Saturday, June 13, 2009
Hello again :D
Ok so I was reading newspapers this morning when I came across this article titled “Rubber demand threatens wildlife” in the Home section of The Straits Time dated Thursday, June 11 2009 (It was on page 10, if you would like more details xD)
Although I hardly take much interest in reading such articles (oops) the picture of this woman (I think the person is female, but it does sort of look like a male from another angle too ><) extracting the latex caught my attention so I decided to read the article! (: (and I am glad I read it too, because the information was rather useful for our Regional Studies Programme)
It talked about how “the rapid expansion of rubber plantations in SEA in the last decade could have a devastating effect on the environment”. Apparently, more than 500 000 hectares of regional mountainous forests (about 8 times the size of Singapore) have already been converted to rubber plantations. By 2050, the expansion of plantations in the highlands of SW China, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar is expected to double or triple.
What used to be a landscape consisting of patches of forest, irrigated rice and a variety of other crops is now just uniformly rubber and this can lead to devastating environmental effects. (By the way, it was noted that there was an unrestricted expansion of rubber in mountainous regions in Mainland SEA)With fewer trees, there are far fewer plants to absorb excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and this will result in an acceleration of the effects of global warming. Deforestation also causes landslides and soil erosion, while growing only rubber also destabilizes regional water systems as these plants tend to suck up excess water. There is also a threat to biodiversity as it would mean the decline of numerous species of native plants and animals (many of them are already on the brink of extinction) should the trend of growing only rubber trees continue. Roughly a quarter of the world’s species of animals and plants lives in this region (this region is a biodiversity hot spot, home to 7000 endemic
plant species, 18 bird species, 25 mammal species and 35 amphibian species)
Experts have attributed this trend to rising crude oil princes a burgeoning (growing/expanding rapidly) demand for rubber products, particularly in China. Thus, rubber seems to be the most valuable crop in the region.
One of the professors has also called for more areas to be designated as forest reserves as “a substantial increase in natural reserve areas could help to reduce the threats to biodiversity and carbon stocks”. He also called for the adoption of diversified agroforestry systems, where cash crops such as rubber and oil palm play important roles, but are not planted as monocultures. Instead, these cash crops will co-exist alongside native species of plants, thus reducing the threat to ecosystems.
After reading the article right, I realise that this area involves countries in SEA, making it even more “related” to me, for after all, I am a RSP student. I think this issue needs immediate attention, for if this trend continues, not only will the plant and animal species be affected but we humans, who were the cause of all these problems, would be affected too. Many of these tree species may actually have medical properties that may be unknown to us yet, and when all these species are extinct, our hopes of getting cures for diseases like cancer will be gone too. Also, should animal and plant species be extinct, it would be impossible for our future generations to get the chance to view them, just like how we did not get to view the Dodo before it became extinct. The continuation of the trend would result in further worsening of global warming, and to be truthful, we are already suffering from some of the effects already. These few weeks, the temperature in Singapore has been really hot, with temperatures reaching up to as high as 34°C. If this continues, we would be likely to experience another ice age, and we humans might not even be able to endure the extreme weather that we caused in the first place. Although this is not the only cause of global warming and the threat to biodiversity, we should still do our best to prevent this trend from continuing. After all, if all of us have the mindset that all these problems are actually very minor and they don’t really make an impact on our lives, we would all be extinct sooner or later due to our selfish nature.
Ok yep, that’s all for this post. Bye!
11:43 AM