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s trees per square kilometre stand around 6,863, significantly less than that of Sri Lanka, which is 36,777. When compared to the GDP, Sri Lanka’s GDP stands around $ 84 billion while Bangladesh’s is around $ 302.6 billion with a population much higher than Sri Lanka, at 163 million. On the other hand, Bhutan and Indonesia seem to have higher trees per square kilometre than Sri Lanka, as they have 47, 572 and 42,405, respectively. Bhutan’s population is 0.7 million and Indonesia’s population is 270.6 million. When taking population into consideration, the population to per square kilometre tree ratio is higher than that of Sri Lanka and Indonesia and many other Asian countries. However, in terms of GDP, Indonesia surpasses Sri Lanka and Bhutan with a whopping $ 1 trillion economy while Bhutan is a mere $ 2.5 billion economy. China, the economic superpower of the Asian region, has one of the least trees per square kilometre rate at 14,853, followed by India at 11,109. Both countries are immensely populated and their GDPs are in trillion US dollars. India’s economy is worth $ 2.8 trillion while China beats them all with a massive $ 14.34 billion economy. Meanwhile, Myanmar and Nepal have 36,420 and 22,641 trees per square kilometer, respectively, with $ 76 billion and $ 30.6 billion economies. However, in terms of the correlation between GDP and tree density, there seems to be not much of a correlation. According to available data, emerging and developing countries in Asia have more variability in tree density than developed country groupings. Clara Rowe, a co-author of the study and a recent graduate of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, has a couple of years ago told The Washington Post that “if you said to me, okay, the GDP per capita of Costa Rica is $ 8,000, I would have no way of telling you how many trees there are in Costa Rica or how dense those trees are”. She added that the most meaningful way of looking at the relationship between a country’s wealth and its tree resources would be to calculate a nation’s “forest potential” – how many trees it is actually capable of supporting – and then compare that with how many it actually has, which would then reflect how much the country has exploited those resources, as opposed to preserving them. However, researchers back up numerous economic benefits of trees. One hundred trees could remove about 53 tonnes of carbon dioxide and 430 pounds of air pollutants, according to researchers. The same number of trees could catch over 139,000 gallons of rainwater per year. Moreover, trees provide food and eliminate the need of importing food, spending much-required dollars for a country like Sri Lanka. While it might be unavoidable to not undertake deforestation, research done in this regard weighs down negatives of deforestation than positives.


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