Tropical Forests Prime For Catastrophic Fires

by Jim Lobe

The report, the "Global Review of Forests," warns that a new El Nino could arrive as soon as 18 months from now, well before forests hit by fires during the 1997-98 El Nino have had time to recover.

As a result, forests in Southeast Asia, the Amazon, China and parts of Africa are like "tinderboxes" waiting to be set alight, according to the report, part of a series prepared by two major independent groups, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

"The world cannot afford to catch fire like it did two years ago," said Tom Dillon, senior forest program officer at the WWF. "While some nations are attempting to face their fire problems, such efforts have been too slow and little has been done to address the underlying causes of forest fires," he aid.

Moreover, the urgency of preventing and containing forest fires -- most of which are caused by human activity -- is not sufficiently appreciated by the international community which, despite great concern during the last great fires of 1997-98, which affected a total area roughly equivalent to the United Kingdom, has let the issue slip off the global agenda, according to the report.

The report, which is based on the latest data on conditions in the most fire-prone forests of China, Latin America, Indonesia, Russia, North America, and the European Mediterranean, identifies the danger as the result of self-reinforcing cycles that are caused increasing concern among atmospheric scientists and other experts on global warming.

The first is the observation that global warming -- the gradual heating of the earth's atmosphere which most scientists believe is caused in major part by the burning of carbon-based fuels, such as oil and coal -- appears to be increasing the frequency and intensity of El Ninos, of which there have been seven episodes since 1970, most recently in 1997-98.

Likewise, El Nino -- a 12 to 18-month atmospheric event that warms ocean temperatures and creates sharp declines in rainfall in the western tropical Pacific, Central American and northern South America, home to some of the last remaining tropical forests on the globe -- appears to contribute to global warming, in part by causing more burning of the forests.

That is because forest fires, like industrial greenhouse gases, are an important source of carbon emitted into the atmosphere. Some estimates suggest that they may be responsible for as much as 40 percent of all global greenhouse emissions in severe forest fire years, such as 1997-98.

"The daunting fact is that the world faces a positive feedback cycle in which climate change exacerbated by forest fires and deforestation, increases the frequency of El Nino, which in turn causes more forest burning," the report concludes.

The second cycle, based on new evidence from the Amazon, suggests that fire or even logging increases the flammability of forests, so that, the more forests become degraded -- either through deforestation or by fire -- the more susceptible to future burning they become, and the more they burn when they do actually catch fire.

That means that previously burned forests become susceptible to fire not only during the drought conditions of El Nino years, but also under more common dry conditions, as in 1999 when very destructive fires swept forests in the Amazon, Indonesia, Russia, and the United States Southwest.

Moreover, scientists have found that "second" fires are much more intense and destructive than "first fires" in tropical forests. First fires ordinarily kill less than 10 percent of living biomass, but second fires can destroy 80 percent or more.

Scientists are particularly concerned about Brazilian Amazon forest, about 40 percent of which is "extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall." One recent study concluded that "in a scenario of increasingly frequent El Nino events, Amazonia is poised to experienced catastrophic forest fire events that dwarf the fires of Roraima in early 1998 and of deforestation activity in scale."

To respond to these threats, international agencies and national governments so far have focused primarily on hi-tech, short-term answers, such as using remote-sensing technology to alert forest managers to the outbreak and extent of fire.

But the report argues that these efforts, while laudable in most cases, are not sufficient, and that fundamental actions to improve forest management need to be taken.

For example, experience in Mexico and Indonesia indicate that the biggest and most destructive fires in 1997-98 occurred on state-owned or industrial forest land, while the least damage took place on land that was community-owned or managed. Community-controlled forests in many countries have also been shown to preserve the bio- diversity of their forests much more effectively, according to the report.

In addition to community management of forests, the report urges the adoption of more intensive agricultural practices that would discourage "slash-and-burn" agriculture; the creation of stronger early-warning systems against fires; the elimination of illegal logging and the improvement of legal logging practices to better prevent fires; and a reexamination of export-led growth strategies that have encouraged the conversion of primary natural forests into plantations.